There comes a time in every middle-class or upwardly mobile person’s life when they will hear the following six words: “Would you like to come skiing?” My answer: absolutely not.
Skiing, I have come to believe, is the emperor’s new clothes of leisure pursuits: a collectively sustained fantasy. People insist it’s magical in the same way they insist that cold-water swimming is “transformative” or small plates are “better for sharing”. At some point we forgot to ask whether any of this is actually true.
This isn’t a carte-blanche objection to activity holidays. I love being outdoors. I’ll hike, climb or cycle quite happily. Nor is it hatred based on ignorance – I have tried skiing, once. I hated every second and emerged convinced that everyone claiming it’s “the best thing in the world” is either lying or mildly concussed.
First, there’s the economics. Skiing is vastly more expensive than the average holiday, once you factor in all of the accoutrements: specialist jackets, trousers, gloves, goggles, helmets, boots – the ugliest clothes you have ever seen in your life, by the way – poles, skis, extortionate chalet fees and flights. You pay thousands for the privilege of spending a week queueing in the cold, slightly terrified, while someone in a fluorescent jacket shouts at you in French.
Then there’s the very real possibility of cascading to your death. Or at least sustaining a not-insignificant and possibly life-altering injury. Every skier I know has returned home with some kind of snapped ligament or mysterious knee problem they now refer to as “something I picked up in Val d’Isère”. Entire orthopaedic careers must be built on this ecosystem of insanity.
Comfort is another baffling element. The idea that people in the UK spend their precious few days of annual leave willingly being even colder than usual is perverse. Why pay to be damp, windburnt and bruised, subsisting on overpriced pasta when you could spend a week sipping cocktails on a tropical island, probably at a fraction of the cost?
That’s all before the circus that is après ski: a collection of the loudest, most exhausting people you will ever meet all shouting, “What school did you go to?” over a relentless assault of a particularly vile EDM-Ibiza pop beat.
I feel as though I’m observing a cult from the outside: an adamantine belief in superiority, ritualised suffering and an evangelical urge to convert the sceptical. I have yet to hear a sensible explanation for why it’s so popular. So yes, this is a hill I’ll absolutely die on – though crucially, not while skiing down it.
Emma Loffhagen is a freelance commissioning editor and writer covering culture and lifestyle
