Perisher 2014 – The powder year

Wow, what an amazing Australian Snow Season. It is officially the best July snow in New South Wales in 20 years.  No wonder the SnowDragon tweets, posts and blogs have been a bit slow coming!  While Andrew continues his pursuit of the perfect ride on his snowboard (apparently he came close last week!) I have decided to keep up the ski lessons I started in Japan earlier this year.  As I see it – it is an evolution from the snowboard to alpine skiing to back country touring of the stunning Snowy Mountains.

Being a person inextricably linked to nature and a little less tolerant of busy lift lines and icy speed slopes, I am quite excited about this adventure and my skiing is coming on in parallel turns and hockey stops!  While my husband always told me “it doesn’t matter what you do on the board as long as you look cool”, my ski instructor had almost the same advice “as long as you look pretty”.  Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll ever achieve either but we have some laughs.

Some exercises for the learner skier with an interest in wine;

– imagine you have two grapes tucked in the top front of your ski boots and press on them firmly but gently with your shins to make wine on your way down the piste!

– practise hands forward, palms down with poles balanced on wrists with an imaginary tray on the poles balancing a glass of Sparkling Shiraz and white Castello on water crackers.

– for the beer lovers, set your hands forward and apart – a bit like you are carrying a slab of Coopers Pale Ale, while doing chair pose(Utkatasana).