Lifestyle Don't miss out on the headlines from Lifestyle. Followed categories will be added to My News. I feel like a newborn foal wearing rollerblades.
My knees wobble, arms flail and the next instant I’m face-planting snow. Brightly coloured “groms” zip past, little munchkin faces grinning beneath gobstopper helmets. I’m in the mountain’s nursery and even the toddlers have found their ski feet.
Powder hounds avert your gaze – this is my first time skiing. In fact, it’s my first attempt at any kind of winter sport, if you discount that church trip I took to Victoria’s Lake Mountain with my nan as a kid, decked out in gumboots and with a toboggan fashioned from garbage bags. The memories of Nan emptying icy slush from my boots might explain why it’s taken me four decades to get back on the slopes.
This time would be different. I was going to do it properly; I was going to get kitted out in all the gear, I was going to have lessons, I was going to bona fide ski. It was going to be epic.
It was also March, and I was going to need my passport. Steamboat hollers There are more than 6000 ski resorts worldwide. As a virgin-skier, my checklist was basic: somewhere with the white stuff, beginner runs (see, I’m adopting the lingo) and a tolerance for novices averse to the cold.
Steamboat Ski Resort in the US state of Colorado ticked all the boxes, not least because it sounds less intimidating than destinations like Canada’s Misery Mountain and Devils Head in Wisc.