THE Dulwich Despatch Summer 2023
Slip-sliding Away: Dulwich Skiers Hit the Slopes
At the beginning of the Easter break, some pupils from years 7-10 went on a ski trip to Austria, writes Toby Kuzi-Orizu (Y7). It took about a day to get to Austria including a one - hour coach trip, a three - hour plane trip and then another five - hour coach trip. We reached our venue at 10:00pm, unpacked, and went to sleep—exhausted! We woke up nice and early the next morning and ate breakfast before splitting up into our travel groups and walking to the ski rental. After the last of us had put on our ski boots on, we finally arrived at the Bad Gerstein ski centre. I was placed into the beginners ’ group, as I had only been skiing once many years ago. We started by putting on just one of our skis and walking around in it. After a few minutes of
falling repeatedly, I was finally able to not lose my balance and tried putting the second ski on. With both skis on, it was a lot harder to balance as the icy snow was very slippery. In the end, me and the rest of my group were able to balance while using our poles as supports, as we did not know how to stop or control our skis yet. We then tried detaching our skis and climbing up a small slope and skiing down it. On the first day we also learnt that we needed to put our skis in a formation that resembled a wedge, with the skis close together at the front and far apart at the back to stop. This skill took me a long time to learn
and so on the first day I would instead stop by turning around and letting my excess momentum carry me back up the slope, making a ‘ J ’ shape. On the second day, we practiced turning and using the wedge formation to decelerate and accelerate as we went around a series of cones. Towards the end of that day ’ s skiing session, our group decided to have a snowball fight! The next day we went to a different location on the other side of the mountains. Here there was a much larger slope for us to ski down. While we had seen some people around our beginners ’ slope, there were significantly more people here. I started by trying going to the top of the new slope and skiing down but I ended up losing control and falling down. The rest of the week was more ski school and snowball fights. My skiing got lots better but there is still lots of room for improvement!
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