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23 Things That Skiers Really Hate About Skiing

Even if you love skiing, you have to admit that it's far from perfect.

1) Getting in ski boots

No matter how many times you go skiing, getting into ski boots never gets easier. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the tortured screams of your feet as you encase them in their tomb.

2) Carrying all the gear around

Skiers love skiing. They don’t love carrying their gear about. Snowboarders, of course, only have to carry around one thing (their board). Skiers, on the other hand, have to transport four things (two skis and two poles). Stuff. Stuff. Stuff. Stuff everywhere. Too much stuff.

3) Ice

Skiing on ice is about as much fun as spending an entire evening with that bloke in your office who calls himself Graham “The Party Animal” Johnson. Or to put it another way, it’s not much fun. Skiing on snow is awesome; skiing on terrain that resembles the internal walls of your freezer, less so.

4) Getting parted from your skis in deep snow

We’ve all been there. You’re skiing off-piste with your squad, having the time of your life, when suddenly you take a tumble into the deep snow. From somewhere beneath you, you hear the familiar click of your bindings ejecting you from your planks.

After regaining some semblance of your composure, you spend the next 10 minutes scrabbling around in the snow trying to reunite yourself with your skis. Meanwhile, your mates are already down at the bottom waiting for you to sort your shit out.

5) Skiing vs Your Knees

Skiing hates your knees, and your knees hate skiing. You, as the skier, are trapped in the middle of these warring factions like an only child in the middle of a heated custody battle between two parents. Your skis want you to go skiing, your knees tell you they “only want what’s best for your physical wellbeing.” Why can’t everyone just get along? We don’t like confrontation.

6) The cost

Even if your name is Montgomery Moneybags the Third, and you live in your own private chalet up in Verbier, you’ll still probably have some awareness that skiing isn’t the cheapest of sports to partake in. Lift passes, flights, airport transfers, expensive restaurants, ski rental etc. Bleurgh. Why must the best things in life cost so much money?

7) Skiers who complain about snowboarders

We’re all for a friendly bit of light-hearted banter between snowboarders and skiers, but why must some people take it so seriously? At the end of the day, everyone’s up in the mountains to have fun. And yet, despite this, some skiers take it upon themselves to treat the whole ski/snowboard divide like gangland warfare. Chill out, guys. They’re just snowboarders.

8) Snowboarders

Speaking of snowboarders, fucking snowboarders…am-I-right?! They’re just the absolute worst. They all think it’s 1998, and that snowboarding is still the most legitimate signifier of coolness. Newsflash, guys. It’s not 1998 anymore. It’s 2016, for crying out loud. 2016! Snowboarders are not, despite how much they want to be, the stars of a late-nineties advert for Sprite. They’re just silly sausages, who share a sport with Justin Bieber (see image above).

9) Skis getting tangled on the chairlift

Just once in our life, we want to get on and off a shared chairlift without drama. Is that too much to ask? Is it?! If you’re a skier, you’ll know that the answer to this question is “Yes, that’s too much to ask.” Our skis getting tangled with other people’s skis, the descending safety bar hitting us on the back of the head, and our poles getting caught at bizarre angles. We’ve experienced it all.

10) Ski ballet

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. This is just wrong on so many levels.

11) Ripped gloves

Is there anything more heartbreaking than getting back to base, after a pleasant day’s skiing, and discovering that your gloves have fallen victim to a samurai sword attack? Of course, you have no recollection of your gloves being attacked by a samurai sword but then how else can you rationally explain the state they’re in?

12) Poor visibility

The only thing more disheartening than discovering that your gloves have been sliced up by a samurai, is looking out of the window in the morning and realising that you’re going to have to spend the day skiing through old-fashioned lemonade. Poor visibility sucks, and can totally ruin all of your feel-good vibes.

13) Powder days when you’re working

Why do you do it to yourself? You’re in the office, going through an Excel spreadsheet, when you suddenly get struck by an urge to check the webcam at your favourite ski resort. Turns out that your favourite skiing destination got a massive dumping of fresh powder last night, and the conditions today look absolutely perfect. RAWAWRHEWRGHHTHT! SO. MUCH. ANGER.

14) Broken bones

Damn you, weak and feeble bones. And damn you skiing, for beating us up and always finding a way to break our weak and feeble bones. I guess you could argue that it’s not skiing’s fault that sometimes people break bones while skiing but then, who else are we going to blame? We’re not going to blame ourselves, that’s for sure. Stop it, skiing. Stop snapping our skeletons into smaller bits. It hurts. It really hurts.

15) Walking around in ski boots

So, you’ve managed to force your feet into a pair of ski boots? Your feet hate you for it, but who cares? Your feet can’t argue back. They’re stuck inside a ski boot. Of course, getting your feet inside the ski boots is just one battle in an ongoing war between your feet and your ski boots. A human, it could be argued, has not known struggle until they’ve had to walk up and down stairs multiple times in ski boots. We hate you ski boots, we really do.

16) Pocket-sized kids who are unbelievably talented

Screenshot: YouTube (The Ski Channel)//Aspen Spora in peak “grom mode.”

Who are these gremlins, and why must they be so good at skiing? Why?! You’ve finally built up enough confidence to hit some kickers and try a cheeky grab from time to time, and these six-month old groms are already corking 720s. Are we jealous? Absolutely. Can we help it? No.

17) This photograph of George Osborne

Photo: Rex Features / The Guardian

This photograph of George Osborne has haunted the world of skiing for far too long. If you’re not familiar with George, he’s a repugnant politician working for a repugnant political party (one that finds themselves in power). Annoyingly, this snap illustrates George’s fondness for skiing, and we hate it. We hate the fact we share a sport with this classist fucker. Will please somebody delete all evidence of it off the internet? Please!

18) Getting out of your ski boots

In the Premier League of Pain, giving birth to a child is obviously number one. We’re not going to sit here and say getting your swollen foot out of a ski boot is anywhere near on the same level as pushing a tiny Winston Churchill out of your body, but it’s still a pretty horrid experience. The unpleasant process of removing your feet from ski boots is just another thing we hate about skiing.

19) Dropping a pole

You’ve been skiing like a champion all-day. You’re feeling cockier than a suited-and-booted John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. You feel like you don’t need to use the straps on your poles. There’s no way you’re going to drop your poles. Only idiots drop their poles, right? Right?! Wait. What’s that? You’ve dropped your pole? And now you have to climb back up the slope to get it?

20) Shit days

Sometimes you have really great skiing days and sometimes you have days when everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. You forget the most basic elements of your well-honed technique, and spend far too much time picking yourself off the floor. Shit days make you forget why you like skiing in the first place, and make you question your life choices. We hate shit days.

21) Catching an edge

Contrary to what music journalists might think, “catching an edge” has nothing to do with setting booby-traps outside the house of U2’s hat-wearing lead guitarist. No. No. No. Catching an edge is actually one of those things we hate most about skiing. It can happen to the best of us, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying when it happens.

22) Snow-Ploughing Slope-Snaking Ski Schools

Photo: www.parallel-lines.com.

We know that every skier was a learner once, but this fact doesn’t make it any less irritating when you find yourself getting held up on the piste by the longest snake of snow-ploughing beginners you’ve ever come across. Two seconds ago, you were bombing it down at speed and breaking the sound barrier. And now, now look at you. You’re struggling to find a way past, and watching as your life literally fades in front of you.

23) Did we mention ski boots?

Have we mentioned that we hate ski boots with the fire of a thousand burning suns?

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