Have you seen how much lift passes cost this season? Or last season. Fuck it, any season. That little ticket that grants you access to the hill is a necessary evil of spending your time on snow. And an expensive one at that.
But wait! Help is at hand. Before you fork out that £235 for seven days of sacred slope access, you should consider these alternative ways of getting up the hill.
The first, and most important rule of riding any lift up the mountain is to stay on board. From the sketchiest button lift, to the most luxurious gondola, just stay on board.
Right, not you know the rule, it’s time to break it. While the mugs who actually coughed up some heard earned cash for a lift pass fight their way through a melee of irritable Germans, you sneak around the hut, hop the barrier like a ninja Indiana Jones, and grab on to a lift that’s about to leave. The ski holders on the side of gondolas are ideal, but anything that could double as a sturdy handle will do.
It all depends on how you define success. If you manage to sneak past the lifty, clinging on to the lift for the duration depends on your upper body strength, and ability to not let overgrown Evergreen branches dislodge you.
When you do reach the top, there will no doubt be a bunch of fairly pissed off Ski Patrol Stasi ready to give you an almighty bollocking.
Luckily, they can’t take your pass off you, because you never had one in the first place. A better option might be to drop of early. Given that doing so will almost certainly lead to at least injury, the chance of success is low. Best avoided.
If a choice between a bollocking and a broken leg sounds like success, be our guest.
Getting a little amorous with the folk that work the lift could be you way around paying for a ticket. Start by studying the terrain. This isn’t limited to the slopes that you want to ride, but also checking out the lift operators themselves in advance.
You may immediately be drawn to the blond with the nice arse, or the rugged, chisel jawed guy but, while they’re may be the best looking, they’re also getting laid every night. They wont give up the goods.
No, you want to aim for the nerd with desperation in their eyes. They’ll be so grateful for the affection, that they’ll be falling over themselves to help you up the hill.
Once you’ve scoped out the ideal lifty, follow them to their favourite après hang out, and hit them with a couple of these sure fire chat-up lines.
If all goes well, either a promising smile, or a look that says “let me on or I’ll tell everyone that you shout ‘MOTHER!’ when you climax” the next day and you’re on the free-lift gravy train.
This may be an affective way of getting around having to stump up the cold hard cash but at what cost? Dignity? Privacy? Morality? Virginity? Still, the £300 you’ve saved can go towards counselling, right?
However, unless you’re some sort of über-slag and get with half the mountain, you’re only getting access to one lift, and only when your one-night-stand is working.
We’re not talking about donning camo ski pants here. They may be perennially en trend, but they wont help you blag a free lift. No, you want to blend in so you can sneak through and onto a lift unnoticed.
Quite how you do that depends on the environment you find yourself in. However, these recommendations should work across the board.
Try dressing as a lift operator themselves. This may involve stealing a uniform, in which case you may want to repeat much of the shag blag, above. More elaborately, you could try dressing as a lift itself. Some battered red pleather an a few metal bars and you’re most of the way there.
The more petite chancers among you could try dressing as a small woodland creature. Not only will you get to ride the lift for free, if you pull it off, you’ll also be the star of many a badly filmed GoPro holiday edit. Too big for that? Go full yeti.
The more elaborate your camouflage, the more likely you are to pull this off. However, should you go dressed as a full on 1984 twin chair lift, complete with piss stained seat and rusting safety bay, you may look perfect at the station but you’re going to raise suspicion for the rest of the day.
That said, if you try to play things down, you reduce your chances of blagging free rides. A happy medium must be achieved for optimum success.
You don’t have to get the lift up the mountain. Garage bodgers the world over spend hundreds of hours every year in their sheds trying to come up with products that will let them cash in on the lucrative snow sport market. These people are your friends.
For starters, why not try defying gravity with the aid of these hand held thrusters? DreamScience have developed these nutty little hairdryers on steroids.
Assuming the rechargeable batteries last for the ascent, you’d be nipping up the hill in no time.
If that’s looks a little too exciting or you, maybe the Propul-Surf fits the bill.
Much like Archimedes’ water screw (which sounds a bit like that DVD you deleted from your Amazon purchase history), it’s basically a big drill bit that’s tuck to the back of your board that cuts into the snow and propels you along when gravity isn’t you friend.
Assuming the slope police don’t come and take your toys away, you should be able to get away with these pass-avoiding toys. However, you should consider that you’d have to buy either of these, and off set that against the saving made not buying a pass.
You’d also have to factor in the fact you’ll look like a massive twat to everybody apart from eight year old boys. Is that who you want to appeal to? Is it?
Just, you know, walk up. One foot in front of the other. Going against the grain as everybody else is having fun sliding down. Plodding away, getting sweatier as the air gets thinner.
If Ski Patrol don’t have you sectioned, you’ll be so knackered when you finally reach the summit, you won’t be arsed enough with strapping in. You could like a nursery run down the bottom of the mountain but, well, what’s the point. Just buy a lift pass, cheap skate.
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