by A French ski resort has banned smoking on the slopes – Les Gets will become the first butt-free ski resort in Europe this winter – so, what happens next? A Nordic resort that bans tall blondes? A German mountain that forbids timely timekeeping and efficient provision of services?
Maybe not, but we know what’s next on the banned list, or at least what it should be: Here are 20 Things Ski Resorts Should Criminalize Immediately.
Wear headphones
It’s not that it’s rude (although it is), it’s not that it’s dangerous (although it is), it’s not that they’re listening to a repetitive Euro dance anthem that melts the brain at a medically unhealthy volume (although they almost certainly are). It’s just that… if they find skiing so boring that they need an artificial soundtrack, why not stay home and play video games?
Do not wear headphones
Those who use tiny mini-speakers to inflict their (poor) musical taste on the rest of us as they carelessly walk by should have their woofer confiscated immediately. The sound of skis on the snow is not ssshhhh for no reason, you know.
Novelty rompers
Cute under 5 years old. Allowed for children under 12 years old. Exhausting for the under 25s. Downright disturbing for anyone else.
Plastic bottles
A number of ski resorts are moving to ban plastic bottles, and for them, climate change is a daunting prospect for many. As for the unsightly impact of skiers’ trash, remember: your next vacation after this one is probably on a beach somewhere, so if you throw that empty Evian in the wrong place this winter you can’t complain if it washes out and spoils. your swim next summer.
Children
Ski mites come in three flavors: a) irritatingly good and mercilessly cutting you at 200mph; b) you’re still learning and robotically plowing snow around your path at 2mph; or c) one of the above, but they’re yours and you’re stuck with them for the next six days.
GoPro
If civilization can survive without a video of, say, Cleopatra’s coronation in 51 BC, then it can probably get by without someone calling themselves “Crazy Mike” making an “awesome!” 360 down this “epic!” slope. I hate to break it to you in the pages of a national newspaper, Mike (we certainly won’t call you ‘Crazy Mike’), but no one will ever watch your video.
Tight pieces
We know we said we were “fine” on the black runs. But we didn’t mean two-foot-wide black runs. They should be banned from track maps worldwide.
french people
Why bother banning cigarettes? Ban François and his friends and you get rid of cigarettes, questionable queue etiquette, and impenetrably hard-to-decipher Gallic shrugs, all at once.
€14 cups of coffee
We have paid thousands of pounds to be here with the cost of ski holidays rising almost everywhere. Couldn’t someone somehow subsidize our morning fix of caffeine?
Ski boots that look perfectly at home in the rental shop…
…but they turn into vicious foot coffins, toe-crushing, blister-inducing, circulation-hating, the second you get too far from the store to be worth going back to change them.
Steps
See my last entry on ill-fitting boots. Then he remembers trying to navigate the metal stairs slippery with slush or the steps down to the shelter toilets – which are always in the basement.
Err
The friend who wants you all to stop and wait while she goes for a comfort break, 10 minutes after everyone else in the group has left. The old man who stops to check the map of the slopes, right in front of the chairlift exit, creating a bottleneck behind her. Or, the lady in the restaurant queue who insists on ordering from her in her schoolgirl French/Italian/German, even though the local server obviously speaks much better English.
People who ski too fast
“Danger to self and others… Selfish… Ruining everything… Giving skiers a bad name… Intimidating children… Raising insurance premiums for the responsible majority… Scary show-offs. .. Spoiled and ungrateful… They should be banned for life…”
People who ski too slowly
“Get in everyone’s way… Shouldn’t take up precious space… No right to be on this trail if they’re not ready… Only here for the damned après… Danger to themselves and others… They should be banned for life…”
Really, just other people
Wouldn’t skiing be great if no one else was around?
Slow elevators
It was bad enough when they were just slow, but now that we know that some resorts in France and Switzerland deliberately slow down elevators to conserve energy, every extra second feels like an infuriating eternity.
Waymarkers that disappear
You can’t miss the bright red headlights on a gorgeous sunny day, but who’s the genius who designed trail poles so thin they become invisible as soon as the cloud rolls in? I suspected it was probably the same master designer who decided to paint the top of the right-hand signals orange so you would know which side of the runway they were on, forgetting, perhaps, that 70 percent of all goggles are orange. , making the marks completely indistinguishable from all other colors. Good, sir.
5G and WiFi
Do you remember when we talked to each other in the gondolas? Beautiful, is not it?
DJ at lunchtime
“Big hello to all the louvely Eetalian laydeez in ze ‘ouse!” Please mate, it’s half past twelve on a Tuesday lunchtime and the only people listening to you are the ski school kids and tired-looking waitresses who have another five hours to go before their turn finish. Save the après till après, put your iPod on ‘shuffle’, turn off the mic and let us ski and dine in (relative) peace, okay?
Excessive consumption of cheese
Everyone knows that skiers have proved unable to control their consumption.
