Let’s get this out of the way – I’m a terrible skier. I have balance issues, don’t negotiate sliding sensations with panache, elan, or any other French words, and my elephantine head gives my body the overall appearance of a titanic lightbulb once it’s been encased in the helmet that I rarely venture outdoors without, let alone onto ski slopes. Couple this with the day-glo orange jacket I’m possibly legally obligated to wear during all ski-related activities for the safety of others, and you know I’m cutting quite the dashing Alpine figure when I ascend le tapis roulant (ok, it’s the dang Magic Carpet) with the other five year olds. Ladies – swoon early, swoon often.

If you’re wondering why I appear to have sprouted a second head coming out of my left shoulder in that picture there, well, that’s something that just happens naturally somewhere around 10-15 years of marriage – you grow an “Extra Spouse Head.” Most people are able to disguise them better than me through a variety of clever wardrobe effects, but it turns out that Kristanne’s head is surprisingly persistent. Unfortunately for me, where most husbands seem to get the “Guardian Angel” variety of Extra Spouse Head, consistently advising caution and reminding their loved one that discretion is the better part of valor, I seem to have acquired the “Go Fast, Take Chances!” model. “Go off that jump!” it urges. “What’s the worst that could possibly happen?” The advice, I don’t mind so much; what I could do without, though, are the inevitable little “Bawk, bawk, bawk!” taunting chicken sounds that start to make themselves known somewhere around my 10th trip down the bunny slope of the day. What if I just really, really like the Magic Carpet, man?

I mention my relative Alpine naïf-hood by way of adding a few judicious grains of salt to what follows. Despite having rarely lived further than 45 minutes from good skiing, I do not boast the comprehensive array of schussing experiences that would allow me to form a carefully considered opinion on French skiing and how it fits into the larger realm of winter sports the world over.

To that, I say, “Screw it – it’s a blog.” Go hunt up Warren Miller and Jon Krakauer for the other stuff – I’m mainly going to crack a few jokes at the expense of French people and possibly myself. You’re welcome.

grenoble – they like to ski here

Skiing is a central part of the culture here in Grenoble, which is not surprising given the terrain. Le G nestles in a valley surrounded by three mountain ranges, all of which you can gawk at in the picture below. The Chartreuse massif is at the right in the distance, a gorgeous national park, full of scenic farm towns, familial ski stations, and lots of extremely good cheese. The Vercors is at the left, high place of the French Resistance during WWII and home to France’s best nordic skiing, as well as some positively remarkable cheese. The picture itself is taken from the Belledonne Alps, looking down on the Gresivaudan Valley below – the Isere River runs right to left between the Chartreuse & Belledonne before turning right and joining the Drac River and exiting out the back of your computer screen. These are perhaps not “map quality” directions but they are almost certainly good enough to let you find some darn fine cheese.

Vercors, Chartreuse, Belledonne, Oh My!

back when the winter olympics had snow

Grenoble hosted the Winter Olympics back in 1968, a gift that continues to pay dividends in the form of untold vacationing Brits (they fly in by the thousand-fold, trailing clouds of cigarette smoke and lager behind them), a questionable tradition of really bad semi-socialist architecture (the original Olympic Village seems to have begat an unending stream of conspicuously ugly cookie-cutter apartment blocks that would fire the passions of V.I. Lenin and probably no one else), and, importantly, Jean Claude Killy (three golds, baby!). That’s the top of the downhill Olympic course from 1968 at Chamrousse pictured below. No, I did not take this picture – Mark Tompkins did, because if I ever get this close to a black run on skis, I start to whimper and sob uncontrollably until they finally send the snowmobile with a proper array of sedatives and cart me down. Good lord.

Killy Was Here

If black runs reduce me to jelly, they don’t seem to have the same effect on the rest of my family. Because skiing is such an important part of what it means to be from this part of France, the public schools in Grenoble pay for every school kid to learn how during a series of six all-day field trips in January and February. The equipment and lift tickets are all on the city; if you can’t rustle up warm clothes, they’ll help you with that, too.

So, Quinn is 10 years old and gets to reap the benefits of this public largesse. For his first trip, they asked him if he’d skied much, to which he replied something along the lines of, “Oh, a bit, mostly greens and blues,” all of which was quite true. Somehow, when this bit of language was run through the French Experiential Transmogrification Machine, it morphed into, “Let’s strap ‘em on and bomb some blacks, baby!” Except with a French accent instead of the implied dude-speak, natch.

This sort of seems to be par for the French course – if you’re signed up to do something you haven’t really tried a whole lot of in the past, their approach is that it’s probably best to just skip any sort of warm-up, discussion, or safety-related measures and just go ahead and do that puppy. French people definitely have the Kristanne version of the “Extra Spouse Head” attached to their collective shoulder. It serves them well when it comes to feats of Alpine derring-do, where they typically excel, but somewhat less well when it comes to managing southeast Asian colonies and, umm, rap music.

Wait, I Have Vitesse?

We already dealt with this paradigm a bit in Quinn’s first fencing class where they skipped any of the introductory niceties and just slapped helmets on all the kids, loaded ‘em up with sabres, and let them get to hacking one another, sans rules. “Rules suck,” says the Extra Spouse Head. “They’re for sissies. Bawk bawk bawk.”

Quinn came through the fencing just fine, limbs intact, but skiing, despite not involving swords, boasts a somewhat higher degree of peril for the “No Risk, No Fun” lifestyle.

To his everlasting credit, Quinn remained more or less unfazed, pointing them downhill and surviving the first black run without even falling by simply trying to keep up with the other kids. He took a few falls during subsequent runs but pretty much came through the experience none the worse for wear…and a much better skier, too. See, this is the advantage of the No Risk, No Fun ethos – you can improve extremely quickly. Of course, that won’t be of much benefit to you if you’re dead, but the point remains. I guess.

wait, they have a nationwide school for this stuff?

In addition to the public school system’s support, there is also a nationwide Ecole du Ski Francaise (ESF) with a whopping 250 schools and 17,000 instructors standardizing and inculcating French ski culture for new generations. Kids learn it early, passing a series of standardized tests over time that lets them graduate from Piou-Piou to Ourson to Flocon (and a host of other levels) until they finally make it to the coveted Etoile d’Or, with each test passed bringing a new badge and possibly some really tasty cheese. Possibly not.

The French school schedule helps, too.Kids get Wednesdays “off” here, though in this case “off” translates to “a day for hell-bent, pell-mell physical activity of many different stripes.” So, during ski season, tons of kids take Wednesdays as ski days, either through racing clubs, ESF programs, or just with their families. The same is true for the holidays that fall during ski season…the two weeks during Christmas and the two weeks in February. They ski a lot.

One of the first things that hits you about the French approach to skiing is how utterly inclusive it is. Everyone seems to do it at some level, whether it’s alpine, one of the many nordic flavors, snowshoeing, biathlon, or this wacky snow scooter contraption. It helps that there are tons of affordable options. Sure, there are high-end French ski resorts with lift ticket prices approaching those at Squaw or Heavenly, but they’re not the norm. It’s far more likely to pay something in the mid 20s for a weekend day at a quality resort. You can also go low budget and hit the – ALERT: RICK STEVES LANGUAGE COMING – quaint and charming family stations of the Chartreuse. (ALERT OVER: RESUME NORMAL READING POSITION). Many of these only have a half-dozen runs serviced by t-bars, but it’ll only set you back about 10 bucks for the day. No food service, no ski shops, just a cashier and a little salle hors sac where you can warm up and eat whatever food you packed. Awesome.

So, yes, we’ve been skiing a lot. Kristanne was already good, the kids are improving amazingly fast, and, defying the betting lines at an online casino near you, I’m still alive. And I’d very much like some cheese, if you don’t mind.

See you next time…on the Odyssey!

Shouldn’t You Be Wearing a Helmet?