CLUB . . . You're wrong and you don't even know it !

Snowboarding is an exciting winter sport where you can effortlessly swish down picturesque snow clad mountains and arrive, stylishly, in excellent restaraunts and bars before once more sayshaying out onto the slopes.

Paul had explained to me that I too could experience this for a remarkably ( later referred to as 'suspiciously' ) reasonable price. I was concerned that being a complete novice in the art of gliding down hills on snowboards I would be left behind as his party expertly negotiated perilous descents and dodged avalanches but once again I was reassured that a lot, if not all, of the party were also relative novices ( later it became apparent that this was relative to the Swiss Olympic freestyle snowboarding team ).

So I found myself in a beautiful, comfortable chalet high in the French Alps just outside a resort called Morzine. Morzine its self is small town bisected by a deep ravine and dominated by an array of chair lifts, cable cars, ski shops, restaurants and bars and is a 40 minute walk from our chalet, The Dolce Vita.

During the course of the first evening everyone swapped tales of previous boarding experiences and it transpired that no one else considered themselves in need of any kind of extra tuition or training. So, carried along by the wave of gung ho optimism and with fond ( but not necessarily accurate ) memories of my training on the ice at the Tamworth Snowdome I decided to head out with everyone the next day and see how I got on before seeking expert advice.

The Telegraphique De Nyon took us up to the Point De Nyon 1500 metres above sea level and into a world of limited visibility and persistant snow, everyone was very business like; consulting maps of the pistes and cable cars and planning exploratory missions to assess the snow and piste quality. I was trying to remember how the clips worked on my board and avoid being pushed through the glass of the cable car by the horde of 8 year old pro-skiers also heading up the mountain.

It took a good 30 minutes to actually stand up on the board once it was strapped to my feet by which time everyone had disappeared off up various chair lifts and drag ropes apart from Paul who was staying on hand to offer useful advice and tips such as "Just stand up on it !".

Eventually I evolved a technique where through various complicated gymnastic contortions I was standing astride the board and thoroughly exhausted, although the slope was virtually flat this was no obstacle to promptly falling back down and going through the entire process again. And again. And again.

I decided to spend the first morning practising by myself on the essentially flat nursery slope where by lunch time I had perfected the art of making it to the bottom with only a couple of dozen falls and almost making it to the top of the drag lift before being thrown out the side. I was quite pleased with my progress and met the others for lunch in an optimistic frame of mind.

Rob, Caroline & Paul assured me they were going to be trying some 'very easy' blue runs after lunch and so in a fit of devil may care over optimistic enthusiasm I decided to join them.

The first run was down a road bounded on both sides by trees and with a steep drop to one side, it looked like some degree of control was necessary in order to not either hit the trees or fall down the drop. This was worrying but the resulting terror generated adrenaline enabled me to complete the top half of the run with only a few minor falls and no forays into the trees or down the drop. Unfortunately I had no idea how I was managing to 'guide' the board down the slope and was using 'controlled' crashes as my means of changing direction and stopping.

Towards the bottom of the run it began to dawn on me that not only do you need to have some method of controlling what the board is doing but you also need to be looking where you are going ( many runs intersect with each other ) and avoid hitting other skiers or boarders. I realised this whilst running down a couple of skiers and and a boarder and careering off down a hill whilst watching the others stopped at the top waving and pointing in another direction. A perfectly controlled crash brought me to a halt and I realised another important aspect of snowboarding which is that snowboards do not go up hills very well. Walking up hills in the snow is exhausting, clipping yourself back into the bindings is also exhausting which make the crippling effort required for the standing up on the board process tortuously exhausting.

Standing on top of hills waving is not especially exhausting so the others soon zipped off down the hill with me desperately trying to get up some speed and make up some ground on them.

Going fast down hills is very easy indeed and I was flying along, the only snag is that you can't carry on in the same direction indefinitely, especially when you've just learnt it's possible to go in the wrong direction if you lose sight of your experienced guides on the horizon in front of you.

I thought that after an entire mornings practice I should be easily capable of something more than a controlled crash direction changing method and my subconscious devised a fool proof method it seemed convinced would work without the necessity of any slow and unreliable conscious thought. My head hit the ice first having been whipped backwards to counter balance the board heading upwards into space, very shortly afterwards the board and my body joined my head on the ice which realising it's job was done was whipped back upwards into my chest. My hat and goggles were some 10ft behind me back up the slope.

The ringing in my ears and somewhat starry, blurred, vision helped take my mind off any potential embarrassment I might have felt crawling back up through the snow to retrieve my possesions whilst hordes of tiny 5 year olds whizzed confidently past me.

The others were waiting at a chair lift, they laughingly informed me that chair lifts could be a bit 'tricky' for boarders being as they were primarily designed for people on skis.

Chair lifts vary in size from 2 to 5 person settees suspended in a thick mesh of steel bars and cables. They are continually revolving to travel up and down the slope with boarding stations at either end where the car is swung around from one direction to the other.

To board a cable car you must approach the gate and wait for it to open before gliding smoothly down the incline to the boarding zone where you allow the chair to scoop you effortlessly from the snow and carry you upwards to the top of the slope.

My board was determined to investigate other options to the gate rather than the direct route I would have preferred so there was just time to claw my way through and try to catch up the others now waiting, poised, at the disembarkation area. Attempting to quickly push the board along quickly caused it to head off at at 40 degree angle into the boarder next to me on the slipway the rectification of which took all of my attention until the grinding and clanking behind me and the yelling of the lift attendant drew my attention to the lift rapidly filling the field of view behind me.

It took me in the back of the thigh and luckily this time I was able to fall backwards into the chair rather than, as happened on other lifts, forward onto the ground where the lift mercilessly grinds over your head driving you into the snow before gouging out your backbone with its solid metal keel.

Once you have successfully mounted the cable car you simply need to reach up and drop the steel safety rail in front you so that you have something to hold on to and do not fall out onto the snow and rocks below. The safety rail also incorporate a board rest which you can rest your board on rather than have it dangling off your foot, dragging you off the lift for the duration of the journey.

I slumped back on the chair and slammed down the rail with a sigh of relief which instantly transformed into a yelp of pain as the foot rest slammed onto the top of my foot. A few more deep breathes and I was did my best to settle back and get comfortable but the heavy board dragging me by the leg off the front of the lift was a little distracting. Paul informed me the foot rests were for putting your board on and that the journey on lifts could easily be a 5 - 10 minutes long by which time the board would have wrenched my leg from its socket if I didn't manage to get it above the rest and not below it. Somehow I managed this and managed a few minutes blessed relief from pain or activity.

As Paul was explaining that the tricky part of lifts was getting off them I was watching intently the chair approaching the departure zone in order to see how it should be done and what to expect. Raising the safety bar and disentangling my board distracted me from my education briefly so as I looked up to check on the progress of the chair ahead I witnessed a pair of skis disappearing over the safety fence, the skis appeared to be attached to a small bulky, flailing, object which rapidly disappeared from view down the slope behind the fence. This wasn't looking good.

In order to get off the chair lift you need to raise the safety bar and brace yourself on the chair ready to guide your board onto the ground. As soon as it begins to glide smoothly over the snow you simply keep it pointed forward, balance yourself with both feet on the board and with a little push off to maintain momentum board gracefully down the slipway to make way for the people embarking from the chair behind you.

My board slammed into the snow first dragging my foot under the chair. I pushed myself off the chair and my back foot slipped off the board and tripped me onto my knees. Desperately trying to maintain some forward momentum I scrabbled through the snow and tried to stand in order to get me and the board down the slipway. I heard a clanking noise behind me and some powerful force connected with the bottom of my skull propelling me through the air into the safety fence which I bounced off into the side the metal side of the chair and was ricocheted over the corner of the fence.

I was aware I was lying on the ground on a slope behind the safety fence. I remembered a number of recent painful impacts and tried to rise and look around me to check for any further hazards. Immediately behind me I heard someone begin to scream and turned around to see a lady writhing on the ground behind grasping her jaw.

Oh shit, I thought. One of those impacts must have been flying through the air and mortally wounding this innocent lady skier. I tried to get up and shouted at the lady asking if she was OK, whether she was injured or in pain and whether she remembered anyone attached to a snowboard hitting her recently. Luckily her boyfriend allayed my fears and said I hadn't in fact hit her or had anything to do with her injury except that I had just almost exactly duplicated her own egress from the chair lift. She mumbled she had bitten into her tongue and was in some pain so I began to feel little better about my own experience and opined that these winter sports seemed to me be a very dangerous activity.

Paul and I deduced that I had been hit by the top right side of the chair as it swung around to begin it's journey back down the slope and that I had been positioned perfectly for it to catch me just below my skull as I was trying to stand up. We both thought that must constitute some kind of dangerous design fault.

It was beginning to dawn on me that having just gone up the lift we were probably at the top of the mountain, this would explain why it was so cold. Paul confirmed it probably wasn't possible to use the chair lifts to go down the mountain, especially not when you have a snowboard so we set off for the top of another nice easy blue run.

By now I was quite tired from the effect of my falls, inefficient riding style and awkward chair lift style. The volume of people on the slope seemed to have increased to ridiculous proportions, miniature 3 year old skiers would zip past every 5 seconds or so and every inch of snow appeared to be occupied by a fast moving ski or snow board. The key to this slope would be control, finesse and keeping a sharp eye out for potential collisions.

The first bit of the slope was quite steep so I easily picked up a good bit of speed but continuing in line straight down was sure to lead to disaster so I managed to successfully modify my course across the slope somewhat, looking around I saw a large man on skis approaching on what would certainly be a collision course if neither of us moved. I had read on the web that the people further down the slope have priority over those above them but the large gentleman didn't appear to recognise this convention and continued ploughing towards me. I knew there was no way I could perform a subtle enough course correction to avoid a collision and not fall over so I gave him some more time to move out of my way. He didn't. At the last moment I was forced to dive forward and take him below the knees which meant his skis disconnected themselves from his boots underneath my stomach and catapulted him through the air for a good 15 feet down the slope.

"Sorry about that !" I insincerely yelled at him. He didn't seem to mind too much and I hoped it would teach any onlookers an important lesson about getting in my way.

This run seemed a lot narrower than the previous ones and alternated between quite steep bits and long flat bits with a steep camber down to the left. The narrowness meant either going down as straight as possible, picking up speed and then crashing using the skull technique or not going quite so fast across the slope and then crashing to change direction back across the slope the other way. Which ever technique I employed inevitably led to me floundering at the bottom of the camber on the straight bits and going nowhere useful except slowly down the bank into the trees.

It now took me an extraordinarily long time to unclip my back foot to attempt to hop to the top of the camber, sit down put the bindings back in and stand up again ready for the next crash so Paul was very helpful in trying to push me along but it was taking a good 5 minutes to cover 10 metres.

Time was getting on and it was getting later and later, my progress was becoming slower and more painful with every passing minute. The lifts closed at around 5:30 PM which was good in that it meant I wouldn't have to use any of them to go any higher up the mountain but bad in that it meant I would have to snowboard all the way to the bottom if I missed the down cable car. This process could have easily taken all night and most of the next day.

It was time to assess the situation and plan our route off the mountain. Our maps showed all the runs and lifts and it appeared there was no direct way down to the main cable car without going up more lifts and down more pistes. This was bad. To make things more confusing on the maps on the actual slopes the runs were given names and numbers and on the maps they give you at the lifts the runs are given letters. Neither the maps on the slopes or the maps on the mountain match the direction signs on the runs which are marked with a different set of numbers. Consequently it's very easy to get lost.

We got lost on another slope like the last one with a lot of neck breaking steep bits and frustratingly tiring flat bits, I had had more than enough of boarding and just wanted to rip the horrible torture board from my feet and go home for a hot shower and the prospect of more lifts and hours more on slopes like this truly horrified me.

It was quicker just taking the board off and walking down the slopes which, regardless of the embarrassment caused by the curious looks of Lycra clad 2 year olds zooming past me, was what I ended up doing.

Unfortunately we had walked down the wrong slope and the nice big cable car to the bottom I had been expecting to see wasn't there. In it's place was another malevolent chair lift squatting amongst a profusion of contradictory signage and a sheer drop to the bottom of the mountain thousands of metres below.

The map seemed to be indicating we had taken a wrong turn and the real cable car should be hiding behind the trees 20 or 30 metres or so above us to the right of the slope we'd just come down ( walked down in my case ).

Before Paul could suggest taking the lift back up and going in the right direction I explained where I thought the correct lift was and that I was just going to walk there through the trees. Paul seemed a bit dubious about my map reading ( probably justifiably given my desperation and concussed state ) but agreed walk up to the trees to look for the cable car.

Walking uphill in deep snow is very tiring indeed but eventually we reached the blessed cable car which could take me off this hellish mountain and I was overcome with an enormous sense of relief and exhaustion. I took the car down and Paul went, very impressively, down a red run to meet me at the bottom. I think he'd been a bit bored stopping and waiting for me all day.