A season in the mountains snowboarding can change your life

Exam results are in. Whether you’ve done really well or not as well as you’d hoped, life isn’t over! There are other options out there…in particular ones involving snow. What about having a gap year before you knuckle down to your studies again? Or perhaps a few extended gap years until you’re 30 and have finally figured out what you want to do with your life?!

“Perhaps you’ve just sent your kids off to uni and you’re feeling a bit lost. Why not indulge in that mid life crisis, pack up home and set off for the mountains. A ski season at any stage of life is an awesome experience to have and something to tick off the bucket list.”

On a personal note (CHEESE ALERT), my first season changed my life. Within the first week I had met this dashing 6ft2 snowboard instructor (I was a skier at the time) who swept me off my feet (with a shot of chartreuse or two), taught me to snowboard and showed me a good time! 12 years later, with 14 seasons under my belt, a success snowboarding career and summers of backpacking the globe, we are still together. Now married with one house, one baby, an adopted dog and millions of amazing memories of the adventures we have had together. Now our child (14 months) is going to be a future olympic snowboarder! Who’d have thought 😉

“I often think how different my life would be now if I hadn’t decided to do my first ski season. You just never know what’s round the next corner. So why not take a risk, pack your bags and head for the mountains.”

Reasons to do a winter Season

Something completely different: If you are bored with the mundane 9-5 routine, stuck in studying hell or just have no idea of the direction you want to go in, doing something totally off tangent could be just what you need to do to see your options more clearly. There is no other adventure like doing a ski season, and you certainly won’t be able to experience it by spending a rainy winter in the UK.

Change your perspective on life: Take a break from your normal life and any troubles you may have. Some might say this is running away, I say sometimes you need to escape to be able to look at your life from a fresh perspective. Things become clear in the mountains and you can figure out what’s important to you. It must be the mountain air.

Untapped potential: Ever seen Chalet Girl?! Well, that could be you! How do you know that you don’t have this amazing hidden talent if you don’t give snowboarding a go? Progression can be so fast if you do a whole season. Maybe not quite as fast as Chalet Girl, but if you are really talented, who knows, you could be looking at the next Olympics in Korea?! It’s only two years away!

Friends for life: You are thrown into this intense little bubble of resort life for 6 months. You live, eat, work, sleep, drink and snowboard with the same people, day in day out. You become so close. The bonds you make on a season can last a lifetime. Plus you could meet the man/ woman of your dreams and then that really could put a ball and chain round you forever…

Become really healthy: Yes, you will do a lot of partying on your first season, but that also comes with a lot of snowboarding and outdoor living. So it kinda cancels each other out?! You will definitely build up muscles from snowboarding you never knew you had and the fresh mountain air will do wonders for your health. Living at altitude will also mean that when you go back down to sea level, 100 flights of stairs will seem mere child’s play.

Learn to live on nothing: Depending on how you choose to do your ski season (see next section) will depend on how much money you have. In general doing a season isn’t about having lots of money, as people are there for the experience and the love of snowboarding. Nobody doing a season has any £££$$ as most of the chalet workers are living off £60 a week. With this in mind, you’ll learn to be savvy with your money. You develop essential budgeting skills and learn of cheap ways to do things including extra cash earners such as selling stuff, bar taps, house parties and chalet wine… Every penny counts.

Learn to be creative with the resources you have: You left the UK with a board bag and a small suitcase. The shops in the mountains are limited (and mega expensive), but yet you are faced with all of these events/ situations you have to cater for. For example: millions of fancy dress parties, creating apartment furniture/ decor, Christmas decorations, fixing things WITHOUT proper tools. You learn to improvise with whatever you have (fancy dress out of bin bags, tables out of boxes, Christmas decorations out of cereal packets and duct tape to mend snowboard pants).

Different ways to do a Ski Season

There are lots of different ways to do a season, depending on your situation, personality and goals. This will determine how you choose to spend your season. Here are just a few options:

Chalet Host: The obvious and easiest option – you are really following in “Chalet Girls” footsteps now. You get paid pittance, but it really is an amazing experience and a great way to do a first season (especially if you’re on your own). You can work for a tour company or a privately owned chalet and they will really look after you. You normally get your accommodation, lift pass, equipment hire, food and drink (chalet wine mmmmm) included – hence why you only get paid £60 a week. BUT you can make tips from looking after your guests well, which can often triple your wages. You’re thrown together with a bunch of people who will quickly become your mountain family. You work hard but play even harder, snowboard everyday (apart from Saturday – this will be the worst day of your week as it is CHANGEOVER DAY = 14+hr shifts) and party every night.

Bar Work: If you’re less keen on the actual snowboarding and keener on the partying that comes with snowboarding, then this is probably for you. Yes you get most of the daytime off work, BUT you could be working until 5am so you have to be very motivated if you want to get out riding the next day. You get to know a lot of people in the resort as they will all come in for a drink and it is a very social/ fun job. Bar work is a lot better paid but all to easy to spend most of your wages on your bar tab.

Instructor: Out on the mountain everyday snowboarding, imparting your wisdom and gaining real job satisfaction. It’s well paid, you’ll get a great goggle tan, have good equipment and everyone will look up to you. From the outside it can seem a pretty glamorous job. In reality, at the start you could just be stuck on the nursery slope all day teaching beginners how to stand up whilst watching your friends carve pass you, probably spraying you with snow for good measure (idiots!). To qualify as an instructor is a long process and you have to be dedicated. However, it will pay off in the end and it is SO worth it, with real potential to make mega bucks. There are some really great ways to do instructor courses all over the world and obviously Ticket To Ride Group would be your first port of call 😉

Lifty: A relatively easy mountain job to have and definitely builds up your strength and fitness. EARLY mornings but good banter. You get perks like free lift tickets, cheaper equipment, riding in your lunch break etc. Amazing job to have when the weather is good, AWFUL when the weather is bad. It can also really vary depending on what lift you get put on for your shift.

Bum: Hands down the best “job” to have for a season. You’ve been really clever and managed to save up enough money to not have to work at all (did you rob a bank?!). You can ride when you want, party when you want, no commitments, no pressure, footloose and fancy free with some good old fashioned FUN. Really can’t see any negatives to “bumming” a season, apart from you need others that are bums too. No good at all if you have all that free time and have no one to have fun with!

What will have changed by the end of the Ski Season

A change in direction: The six months of mountain air has cleared your head and now you can see more clearly. You realize you don’t actually want to go to uni at all and want to kickstart your snowboarding career by doing an instructor course. Perhaps you’ve decided to buy a little log cabin in the mountains, open a bakery, get a husky and live happily ever after.

Alternatively, you’ve actually hated doing a season (although rare, can sometimes happen) and you’ve decided that you want to become an astrophysicist. Or maybe you’ve got your midlife crisis out of your system and are now excited to return to your normal life in the UK.

Change in appearance: You will come out of your season looking totally different to how you went in…(dirtier, a little rough around the edges).You took all these lovely clothes to the mountains that haven’t even come out of your suitcase (bet you feel a bit silly taking your Gucci handbag now!) You get used to living in jeans and a hoody and you don’t even bother to brush your hair anymore, as you wear a hat all the time now anyway so there’s no point, right?

Not to mention the leathery face with a goggle tan that looks like a beard (did you forget about suncream for the whole 6 months?!). You may even find it hard to adjust to dressing back in the UK, after all, you have missed out on a whole 6 months of fashion, skinny jeans are out, dungarees are in wtf?! And you just don’t feel comfortable exposing that much skin anymore – give me my thermals and snowboard jacket back! And what’s cool in the mountains isn’t necessarily cool back in the UK… For example, ‘what do you mean I can’t wear my oversized tye die t-shirt out to dinner in town?’ Mountain resorts are their own little fashion bubble.

A change in lifestyle: You have loved the healthy mountain lifestyle with all that fresh air and exercise, as well as all those new muscles you’ve acquired. You really want to continue on this fitness train when you get back to the UK. So, the first thing you do when you get back to civilisation is sign up to the gym, with great intensions…

….either that or you’ll have gone the other way completely. You were pretty straight-laced and sensible before, but doing a season has unleashed a wild side that you never knew existed. P.A.R.T.Y

Join uni/ local snowboard groups: You want to carry on the snowboard dream alongside whatever else you are doing in the UK. So upon your return you immediately research any local snowboard groups you can join. Your new hobby doesn’t have to stop when you’re back in the big smoke without a mountain in sight. In fact, there are snowdomes and dry ski slopes all over the UK, so that you can carry on with you new passion. Joining the university snowboard team is a great excuse to party with new friends who are all pining for the mountains too.

Nothings changed apart from you: Sometimes you come back home, expecting everything to be so different, because YOU feel so different. But then everything and everybody is exactly the same as when you left. It makes you realize how much you have grown as a person. Hopefully, happier, more laid back, braver, more adventurous, with amazing social skills and an excellent tolerance to Vodka

So to finish off, there are many paths in life, not just the obvious ones.   Venturing down a snowy path for a few months will be an unforgettable experience that will ultimately have an impact on your life in some way or another. There is nothing better than the School Of Life…and riding fields of endless powder everyday!
[vimeo 156078072 w=840 h=473]

YEEAAW from TTR Group on Vimeo.