The smell of fear

Fear can make the most rational person irrational. Today we spent the best part of the afternoon trying to calm a very scared skier and to help her get herself to the bottom of a ski run. The skier in question is a novice who was making good progress in her efforts to learn to ski when she had an accident, while on a skiing lesson, that stopped her from participation for two years, initially due to the physical trauma and later from loss of confidence in her own abilities.

The novice skier decided to restart skiing lessons this winter and after a morning on the slopes with an instructor decided to join a group of friends for lunch at a restaurant situated near a blue run. She has the technical ability to ski blue runs and the group had offered to keep her company on the way down after the meal. On the way up the novice skier was separated from her chair lift partner because she had been unable to follow through the gates when they opened for them to move to the seating area. She was upset at having to travel on a chairlift alone and by the time she got to the top of the lift section she was terrified to the point of tears. All through the meal she was worried about the descent as she realised that this was a ski section she had not been on before, and she was unhappy about being on unfamiliar ground.

We set off as a group of 6 after lunch with her in the middle of the group so that she was somewhat shielded from other skiers- she was worried they would crash into her. She was so worked up by this point that she was unable to do anything at all and had to be guided down one turn at a time, stopping at the top of every brow and when fear- of other skiers, the steepness of the incline, etc- struck her. To her credit she got to the bottom and decided that she needed more lessons to help her regain her confidence, and she duly arranged for these for the rest of the trip.

Safety first and foremost. It is great to be able to get about the mountains on skis but these are inhospitable places and when in doubt it is prudent not to engage in battle with them. One must be realistic about one's abilities to travel in these terrains and take responsibility for one's own safety. This means planning ahead- getting to know where one is going- and honestly assessing whether one is up to the challenge. A person should be the best judge of his/her own abilities as, in the case of an adult, he/she is the only person ultimately responsible for his/her own safety. It may seem boring when this means non-participation in certain activities but safety should be the main consideration.