The Snow Center – Hemel Hempstead

Opened in May of this year Steve recently found out about The Snow Centre and was keen to take a trip. I had some annual leave days up my sleeve, he had a day off and so today we took off for a day of skiing.

Our GPS, Susie, indicated it would take 2 hours but as we got nearer to London this became rather more like 3 hours. Oh well, thankfully we had the day all to ourselves.

The indoor center is lovely and new with a 30 metre width on the slope enabling more area to try some of those longer linked turns. What the heck am I talking about, I’m lucky to get to the bottom in one piece! We got a 2 hour ticket which comes at a reasonable price of 27 pound each as it is off peak. I needed about 1 hour of this to get my mojo happening.

Anyone who knows me well will know that I am rather risk adverse. Ok, so extremely risk adverse. Maybe this comes from my OHS background..this leads to that, which creates this = consequence. Manage the consequence by managing the risk. When you strap planks to your feet and point these downhill on a steep, slippery slope this would indicate a high probability of injury. Injury = pain, I dislike pain intensely…you see where I am going with this.

Maybe I continue to do it is because in my head I see a far more competent skier who can do amazing jumps, tight turns and laughs in the face of danger…then I wake up in a cold sweat and strap on the planks anyway!

So, here are some pics from today. Thankfully I made it home in one piece with thanks to my incredibly competent ski buddy who stuck with me, gave me advice and didn’t get too frustrated with me even when I finally listened to his advice at the very end and would have to agree that apparently going faster does make turning easier. Who knew! Maybe I should try this theory in the Rover.

The only person with a stack hat!
The Snow Center - main slope