So as this is the very first post, I thought it would be a nice idea to write a bit about ourselves and in particular why we love the wonderful sport of skiing (and snowboarding of course!).
Funnily enough, my parents were not particularly keen skiers, although my Mum did try it out as a youngster and my Dad skied last season for the first time in 50 years! However, it was my Aunt and Uncle that gave me my first taste of skiing, in Andorra, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
I can never quite put my finger on exactly what it is that I love about skiing. I’ve always been a bit of an adrenaline junkie, so obviously the crazy speeds, and that thought in the back of your head that at any moment you could be snow fodder are, bizarrely, appealing! But more than that I guess I love the sense of freedom that skiing evokes, in particular off-piste. In my experience there’s no greater feeling than having picked a perfect line through a challenging gully, with just the sound of the wind rushing past you, then looking up to review your fresh tracks from the bottom. Bliss! I sometimes wonder whether it was skiing that the French were thinking of when they coined the term ‘Joie de Vivre’!
So after that first trip to Andorra, I was given the chance to hone my skiing technique in Canada, where I studied my A levels for 2 years. During the winter term we were free to ski every weekend at the local mountain in Quebec which, though not quite the same as the Alps in terms of size, was at the time my idea of heaven! It was also where I discovered the diverse delights of snowboarding. (But more about that another time!)
It would have been about this time that I thought about the possibility of a career based around skiing, although I had no idea how I would go about it! And when I finished college, 4 years of University with all its distractions kind of diverted me from all thoughts about skiing, and a career for that matter!
Whilst I was at Uni, a good friend of mine had spent every winter working in the Alps as a chalet chef and he would delight in telling me about the amazing adventures he’d been having whilst I’d spent my time writing essays and listening to boring lectures! Well naturally this got me thinking- “Ok then, let me see, I love skiing and the mountains and all that malarkey, I consider myself a pretty good cook, and I reckon I’ve got a pretty high alcohol tolerance. Bingo! I’ll do a ski season!!”
And the rest, as they say, is history. I finished University and immediately applied for a job working in a chalet. I met my beautiful fiancee Catherine on my very first day on my very first ski season where we worked together running a chalet, and over the following six years we came up with the idea of our very own company, Pure Mountain, and my dream of living and working in the Alps have slowly and surely become reality.