Skiing China 5: Our Own Private Mountain

And, as if by magic, with a little lot of help from Ski School videos, everything comes together.

It’s snowing! It’s snowing, for this arid region, a lot.

Lovely, soft fat flakes of ripe March snow, not the diamond-hard glitter of the January snows, spreading their cottonwool softness over the runs, smoothing the edges of the landscape, muting everything to a silent, translucent grey.

Yabuli Sun Mountain feels, all at once, like our own private mountain. As we arc in easy turns down deserted runs, and race down the final, easy sprint, faces covered against the snow, in silence but for the hissing of our skis, we’ve found our own little slice of ski heaven in this most implausible of places…

And as we make our way back up, we’re happy, gurning skiers.

We have our separate projects to complete. Zac wants to jump higher. I want to ski higher, faster, steeper…

So off he races, down past the waving Chinese lanterns, into the snow park, where he conquers the house, wipes out on the car.

I tackle some of the easy black runs, lumbering and bouncing over the chop, exhilarated in the turns, and then a harder, longer one, thighs burning.

We meet to discuss what to do with our last run down before the ski train takes us back, to Harbin, and, we hope, to school.

He wants to do the snow park, string his three jumps together. I want to do the longest, hardest of the main black runs that descend from the ridge: I’m not bold enough for the tight “powder run” that goes down through the trees.

We split up again. Zac nails his jumps, he tells me.

My black run isn’t exactly elegant – I’m slewing and skidding on my turns, but I’m up, I’m not too slow, I’m not too wide, and when the bumps catch me I’m airborne without panic, and all of a sudden I’m leaving the Chinese in the dust and veering off through untouched powder, soaring light over the surface of the fresh snow.

It has, we conclude, as we peel off our ski gear, been a good few days, in the end. For all its oddities, skiing China can be worth it — and the word on the street is that Beidahu, out in Jilin, is better….