Managing the Ski Hire Maze

Worrying about your first ski holiday is bad enough without people asking you confusing questions such as ‘where are you going to hire your skis?’ It’s a hard question to answer when you don’t really know what skis do, or how you make them do it.

I remember one beginner explaining that skiers walk stiffly because they’re wearing thickly padded clothes. She wasn’t the brightest icicle on the eaves, admittedly, but until you actually try on a pair of ski boots, which hold your feet and ankles safe from twisting, you wouldn’t possibly know that they clamp your feet so tight it’s impossible not to walk like a robot.

Reading books and magazines in advance just makes you anxious about possible pitfalls. Will it hurt when I fall over? Adults fall so rarely in their day-to-day lives that the prospect is a worry. How will I stand up again? Will I die? Rational decision-making on the technicalities of ski equipment is impossible.

One time-honoured way for dealing with the prospect is to ignore it until you arrive in the ski resort and a smiling Rep helpfully points you in the direction of a ski shop, hands you some coupons you probably paid for months earlier, and it’s all arranged seamlessly while you simply stand, sit, bend your knees and fill in a form at the till.

Others prefer to plan their equipment hire as if their holiday were an assault on Everest – only with extra budgeting. In the past it was perfectly natural for the ski shops in a resort to compare prices with one another - after all they were probably cousins - and set their prices accordingly, rendering shopping around futile. Nowadays the enterprising Brit has put an end to such familial conniving, and the bargain hunter will find his or her reward, usually in shops owned or part-owned by a ski-lover from Aberdeen or Arundel who arrived to the Alps in his teens to wash dishes and never went home. These days, internet deals offering two sets of ski equipment for the price of one are undermining the cosy cartels and keeping prices down.

Val d’Isère, probably the most famous ski resort in France, has the whole range of ski shops for the whole range of skiers, from bargain-hunter to technophile. There are shops owned by families who go back generations to the farmers and shepherds of the tiny hamlet which this plush resort once was; there are smarter shops set up in the last decade by French and British partnerships who have studied the market and aim to be the best, and there are new shops which are undercutting everyone, grabbing as much of the market as they can, and enjoying the returns while they last.

The care you receive generally reflects the money you spend, as in most things. The first day of a ski holiday is a crescendo of excitement and stress in equal measure. You probably got up very early, negotiated a noisy airport, and haven’t eaten very much beyond your mini in-flight breakfast. To walk into a chaotic ski shop where dudes with goaties are too cool to speak to you because you’re over the age of 25 and wearing the wrong sort of jacket, can be off-putting on an empty stomach.

The antidote is Snowberry, a smart shop, which gives such good customer care you never want to leave. You decide to buy some goggles because they’ve been so kind. You leave your skis there overnight so that they can look after you a little more. Such service comes at a price, but the bedside manner is worth every penny.

A good shop will take the time to tell you how a ski boot should feel, what it’s going to do for you, and even how to do it up properly. Susan Dun from Snowberry explained “You do the top one then the second one down, then flex forward into the boot which pulls the heel back into the correct place, then tighten up the top two clips again, especially the second one. Then you fasten the two over the top of the foot. The second clip, over the ankle, is the most important and should be pretty tight. The top one at the cuff and also the Velcro power strap if there is one, should be fairly tight too, to stop your calf moving in the boot as you bend. You shouldn’t tighten the two over the top of the foot any more than you can fasten and unfasten with one finger quite easily. If you do them any tighter it will deform the shell of the boot and force your instep down which can cause a lot of pain. A lot of people do this because their boots are too big and they feel that their foot is moving too much within the boot, but if they are having to do that then the correct way t o deal with it is to change the size or shape of the boot for a model that more closely follows the contours of the foot so that the foot is held in place mainly by the shell and liner.” While some people can’t do up their upper clips until the lower ones are at least semi-tightened, this still has to be good advice for those trying on ski boots for the very first time.

Meanwhile, skis these days are works of art, all graphics and rhetoric. When a ski bends, it turns, so the softer the ski, the easier it is to turn. A good ski hire shop will know this and give you the right skis for your level. People who buy top-of-the-range racing skis after their third week will wonder why all the fun has gone out of it. Perhaps they think advanced skis will make them look better - or perhaps they’ve found a good deal on the internet.