Doing a Ski Season: The Ugly Truth

The temperatures are dropping. The nights will soon be drawing in. And already the shops are full of Christmas tat. Autumn is well and truly here. If the thought of another wet and dreary winter is the UK has brought you out in sweats and you’re considering doing a ski season, we thought we should let you know what you’re letting yourself in for. 

What does working a ski season involve? The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about doing a ski season. Can you handle it?

Doing a Ski Season: The Ugly Truth

You will be tired. All the time.

Ski seasons are too much fun. Imagine skiing all day and partying all night, with a little work thrown in for extra measure. Work, ski, party, sleep, repeat. 7 days a week. Too much fun can wear even the most caffeine-fueled seasonnaire out.

You will develop an unhealthy obsession with sellotape and cardboard boxes.

Fancy dress will become a regular feature in your life. And without a Claire’s Accessories around the corner, you will need to improvise. So be prepared to develop your artistic talent, creating all manner of beings out of chalet waste.

You will gain several pounds.

Living off a diet of beer, cheese, and baguettes, will take your body back to its uni days. And although convenient, and often very tasty, a seasonnaire diet of carbs and leftover chalet cake, washed down with wine, and French lager does not a svelte figure make. They don’t call it a chalet girls ass for nothing you know!

Skiing every day will not counterbalance your increased calorie intake.

It’s easy to convince yourself that those four hours hooning around on the slopes burned off last nights wine consumption and your breakfast baguette. But who are you kidding?

Once your muscles are used to the exertion of skiing they quickly adapt. And there’s the little thing of gravity to consider, and it’s part it plays in helping you ski downhill repeatedly. But hey, who cares. It’s winter. Everyone needs a bit of timber to keep them warm. And besides jumping around like a loon at après certainly helps!

The return to reality will be seriously hard to take.

After a season of skiing or boarding each day, with live music most evenings and a party to found whenever the need takes you, it’s easy to see why seasonnaires struggle come spring time. And trust me, it never gets any easier!

The return to the daily grind is a shock to the system each year. Swapping a ride on a chair for a commute on the tube and living for the weekend once more is more than my heart can bear.

Ski seasons are dangerously addictive.

No one sets out to be a lifelong seasonnaire. And yet, how often have we met people who’ve come to do « a season » and are still lingering 10 years on. Parental advisory notice. You may not ever want to leave.

Still keen? Well, you’ve passed step one.

And if you are keen to do a ski season, with a rewarding role, with plenty of ski time, with a company that invests in its staff then check out the ski season jobs for which we are still recruiting. Or check out our ski instructor courses for a ski season with a difference.