Thread: August skiing stoke... and kinda fail.

I'm not one to post here to share my skiing stoke, but I was recently in Seoul, Korea and had some free time on my hands. So I decided to check out the indoor skiing at "Tigerworld" that a Taxi Driver told me about.

After doing some last minute shopping I finally got on the train down to Inchon area, showing up around 6:30 pm or so. I thought that I might be way too late to go skiing, but it turns out that the place does not open until 7:00 pm. It was kind of a weird building, complete with a Starbucks and KFC, but no one was interested in skiing. It was kind of creepy until the ticket counter on the other side of the building opened. I paid something like $40 for a ticket, and since I did not have gloves or pants, I decided to "rent" some ski clothing as well as skis.


The equipment was an excellent reminder of why crappy skis are really crappy. The 150 cm Head EAZY-2 that I got came with perfectly round edges and bindings set to 7. I got a pair of rear entry boots to match. They also were a quick reminder of why rear-entry boots suck (but were soooo delightful to put on, I might have to dig through my mom's basement for those old SX92s I've got laying around). I also got a mandatory helmet, although between the hit and my low speeds, I'm not really sure what it was for.

I also put on my rented ski clothing in 80 degree weather/room temperatures. Turns out my rented clothing came with no gloves, which is what I was really after in the first place (I had brought my track/running warm-up pants). Pretty miserable schlepping my stuff across a empty mall like environment to the ski area.


The ski area turned about to be about 350 vertical feet by about 150 feet wide or so. There was some decent pitch on the hill, something between a Green Circle and Blue Square in my estimation.




The snow sucked too. It was a sheet of ice with some loose ice blown on it. Turns out they make their snow by grinding blocks of ice into smaller granules of ice that get shot on the piste through an airhose apperatus. They also make their Ski Patrollers make snow in Korea.




The lift was an a slow moving walkway type of operations, something that you would find at an airport, but elevated.



Anyways, I popped into my skis and went to ski. There were a bunch of kids hitting rails. Fortunately for me, the douchebag indicator (a go-pro camera) is universal and international. I decided to get to know a couple of the locals and got them to take a couple of pictures of me trying to schralp. Turns out that round edges, short skis, and bindings set to 7 result in half controllable chaos. And mostly pandamonium. I tried bringing my skis to the rental counter after a couple of runs and find some better skis, but apparently the concept of files and applying them to skis was a new idea to the rental staff. So I was stuck with my 150cm asskickers.

I basically spent the next two hours riding the slow lift, skiing on the edges of the slope where there was a tiny bit of loose ice and made some crappy turns. At 9 pm I could not take the pain/boredom anymore and hung up my sweet skis and rental clothing.



Not bad for day 1!

the sad thing is , if it were within an hours drive i would probably pay for this once a month

Actually, I'd do it again... but bring my own stuff next time. Definitely going to get some weird looks carrying ski boots as carry-on to Korea.

Or at least bring a file and conduct a short 5 minute class about all the wonderful things that an 8-inch bastard mill can do...

Noice!
But, no Video?

Man, you know that Skier666 is going to be Soooo Jealous of you!