Learning to ski in Dublin: I’m sweating in borrowed gear with a dawning sense I can’t avoid mortification

Skiing as a beginner can make you feel like a complete ninny. From the awkwardness of clamping down foreign ski boot buckles to the self-conscious hobble out of the gear room, it’s an exercise in learning how to do everything again. Stop paying attention and the first casualty is your balance. The second: your pride.

At Kilternan Ski Club, where I’ve driven 30 minutes from Dublin to have a lesson on their dry slopes, ski hazards are on my mind. The bottom of Kilternan’s 180m-long main slope is famously in Dublin, the top in Wicklow. The divide in my imagination – from non-skier to skier – feels just as stubbornly demarcated. And far, far harder to cross.

In a gear room full of neatly stacked shelves of boots behind a worn-down counter top, I’m asked for my measurements. “Step up,” my instructor Donal Murphy says cheerfully, gesturing to the scales. “We won’t look.” Weight and height details are necessary for setting the bindings on your skis – and ski shops expect you to know them.

Back outside, the sun is high in the sky and I’m sweating in gear borrowed from my sister, fashion sunglasses that are not polarised and a dawning sense I haven’t done enough squats in recent times to navigate this without mortification.

My hesitancy must be written all over my face because Donal turns to me and says that he felt nervous too when he was starting off. “My wife worked in a ski resort in Vermont,” Donal says.

Brought skiing on holiday, the bug bit hard and “now here I am, an instructor”. Donal was 50 when he began skiing 20 years ago. The oldest instructor of the 100-strong volunteer team is in their 90th year.

“We’ve had people in their 60s coming up here for their first lesson,” Donal says, as he shows me how to pop my ski boot into the ski with a firm forward toe-pointing motion and then a snap back into the ski.

The fine spray that emits from tiny jets on Kilternan’s four slopes (one main, one intermediate, two nursery) means that waterproof ski gear is much better worn than leggings, even though there is no snow. The spray helps with speed.

“It’s called a dry slope,” says Donal. “but in fact it’s a wet slope.” The surfaces are made from Dendix, a hard plastic surface and Snowflex on the beginner slopes, as it’s softer and “ideal for beginners”.

Soft sounds good, I find myself thinking, as the reality sinks in that I have to ski down – or, as Donal calls it, try “straight running”, bending my ankles, hips and knees slightly so I can feel my shins against the boot and use my ski poles to push myself off down the gentle incline.

“Think about being forward all the time.” He shows me a rotary movement, followed by the snowplough – a “slice of pizza” shape that you make with your skis to slow your descent, and an essential skill. Every time we get down to the bottom, we must sidestep back up. “It’s easier if you’re fit, but you don’t have to be that fit,” says Donal. “The first lesson is probably the most draining because we don’t use the travelator.”

Donal is an encouraging teacher – and like all good teachers, he reminds me to find the fun in the lesson. “Ski and smile,” he says. It’s a practical tip. Smiling helps release tension. Releasing tension makes for a better skier.

As I reach the bottom intact, I don’t just smile, I whoop. Back up we go, and this time Donal tells me to sing “Hands, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes” as I ski back down and do the dance movements as well. Ski lessons are not for the timid, I think, as I holler at the slopes like an enthusiastic preschooler while skiing and patting my head in time.

Once I achieve this feat, I’m about ready for après-ski – alpine liquor anyone? Sadly this is not a service the Ski Club offers; they’re more of a tea and coffee gang.

Instead Donal suggests we try the travelator at the side of the slope (“the same as an elevator in Dundrum”, he says, speaking my language) so we can reach higher ground.

We snowplough, we parallel ski – and over the course of an hour, I gain in confidence. I might not be ready for a black slope just yet, but I do feel far more prepared to go on a ski holiday. Even with ski boots on, I’ve got a pep in my step.

Nadine O’Regan was a guest of Kilternan Ski Club

Use of Kilternan’s slopes for practice costs €25 and adults classes are €60. Prices include ski and boot hire, skiclub.ie