I didn't wear a toque all week!

Andrew’s work sponsors a ski club, which skis in the Italian Dolomites every year, and we signed up.

My hopes of spending eight days with a bus-load of potential Belgian friends were quashed in the parking lot before the trip even began, when I eyeballed the group’s demographic and realised that the average age was sixty-five with a healthy smattering of Baby Boomer teenagers. Teenagers with their baggy trousers and crazy “rap” music, did not figure into my wine-drinking, fire-sitting, fondue-eating, hot-chocolate-sipping fantasies.

On the bright side, my worry that ex-military types would dominate the trip, barking orders and making us scale fences to prove we had what it “took” were ill-founded. Turns out that the Ski Club has been around for twenty-five years and is run by about five round-girthed Belgian men who are less concerned about the quality of the snow on the hills, than the quantity of the grappa in the lodges.

The first clue that we were not with a rigid, disciplinarian bunch was on the fifteen-hour bus ride to Italy. We left at seven pm. and the plan was to drive through the night. Fair enough, sleeping on a bus isn’t fun, but waking up in Italy is a pretty sweet payoff.

Except, every time I managed to finally fall asleep in the cramped, crowded space, the bus would pull into another rest-stop. I didn’t understand it at first, did the vehicle have a fuel leak? Did the driver have a bladder infection? Finally, at the four a.m. stop I stood and looked around. The bus was deserted, except for a group of bewildered-looking Norwegians in the back. Where was everyone? I squinted through the window and got my answer: forty-five Belgians, ranging in age from fourteen to seventy-three, were standing outside, puffing away on ciggies.

Thus, smoke-breaking away across Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Germany, we finally arrived in Italy.

Our hotel was gorgeous: Built into a cliff in a little village of steep-pitched roofs, we were surrounded by Heidi-esque views of mountains, mountains and more mountains. Getting off the cramped, cigarette-reeking bus to stumble into this paradise, I felt like Maria escaping the Nazis, and was barely restrained from belting out “The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music.”

The village was adorable: There were outdoor wells where black-dress-wearing Italian ladies fetched water. There were cows living in a barn underneath the hotel, providing an extra level of warmth to the building above. Men walked around wearing those Elf-y sort of hats that you see on the boxes of “Alpen” cereal. The streets were narrow and winding, allowing only one car to pass at a time.

Every day we went to a different hill. Andy and I, in our keen Canadian way, would hit the slopes immediately. We’d ski continuously until one pm, and then stop in one of the many restaurants dotting the slopes for a big plate of fresh gnocchi or Hungarian goulash, then it was back on the hills until 4:30. I think our skiing frenzy was a result of the weather. I have never skied without wearing two pairs of long underwear, sweatpants, ski pants, toque, scarf and designed-to-withstand-Antarctic-gales-ski jacket. I’ve certainly never skied when you didn’t spend the five-minute ride in the chair lift being tossed around by bitter, howling Arctic winds. It was sunny and warm for five of the six days we skied. Temperatures at the bottom of the hill were nine degrees Celsius. We were more worried about sunburn than frostbite. Fantastic.

The Europeans were obviously more blasé about maximising their time in this glorious weather. Our Belgian friends, for instance, would call it quits around eleven a.m. After that, it was Grappa and Limoncello in a restaurant, until it was time to roll onto the bus. The Italians weren’t much different, and we noticed by two pm, the lift lines had migrated to the bars and Andrew and I had the hill to ourselves.

We had a few minor adventures, the most notable being on our fifth day. We skied over the other side of the mountain, and were shushing our way down the slopes, like the Olympic-calibre athletes we are. Since it was first thing in the morning, there weren’t a lot of people around. Nearly at the bottom of the hill, Andrew spotted a little trail off to the left. “Let’s take this and see where it goes?” he said.

“Are you sure it’s going to lead us to a lift?”

“Of course, all the trails have to lead to a lift.”

As it turns out, all the trails DON’T have to lead to a lift. Some trails wind through the woods for two kilometres on a gentle slope, until they actually come up alongside a highway. These trails lead you to slowly ski along the road, while Italian drivers laugh at you from the comfort of their Fiats. Some trails finally veer off from this public humiliation and end in a… snow bank.

At this point, not a chairlift in sight, I was nervous. Had some sort of magical troll band built the trail from the ski hill specifically to lure foolish tourists into their lair? It was time to face the question that haunts every person’s nightmares: Were we about to be tortured and eaten by Italian Troll People?

With no alternatives before us, we took off our skis and walked. At least we could use the skis as weapons against the inevitable attack. Eventually we came to a village, bustling with life and activity, with nary a troll to be seen.

We lurched through the centre of town in our big ski boots, looking like two of Frankenstein’s more sporty monsters. Eventually were able to catch the bus back up to the base of the mountain and return to our skiing ways.

Why the ski hill has created and maintained a perfectly lovely trail that leads to a snowbank, I have no idea. What I do know is that the story delighted the Grappa-fuelled Belgians on the ride back to the hotel that night.

Don't miss part three of the Ski Club adventures, where I describe every single meal we ate in loving detail!