Where real skiers ski

Glenridding, Lake District, United Kingdom

I have done it, at least they have done it for me. A little while ago I reached the zenith of my skiing career and became a member of the Lake District Ski Club.

Moving to Cumbria had been a life decision, swopping London’s pollution for the purity of Lakeland air. The ongoing pandemic persuaded me, as I had no wish to spend a second lockdown period in London.  Yet the last thing I was expecting in Cumbria was a ski tow, clinging out-of-sight to a patch of fell, somewhere north of the majestic Helvellyn mountain.

“It’s difficult to find,” said Mike Sweeney, the club’s President. “We have it well hidden, but our website tells you the route.”

One look at Mike told me I should start training. He has the outdoor look about him and appears ready for the mountains at all times. What he described as not too bad, for me would be diabolical.

The snow had not arrived when I first visited the Club’s wooden ski hut, which sits at the bottom of a Poma tow. I had decided to walk there from the village of Glenridding, once a mining town, but now a tourist haven on the side of scenic Ullswater. There is a special Club car park higher up, which removes an hour of walking, but you need permission to use the track to get there. I was after the full experience.

“Our hut is on the northern slopes of a fell called Raise,” said Mike. “It’s small, takes 25 at a pinch, but we’ve limited it to six these days with virus about. We also have a loo, one of the highest flushing toilets in England.”

I set off from Glenridding but was soon lost. Two chatting ladies pointed me one way and two builders another, so I ignored them all and followed my nose, which was pointing directly forwards.

It was a fungus hunter who saved me. He had emerged, unannounced, from behind a windswept tree, a basket filled with fungi in his hand.  I was clearly lost, mouth open, map upside down, compass absent, and a mobile battery that was lifeless.

“Ski Club?” asked the fungus hunter. He, too, had the look of fitness about him.

I nodded.

The fungus hunter pointed to the distance, saying, “Turn right past the mine and zigzag up the slope.”

I headed onwards.

The mine was Greenside Mine, once thriving but now derelict. The route to the ski tow goes right past it. Active for at least two centuries, it was once the most productive lead mine in the land. It closed in 1962, after the lead had been exhausted. Greenside was also the site of two massive test explosions. The government was seeing if it was possible to hide subterranean nuclear tests from seismic analysis, in preparation for the 1963 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

I plodded upwards, along the zigzag boulder-strewn path. Thick mist now swirled around me, so I zipped my jacket snugly and carried on. In mist it is easy to panic. The fear of being alone on a mountain with no means of communication, white fog all around, the only sound being Lakeland wind.

It was then that the mist parted, which was the last thing I was expecting. The parting became a gap, the gap a clearing, and soon it was a magical Lakeland day. It was as if the mist had never happened. Suddenly, I could see so much. Ullswater and Glenridding behind, Helvellyn to my left, mine workings to my right, and there, a short distance ahead, was the tow hut of the Lake District Ski Club. From it ran a 360-metre tow, its buttons dangling vertically, as they waited for winter. They were poised for a snowstorm and the skiers who would unquestionably follow.

The Lake District Ski Club has had a permanent tow on the fell since 1954, which made it the first in the UK. Joining the Club may seem easy, but it is not. Presently it has 355 members, although its unpisted ski area is crowded should more than 70 skiers appear. It has made the Club choosy. Its slopes are not for beginners, nor for immaculate skis. It has blue runs, red runs, black runs, and impossible. It has no restaurant, no ski bus, no tuition, and no ski hire. Plus, I had learned, you must be mountain-wise to find it.

“Why do people go there?” I had asked Mike Sweeney before I had departed Glenridding. “After all, there’s Europe, America, other places, too. Not forgetting glühwein, rösti and raclette.”

Mike looked disapproving when I had asked, but his answer was simple. “If it was always perfect it would be boring,” he said. “Only real skiers can handle Lakeland.”