Skiing in Austria

Hello,

So Julian and I decided we'd go skiing randomly. There were many, many issues with this train of thought: 

1. We didn't have waterproof clothing 

2. We didn't have ski equipment 

3. We both had not skied in about 10yrs 

4. Our travel insurance explicitly said any injuries sustained while skiing were not covered by them 

So what did we do? We went skiing in a Austria because we could, and that became an adventure and a half because everything that could have possibly gone wrong, went wrong. 

Mistake one: thinking we could ski. We got to the mid-point of the mountain, looked down a red run and spent fifteen minutes realising there was no way we could go down on it. So we went higher in search of a blue run, which we found. I happened to be good on the easy stuff, and Juls happened to be good on the steeper stuff. Anything else and we both stacked. Hard. 

Mistake two: turns out waterproof clothing is pretty essential. My butt was frozen and numb by the first couple of tumbles. 

Luckily Austrian people are the kindest humans on earth. People picked up poles when we stacked, helped us up and tried to teach us how to ski with minimal English. One guy even carried out skis down to a lower part of the mountain while we walked down a particularly steep bit. We didn't ask anyone, they just offered their own advice and assistance on their own which is something we both found beautiful about the Austrian culture. Everyone spoke English and was willing to help out a lost traveler. 

Then came the cherry on top: we reached the end of a blue run and saw a chair lift that was going up, not down. Thinking that it would end at the top so we could take the cable cars back down, we naively took it up. It didn't go to the top, it went to the middle of nowhere. We got off the chairlift and the snow picked so much, it felt like a blizzard. We began to walk towards a set of signs before realising all the runs on this mountain were red. At some point Jus went ahead and as I focused on catching up, I didn't realise just how bad the snow had gotten. I looked up and he was nowhere to be seen. The only thing I could see was an entire wall of solid, white snow. You know in those movies where explorers go into the snow and get seperate by a bad blizzard, leaving one calling aimlessly into the snow to no avail? That is what it felt like. Nothing but white and a slight shadow of the ski lift in the back. I spent a solid minute debating whether I wanted to follow him or turn back, and as I stood deciding I was beginning to notice the ice that had formed on the edges of my jacket. Not snow, solid ice that had frozen into my clothing. Juls eventually reappeared when he realised he could no longer see me, and we returned to the ski lift hoping to get help from someone. Luckily, this guy saw our complete incompetence and realised we were not going to make it down the red run to the next cable car station. So he called us a snow mobile which whisked us to the top of the mountain to safety. That is the story of the dumbest thing I have ever done in my life.