Skis are older than writing
People were skiing long before it was a sport. Pieces of a wooden ski found in a peat bog in northern Russia are around 8,000 years old, and a rock carving on the Norwegian island of Rødøy, several thousand years old, shows a figure on long skis. For most of history skis were for getting about in winter: hunting, carrying messages and moving across deep snow on foot.
Norway gave skiing much of its language. SLALOM comes from the Norwegian for a sloping track, and the Telemark turn is named after a Norwegian county. Other ski words come from the Alps: SCHUSS is German for a shot, meaning straight down the hill at full speed, and APRES comes from the French après-ski, the relaxing that happens after a day on the SLOPE.
How skis turn
Until the 1990s most skis were long and straight, and turning meant skidding them sideways. Modern skis are wider at the tip and tail than in the middle. When a skier tips them on to their EDGES, they bend into a curve and slice round in a clean arc instead of skidding. That is CARVING, and it made turning much easier to learn.
Beginners start with the SNOWPLOUGH, pointing the ski tips together in a wedge to slow down. BINDINGS hold the BOOTS to the skis, but are built to let go in a bad fall. Before release bindings became common from the 1950s and 1960s, broken legs were a routine part of a skiing holiday.
A lift for bananas
Skiers used to climb every hill before they skied down it. The first CHAIRLIFT was built in 1936 at Sun Valley in Idaho, for a railway company that had just opened the RESORT. An engineer called James Curran based the design on equipment he had built for loading bunches of bananas on to ships, swapping the hooks for chairs. Those first chairs carried one skier at a time, with no safety bar.
Big resorts now have enclosed cable cars, the GONDOLA, as well as chairs, and some lifts climb more than a thousand metres. Our mountains page covers the ranges where the biggest resorts are found.
Colours, bumps and snow safety
In Europe, a PISTE is marked by colour: blue for easy, red for harder, and a BLACK RUN for the steepest, with green for beginners in some countries. In North America, runs are marked with a green circle, a blue square or a black diamond. MOGULS are the bumps that form when many skiers turn in the same places, pushing the snow into mounds.
Mountain patrols reduce the risk of an AVALANCHE by setting off small ones on purpose with explosives, before a big SNOWFALL can build into something dangerous. GOGGLES protect against snow blindness, a painful sunburn of the eye caused by sunlight bouncing off snow. Long before plastic lenses, Arctic peoples carved goggles from wood or bone with thin slits to see through. Our Arctic page covers the far north. The best days are fresh POWDER, good GLIDE and POLES planted just right on every turn.