I woke up early on 1 January 2009 because the yellow tent I was sharing with two friends at a dodgy beach resort in Tofo, Mozambique, had become unbearably hot and humid, although the day did improve dramatically and ended at a street-party in Inhambane. It was certainly not hot or humid on Jan 1, 2010 but I did wake up relatively early, this time to meet up with friends and head off on a skiing/snowboarding expedition.

I was a little unsure of exactly where we were meeting, so I was relieved to spot a Scotsman with a guitar in the distance. We were first. The others trickled up in dribs and drabs until everyone had arrived (one rather later than the rest). We piled into the bus. ‘Bus’ may be a misnomer, here. It was more like a mini-bus, only slightly smaller than a South African taxi because made for Koreans. Theoretically it was made for 15. I suppose it might fit 15 small Koreans. It definitely struggled to hold 11 foreigners, with luggage, plus one Korean driver. To the point where we had one person sitting on the floor between the seats. It this rather crowded manner, and with several people still in various states of recovering from New Year’s Eve, we set  off to drive across the country to a place called Bear’s Town Ski Resort outside of Seoul.

We stopped about half way there, at a rest-stop, and saw the first glimpses of snow. I began to get excited. As we drove on, there was more and more snow in the fields and on the country roads we passed. Dams or lakes were iced over and lay covered in white snow. There were people on the ice, in little clusters, perhaps fishing. Further on, we started to see snow lying on the sides of the road and then the sides of the mountains. The hills were all covered with the usual Korean forests but under the trees, snow lay on the ground. We were travelling rather slowly at this point, because we had hit New Year’s traffic, so everyone was a little frustrated and very ready to reach our destination. Then someone spotted a shop selling snowboards. We were getting closer.

Eventually we saw ski slopes and -lifts. The driver inched through the traffic onto the resort and up a hill and dropped us off. Assuming we were in the right place, we trudged around for a while looking, unsuccessfully, for a check-in point. Then Tim found a bandy-legged Korean who took him to where the front desk was, all of us following along behind. At the front desk we were told our booking didn’t exist. Quiet, controlled panic ensued. No-one said very much. Then Stuart suggested we check if this was the Youth Hostel. The check-in clerk’s face relaxed, he made a quick call and 10 minutes later we were being led down one hill and up another to the place we were actually supposed to be. Apparently the spot where we were dropped off was the ‘town houses’, rather than the Youth Hostel.

We were booked into two rooms at the Youth Hostel, each designed to sleep 6 people. ‘Youth Hostel’ has here a slightly different meaning from what most people may be used to. For one thing, it seems to be the preferred holiday accommodation for family groups, I suppose because it is cheaper than most other accommodation and not a love-motel. The second difference is that the rooms had no beds. This is not as completely crazy as it sounds. The traditional Korean way of sleeping is on a mat directly on the heated floor – ondol-style rooms, they are called. Some people found sleeping on the floor extremely uncomfortable but I was happy. It meant that we had far more space in the room than we would have had had it been full of bunk-beds – the living space was more spacious. It also proved hazardous to stray chocolates, which would sit on the floor and melt and then get plastered to the bottom of sleeping mats, duvets and pillows.

Both rooms had balconies looking out over the slopes. Ours looked out across the main ski rental place, practice area (bunny hill) and food stops (including the KFC) at the bottom of two of the slopes. From the room, we could watch people skiing and see the huge vehicles packing down the snow between sessions and hear strains of K-pop coming from the lifts.

As soon as we’d settled in, we found food. Most of us had KFC and largely regretted it. The food seemed to tire people out. Everyone in our room was cuddled under blankets. And then someone suggested duvet wars. Duvet wars involve wrapping yourself in duvets and pillows and then running into one or more other people who are similarly wrapped up and falling over. They also wake people up. We joined the others in room 309 and enjoyed a rather ridiculous game while we waited for the evening skiing/snowboarding session to begin.

This resort has several sessions every day – dawn, morning, afternoon, evening and midnight (although their signage is not that clear). The times are rather random and they are separated by an hour or so each time, when they press the snow with ‘snow groomers’ (according to the website). The evening session runs from 18:30 to 23:00. Two of the guys in our group were going snowboarding. We kept them company as they got their gear and got all decked out. Snowboarding gear makes you look cool. They headed off to try the slopes.

The rest of us had decided to try sledding, which seemed a lot less energetic while still being super-fun. We were given directions to the sledding place and set off. It was quite a walk, and some of the group peeled off and headed elsewhere as we went. We got there eventually (“look for the golf,” the instructions had said) and found the sledding area. The tickets weren’t particularly expensive and included the ski-lift. There was a tiny little baby sledding slope for the very young children, and then a larger one for older kids and adults, up a ski-lift, which we tried.

I should perhaps mention, at this point, that I have never been in snow deep enough or lasting long enough to do more than build a tiny, miserable little snow dwarf and get wet feet as it melted, so almost everything about this trip was new and exciting for me. Getting on a ski-lift for the first time included. I was rather nervous. We sat down in the seat as it slammed into the back of our knees and moved quickly off, with the bar with foot-bits across us. It did not feel secure. In fact, it felt like people should be strapped in. It was not massively high but definitely high enough that it would have been dangerous to fall down. The view of the snowy world from above was beautiful, though. It’s hard to explain to people for whom it is an ordinary sight, how spectacularly beautiful the first sight of snow on the rocks in a wintry stream or on the bare branches of trees seemed to me. It was evening, too, so everything was a black and white picture-postcard winter-wonderland.

Towards the top of the ski-lift’s run, it occurred to us that we didn’t know exactly how to get off, so we watched the people ahead of us, lifted the bar across our knees at the same point they had, and hopped up and started to run as soon as our feet hit the ground. It proved to be the right thing to do. We then grabbed our sleds and headed for the slope. The sleds were little and plastic, with a string to hold onto. When you reached the front of the queue, you sat in the sled and pushed yourself forward with your feet and then took off down the hill. The rush of wind in your hair… oh, wait … hat… um… the rush of wind past you, the feel of the snow under your sled, the speed and attempts to steer right and left to avoid someone else who has fallen over. I could feel the adrenaline pumping. It wasn’t so high that it was scary, but trying to steer the sled and avoid falling over and not run into the wall all at the same time took almost complete concentration. I got a first inkling of how people can feel completely absorbed in snow-sports for hours on end.

We had three runs, taking the ski lift back up each time. My first introduction to snow and I loved it. Back at the youth hostel, we got warm and settled down to play games and chat. And then it started to snow. From our window, we watched the snow falling and flurrying across the practice area under the huge floodlights and the railings of our balcony slowly turn to white. It was so pretty. Actual snow falling out of the actual sky. The others said it was very small for real snow but as the snow-novice in the group, I didn’t mind. It was still snowing when we went to bed, much to the joy of the snowboarders because it would apparently do good things for the slopes. It was a good start to the weekend and a great start to 2010.