Skiing kit for beginners

... the ULTIMATE LIST!!

Okay, here’s my problem. I can’t imagine that anyone is still going ski-ing, what with mortgages all costing one million pounds per month and heating bills like phone numbers. But I’ve got this uh-mazing ski-ing packing list burning a hole in my pocket and I’ve just got to share it. We are not going ski-ing again because Kitty hated it so much, (though even if she liked it I would be stalled by the expense), and I’m partly bummed out because I wanted to go again in order to get my packing right because I completely spammed it first time round.

ANYWAY. If you are skiing for the first time soon, or over New Year or at Easter, I recommend you start thinking about your kit in the next few weeks. Between now and Christmas you will be thinking a lot about Christmas and by mid-January all the best skiing stuff will have gone. After February half term shops stop stocking ski stuff entirely.

Shop staff laughed in my face when in mid-March this year I asked if they had any skiwear. As a result I had to panic-buy everything from online sale stock and the Corens turned up in Austria looking even weirder than we normally do. Giles accurately described himself as looking like “a full binbag, rolling down the mountain”.

THE LIST. It’s amazing, get a pen ready.

CLOTHES

This is the absolute minimum of clothes you and your children need to ski

1 base layer. This means thermal underwear – a long-sleeved top and bottoms. Although when you come to actually ski, you have to fold the bottoms up to just below your knees. There must be nothing between skin and ski boot except ski sock. Don’t ask me why, it is just so, everyone was demented about it and kept telling me. If you manage to find some thermal bottoms that stop just below the knees, buy them – most seem to go down to the ankle.

My key advice here is: don’t get any base layer item in black. One slithery black item of underwear looks vastly like another and when everything is jumbled in a heap on the floor after bath-time it will do your head in. I am a big fan of the Mountain Warehouse Thermal range, it’s very light, stretchy and warm and comes in mad colours.

1 x pair of socks. Ski socks are quite particular, they are not hiking socks, they must go right up to your knees.

1 x sports bra for you.

1 x sweater. This is your opportunity for something covered in snowflakes or reindeer. It could maybe be a fleece or a sturdy wool/cashmere blend half-zip. This is all you need.

1 set loungewear, i.e. a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. This is what you will wear in your room or chalet, after your post-ski shower and before dinner. If you are in a chalet this is probably what you will wear to dinner, too. You do not need warm clothes for indoor-wear as Alpine countries have very good insulation and heating and everywhere inside will be 24C.

Eveningwear. This you need the least of. Even if you are staying in a smart hotel, all you need is one pair best jeans and one fine gauge black merino crewneck sweater from Uniqlo and 1 set of jewellery. You will spend approx. 2 hours per day in this rig so don’t overdo it. Kids can also wear jeans or clean sweatpants and a top.

Shoes. You need 1 pair of snow boots, which you will travel in, and one pair of trainers that are smart enough to wear to dinner if you’re in a hotel/restaurant.

Ski trousers and jacket. It is worth getting these right. Take some time to try on different trousers and jackets to find something you like. If you are a never-skied-before person you will probably be so worried about it that you will panic and buy the first thing.

You also might be frantic not to be “all the gear and no idea”. Put that out of your mind. You might be utter crap, but so are a lot of other people. You will definitely fall over, because everyone falls over. And falling over doesn’t hurt. Unless you get unlucky, you just sort of crumple painlessly into a heap. Most of the time when you are skiing you are not actually skiing. You are on a furnicula, or a transfer, or plonking about, or queuing for the button lift.

And feeling like you look okay while doing all these things is important. You don’t have to spend £1200 on Perfect Moment. North Face or Mountain Equipment is absolutely fine. As you’re doing all this so early, you will have the pick of all the stuff. Make sure your jacket is specifically a ski jacket as they will have a special pocket in the left-hand sleeve for your ski-pass, which is basically the Oyster card of skiing.

Have a poke about in your nearest Decathalon to see if there’s anything you fancy and Asos.com have a load of jazzy ski gear. I would hesitate to buy an all-in-one because even in my limited experience I can see there are many times when you want to take your jacket off and just be in base layer and ski-pants.

When it comes to kids’ kit, err on the side of very colourful as it is useful, when trying to pick your kid out of the SkiSchule crowd, to be looking for the one in the neon yellow trousers.

Technical kit. I like mittens for a ski glove and look out for brands that come with an elastic loop for the wrist, so that you can take the glove off and let it dangle, rather than fall directly into the snow, because you will fall over trying to pick it up. Hesta gloves have this. Goggles are much of a muchness. Just pick a pair within your price range, mine are Adidas. Sunglasses must have the correct UV rating and don’t be shy to go for a wrap-around Sporty Dad pair. A mountainside full of snow is absolutely blinding even if it is cloudy.

Headwear. I am a big fan of ski-bands, which keep your hairline neat and tidy and your ears warm. Pretty much everyone now wears a helmet to ski, which makes woolly hats only partly useful.

Okay, done. This is the absolute minimum of clothes you will need. If you go skiing with just these things you’ll be fine.

If you’re tempted to double up on anything I recommend taking an extra set of base layer as you will sweat while you’re skiing and a mid-week wash of your thermals might be welcome. If you have space, I also recommend a pair of pool slides, or Birkenstocks for pottering about the place.

Extra things.

I don’t know if it’s the mountain air or the Schnapps or the snow or the cold or what, but my eyes were like shrivelled raisins the entire ski holiday and hydrating eyedrops would have been very handy.

Rehydration tablets like these would also have been useful as I sweated like mad all day long and didn’t drink enough water. Perhaps these would have been the solution to my dry eyes.

You will also want to take with you a super-hydrating moisturiser like CeraVe and a hair mask, as the sun and the helmet and the air will frazz your hair to straw. Also consider a serum such as Oleo-Relax from Keratase to apply after hair-washing to prevent your barnet from sticking straight up into the air once dry.

When you need Compeed, only Compeed will do. Yes, they might sell it in St Moritz. But they also might not.

SPF. Factor 50 sports SPF is the best, from UltraSun. Put it on even if it looks cloudy at breakfast because weather conditions change in seconds in the mountains and even a ten-minute shaft of sunlight will burn you to a crisp once magnified x 1000 by the snow. Don’t forget your lip SPF, UltraSun is the least yucky.

Ibuprofen. After two days of skiing you will feel like you have been on a medieval torture rack. Take Voltarol gel and Deep Heat if you know you don’t cope well with muscle pain.

Rucksack. You will want to take a small rucksack with you up the mountain with water, tissues, money, a snack and your SPF as no-one remembers to put it on the back of their neck after breakfast. Ziploc bags are also useful for bagging up rolls and mini croissants at the breakfast buffet to inhale at about 12pm. Even better if your rucksack has an elastic bit across the front where you can jam in your wretched bloody ski poles.

If you are taking small children with you aged between 5 and 13 and you want them to carry their own kit, you might consider ski straps. Skis are awkward and slithery and not easy to carry even if you are an adult. Ski straps make the whole kit-schlepping thing much easier as you can just sling them over your shoulder and there is a separate section for the poles. Poles are, hands down, the worst thing about skiing. Worse even than those snowboarding berks in fancy dress doing 150mph. There is no convenient way to carry poles and they are pretty much designed to fall over sideways in a big clattery heap when leant up against anything.

And that’s it! Pretty good, I think.

But I know for a fact that many of you are very experienced skiers – please leave any handy kit-recommendations for novices in the handy box below. Thank you!