[nabs-l] Has anybody skied before?

[Karl Martin Adam]

Hi Sami, I've been skiing every week at my local hill for the 
last fifteen years or so.  It's totally doable as a blind person 
as long as you have a guide, but it's really not otherwise.  The 
problem with having your family teach you isn't the teaching part 
(though many people both blind and sighted do get ski lessons and 
learn that way unless their family is really good at it), but 
that if your parents aren't really good skiers they won't be able 
to take enough attention off their own skiing to guide you.  To 
ski you have to be able to weave around all the other people 
while going fast including when other people randomly fall, cut 
in front of you, etc. not to mention avoiding trees, lift towers, 
snowmobiles, etc.  You can sometimes here the other people moving 
around you well enough to avoid them, but you won't be able to 
hear the person laying on the snow in front of you because they 
fell a while ago, and when it gets windy and you have to put a 
hat over your ears, even hearing the moving people gets pretty 
much impossible.  There are lots of blind ski programs though, so 
I suggest you find one of those.  Sometimes you have to fight 
with them a bit because they often consist of very well meaning 
sighted people who don't really believe that blind people can do 
much of anything, but with a bit of pacience and assertiveness 
you can get them to do things that are helpful while still 
recognizing that you're capable of doing things yourself.

Hope this helps,
Karl

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Sami Osborne via nabs-l <nabs-l at nfbnet.org
To: nabs-l at nfbnet.org
Date sent: Wed, 18 Feb 2015 15:23:02 -0400
Subject: [nabs-l] Has anybody skied before?

Hi all,

So I have a question about your experiences as blind students and
I hope you can answer.

Today, my mom and my younger brother (who is sighted) are going
out skiing.  We've never actually done it before as a family, so
I was looking forward to trying something new (my mom has done it
before back in France, and my brother did it last month on a
school field trip).  But today my mom told me that she'd love
that I come with them, but that skiing requires a fair amount of
vision.  She thinks I can learn, but that neither she, my dad, or
my brother is sufficiently good enough at it to teach me how (as
a blind person,) and I would therefore need a specialized
instructor.
While I was of course pretty disappointed, I could also see the
confidence that my mom had that I can ski if I get the proper
instruction (both my parents have high expectations for me and my
brother).

So I'd like to know if any of you guys have gone skiing before
and how your experiences were.  Did you manage without vision,
and did you learn from your family, friends or a special
instructor?
Also, how different is skiing from sledding in terms of requiring
the use of vision?
 Just to let you know, we go sledding every winter, and I am able
to sled down the hill and walk back up without any problems with
vision or sighted assistance (where we go sledding, the hill is
just a straight line, so it's relatively easy to walk up once I
slide down).

I look forward to hearing about all your experiences and try
something new with my family eventually.

Thanks,

Sami.

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