China Skiing

One of our more adventurous members of of the team has been out exploring the local Beijing ski slopes. He arranged a quick ski trip for a group of us to Shi Jing Long Ski Resort http://www.sjlski.com/.

AF and I were one of the first stops at 5:50am. We then went to Shunyi to pick up two other families and then we were on our way into the countryside. We got to the resort at around 8:15 am.

Our driver Mr. Wu did a great job of navigating through the bureaucracy of getting onto the slopes:
1. Make reservation a few days in advance (cheaper that way)
2. Pay an admission ticket to get into the gates of the resort
3. Get in line to pay for the equipment rental and lift tickets
4. Go to the ski clothing counter (none of us needed to rent the colorful one-piece ski outfits that may not have been washed since the season began).
5. To the boot counter to find your metric size boots
6. Get a locker for the shoes
7. Pick up skis or snowboards and then select ski poles
8. The bindings were adjusted once outside the building
9. Then to the only chair lift that was operating since we were early (the great thing is we did not need a lift ticket to show to the chair operator)
10. Oh there are no chair operators to help you on the lift. The operators are close by to shut the lift down if one of us falls trying to get on or off the lift.

Being early had many benefits most of which was to navigate the bureaucracy without waiting. The resort says it has 7 slopes. There was really only one long slope with one chair that went half way and another chair lift that went to the top. The rest of the "slopes" were a number of surface lifts next to each other on a gentle beginner field.

The skiing was fast packed powder on man-made snow. All of this was in contrast to the desert mountain terrain with no snow. All of the vegetation was dried out shrub growing in the arid ground.

Everybody had a good time and there were no injuries, except the broken pole that I had to pay 30 RMB for (which is a whole other story). We left the slopes at 12:30 just as bus loads of people were checking in and getting their equipment.