Skiing as a mother is hard... but liberating
After a two-year break, Gabriella le Breton returns to the Alps with her two young daughters and finds that it isn’t downhill all the way
Ask me right now, as I write this late at night next to my snoring sixmonth-old baby, what the truth is about skiing as a mother and I’ll give you a one-word answer: exhausting. Ski holidays are physically demanding at the best of times but more so if you have neglected your fitness for four years, thanks to two pregnancies, childbirth and a lack of spare time, plus meeting the demands of an active toddler and a baby who doesn’t sleep more than two hours at a time through the night.
On Mother’s Day of all days, it’s good to recognise that parenting is at once the greatest privilege and the ultimate self-sacrifice. I look back now at the ski holidays I enjoyed as a child and acknowledge belatedly that my mother bought the cheapest ski gear for herself while treating my brother and me to top-notch kit. We would laugh at her, lugging around her lead-weight skis and sporting a soggy, oversize woollen jumper she’d knitted herself, not realising the sacrifice she was making for us.
In a similar vein, this season I sourced lovely new kit for my two girls, while duct-taping my old gloves. A few essentials were hurriedly squirreled into a bag for myself, while packing theirs with painstaking attention to detail.
I have also learnt through experience that economic sacrifice, in the form of professional childcare, really does seem to be the way to make a family ski holiday work best. Before the pandemic, my husband, Ed, and I tried ski trips without the help of a nanny or kids’ club, with one of us looking after our eldest daughter while the other took a few frenzied runs before swapping over – but it was a compromise that didn’t work for any of us; the one who was skiing felt guilty, while the one looking after a restless infant felt unfulfilled, and the child played up to our distress.
So, for our first ski holiday as a family of four, and my first ski trip in two years, we turned to specialist operator Scott Dunn. Our bank card took a major hit by ensuring we would have access to qualified childcare staff during our stay, but we decided this would be an investment in family unity and parental sanity.
Seeing my eldest daughter Mathilde’s face light up at the sight of snow when we arrived in Val d’Isère, and her unabashed joy upon spotting her cosy bunkbed in Le Yule hotel, was assurance enough that we had made the right decision. However, the next morning, when our Scott Dunn nannies arrived at the hotel to whisk Mathilde, nearly four, and Amalia off for a day at the kids’ club, I was suddenly less reassured.
Amalia had never been in childcare and, as she disappeared from sight in the hands of Beth and Clare, I fought the primal urge to chase after her, a tidal wave of motherly guilt threatening to overwhelm me. Despite the investment, skiing as a mother is hard.
Still feeling sick to my stomach, I strapped on my skis and boarded the Solaise Express gondola with Ed. The sun was shining, the snow glittering and Val d’Isère positively fizzing with springtime energy. As we gained altitude and the mountains started to reveal themselves in their full glory, I received a message from Clare with a photograph of a slumbering Amalia and my nausea abated. By the time we had skied a couple of runs, I started to gulp down deep breaths of crisp air as the mountains peeled back layer upon layer of parental worries and mental load. Ed pointed out that this was the first time in nearly a year that the two of us had been alone together and doing something other than sleeping, working or doing housework. I am fortunate to have a husband who shows remarkable dedication to his family and this holiday has been as essential in restoring my own sense of self as it has been in reigniting our appreciation of each other.
As with many mums, I have struggled with the loss of identity that can accompany motherhood. As a travel writer and keen skier, my sense of belonging has taken a further beating from the lack of being able to do what I love most during the pandemic. Here I was, at last, rediscovering who I am on the slopes.
Knowing that a woman’s attitude to risk is fundamentally altered upon becoming a mother, which is bound to impact our confidence on the slopes, returning to the mountains after having children was incredibly important to me. But, despite my best intentions, I failed entirely to find time in between caring for two sick children (our ski trip was postponed first when Mathilde got chickenpox and a second time when Amalia followed suit) to prepare myself physically for skiing. The result was that I could barely move after two short days on the slopes.
It’s a schoolgirl error for which I was gently reprimanded by my instructor, Charlotte Henry. “Returning to skiing after having a child is like coming back after an injury,” she told me. “Preparing physically for it is the most important thing you can do. Not only will it maximise your enjoyment, but it will also minimise your chance of injury.”
A mother of two girls herself, Charlotte is one of three female instructors working for Val d’Isère’s most exclusive private ski school, Tetra. With 15 years’ experience of teaching there, she estimates that at least a third of her clients are mothers seeking one-to-one tuition away from their husbands and kids.
“Sometimes they just want to go slower or ski different terrain to the rest of the family,” she explained, “and sometimes it’s about just wanting time to do something for themselves.”
Compassionate and supportive, Charlotte nonetheless worked me hard, picking out small but critical faults in my technique and working through them thoroughly. Our chairlift chats ranged from biomechanics and the technical intricacies of carving on the pistes to breastfeeding and the importance of a strong pelvic floor. I’ve certainly learnt the latter while spending
‘A family ski holiday is the best thing ever… but entirely different to the skiing you once knew’
back-breaking mornings on the nursery slopes, scooping Mathilde up off the snow and skiing with her between my legs, taking equal delight in watching her discover her ski legs as I have taken in rediscovering my own.
Witnessing Mathilde’s love for snow, I’ve been recalling the words of Chemmy Alcott, the British Olympic skier and mother of two, who told me: “Every time you get back into something you enjoyed before having children, take baby steps and focus on the long-term benefits. A family ski holiday is the best thing ever, sharing what you love most in the world with the people you love most. It’s incredibly special but it is entirely different to the skiing you once knew.”
Perhaps the most surprising benefit of skiing as a mother for me has been a great sense of liberation, of skiing unfettered by my own exacting expectations and those of others. Rather than greedily seeking out the best powder runs and expecting flawless technique, I have accepted that I will get less ski time to myself but will appreciate it more – and that my performance will be the best I can manage on that day.
Nothing sums this up better than when I skied down from the last run of our holiday, legs wobbling and back screaming, to a gurgling Amalia and a rapturous Mathilde: “Wow! Mama, you’re the best skier in the whole world!” That’s all the praise this mama needs.
Scott Dunn (020 8682 5080; scottdunn. com) offers three nights at Le Yule hotel and Spa and three nights at Les Barmes De l’Ours from £11,374 B&B, based on a family of four travelling and including flights and private transfers. The Scott Dunn Explorers Kids Club is priced at £495 per child for six full days
Covid rules For full details of entry requirements and in-resort Covid rules for your favourite ski destinations, including Val d’Isère, see telegraph.co.uk/ tt-skirules. Refer to gov.uk/foreign-traveladvice for further travel information