Skiing China 4: Sun Mountain Yabuli

We awake to a blanket of snow, carpeting the shrubby elms and larches and softening the contours of the disappointing hills, chow down on our northern Chinese breakfast of steamed buns, soup and pickled vegetables, and summon the driver for SanGuo.

It is, as I’d figured out, Sun Mountain.

And it’s better! Much better!

This is China, of course, and Yabuli, so only one of Sun Mountain’s two long lifts is working, but I establish in Chinese that they’re running a ski bus from the base of the second, and stacks of runs are open.

All the ski gear is in good nick, although for some insane reason, while they offer ski boots up to an absolutely-gigantic-for-China-what-are-you-a-yeti size 44, the longest sets of skis they have are 159 – AKA only 4cm larger than the size Zac skis on.

Some of the runs are close to deserted, all of them are clearly signed, and several of them obviously within our level.

But best of all, there’s snow! Not artificial snow! Lovely, fresh soft snow. And a lot of it for this part of China, too.

Now, leisure skiing for anything more than a day, or possibly two, is very much a new thing for China, although we’ll meet a couple who’ve flown up from Shanghai for a full week, but there are rows of ski condos under construction below.

Best yet, there are ski instructors! Ski instructors who know their stuff! Tonnes of them, Asian, Australian and European, all in their Club Med outfits, nary a one among them who’d take an intermediate down a black run onto an icy slalom.

And, oh joy of joys – for Zac at least — Sun Mountain has a snow park! I buy him a helmet, though as the funky snowboard pants he wants don’t come in kids’ sizes he has to ski in the godawful green balloon pants we bought for Everest Base Camp.

And he’s off. And, umm, down. And up again, and laughing about it.

This being China, the ski instructors can’t teach us unless we’re actually at Club Med — the resort has a contract with the ski school, whose coaches’ talents we have already explored — but one of them gives us a few pointers over lunch.

And, as we do our last run of our half day, a leisurely wind down through the trees on a virtually deserted run, fat flakes of snow falling gently, it starts to feel…

Well, it almost starts to feel as though skiing in China could be worth it, after all.