Ski Trip: Vivaldi Park

As some of you may have heard (here or here), Nana and I went on a short ski trip with Dr. Kim this weekend, to Vivaldi Park, about an hour and a half east of Seoul. (Vivaldi Park is owned and operated by the same folks as Sol Beach, where we stayed on our East Coast tour.)

The first part of the adventure involved me DRIVING (gads!) Dr. Kim's car (double gads!) at night, while trying to follow both Dr. Kim's stealth Dodge pickup and our car's Korean GPS (kudos to Nana for figuring that contraption out). On the bright side, the trip did involve a long stop for a giant country-style Korean dinner: spicy stir-fried pork and big bowls of barley topped with tofu and assorted veggies.

So, Vivaldi Park. If we can take Vivaldi Park to be anything remotely representative, then skiing in Korea is so different from skiing in the States that it's hard to know where to start. First of all, Koreans ski (or board--honestly, the skier/boarder breakdown was about 50/50) like they hike, which is to say that they dress the part no matter how little actual skiing or hiking they plan to do. (Though this person in a cow suit would beg to differ--she's taken the apparent trend towards wearing cartoon-animal ski hats to a new and disturbing place.)

Also, night skiing seems to be more popular than day skiing (the techno-fetish?), and the vast majority of Korean skiers seem to stick to the beginner slopes, which also fits with the dress-the-part no-matter-what theme.

Anyway, take a look at this (shamefully low-quality video) of the hill: a writhing mass of humanity at the bottom, desolation on the more advanced slopes at the top.




The obsessive technojoy also spilled over into the lift system: below you can see Vivaldi Park's utterly unnecessary gondola, which serves the dual purpose of looking cool and helping drunk people get back down the hill without stepping into their skis, and below that the insane conveyor belts they had to help people get on the lifts.




Bonus: These crazy air-guns you could use to blow the snow out of your skis. . .




As for the skiing itself, it went pretty well. The place had a couple nice runs, and the mountain was nearly deserted for most of the morning. More importantly, the knee held up, and Nana made some pretty huge strides. She even managed somehow to pick up a flock of little Korean ducklings in a lift line, who then proceeded to follow her as she made her increasingly graceful S-curves down the slope.




(As evidenced by this clip, Koreans seem to ski like they drive: you can see several near-disasters, including a snowboarder careening in from the right.)

Anyway, overall, the trip was a huge success, dotted with important firsts: my first time driving in Korea, our first trip to a zzimzilbang (more on that later? maybe?), and Nana's first time having fun on skis. Here you can see me beaming with pride, and below, the celebratory hot chocolate I promised Nana if she got through the day.