Skiing with Parkinson’s - the final run

You have to know when it's time to stop

A year ago I returned to the slopes for my first skiing holiday since I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2019. Somewhat to my surprise the skiing went reasonably well - I was quicker to tire and even clumsier than normal, but as long as I stopped soon after lunch I could still cope with most blue or red runs.

Last week I was back in the mountains with the same group of people and at a resort I had visited many times before, Morzine in the French Alps. While assessing the state of your Parkinson’s symptoms is a subjective business, I felt mine had got only a little worse over the course of the year. The weakness on my right side had been compounded by a growing stiffness in my right hand. So I assumed that skiing would be a bit more challenging but still perfectly possible.

I was wrong. It turned out to be so hard that by the end of the week, I had decided that this would be my last skiing holiday. The problem was a simple one - I could not turn effectively. Skiing is all about shifting your weight from one side to another to carve a turn and control your speed but on anything but the gentlest of slopes I found myself incapable of doing this. After more than 30 skiing holidays since my mid-20s I was back to week 2 when anything with a gradient meant going into a tortured snowplough.

My turns would alternate between too fast, sending me rocketing across the slopes, and too slow, with the result that I turned up hill, came to a halt and sat down. Previously, that would have meant hauling myself up, but now I’m reliant on fellow skiers to winch me back up and send me on my way again. My Parkinson’s symptoms worsen with stress and I got into a vicious circle, becoming more stressed as my legs wouldn’t do what I wanted them to do, and skiing ever more incompetently.

Me with my rescue crew

It all came to a head on the fourth day on a crowded blue slope, with fresh snow being carved into moghuls. A few years ago I would have made my way down without a problem, perhaps cursing the heavy traffic but managing to dodge round incompetent skiers. This time I was the hazard, falling at almost every turn, with my ever-patient friends then performing a double act, one uphill, the other downhill, to rescue me each time. At one stage, I took off my skis and started walking downhill before deciding that was even harder.

By the time I reached the bottom, with one more fall even on a flat section, and headed into a mountain restaurant for a large beer I had made my mind up. My skiing days were over. After a day off due to terrible weather, I did go up the mountain one last time on our final day. I decided on one last green run which mostly involved poling along a very flat stretch and even here I had one last fall. Then after a long lunch and a descent in a “bubble” lift, it was off to the ski hire shop to hand back my kit.

It is always a delight to remove your ski boots at the end of a holiday and realise you have survived unscathed. This time it might have been a bittersweet moment, but somehow it wasn’t. I have always loved everything about skiing - the beauty of the mountains, the obsessive monitoring of the weather and the state of the slopes, the camaraderie of skiing in a group and heading off on a day’s adventure, even the often rather basic food. Chips always taste better at altitude.

And despite the dodgy weather which saw our resort hit by torrential rain, this too was a great holiday with a lovely bunch of people in a chalet where a young couple from Cornwall served up some of the best meals I have eaten on a ski trip. There was just one thing I did not enjoy - the skiing. As you can see from the video above, the contrast between the days pre-Parkinson’s when I would bomb around the slopes, filming as I went, and today where every run is an ordeal, not a pleasure, is just too great.

Exercise is a vital part of my regime these days, good for my mental as well as physical health. Parkinson’s does not stop me enjoying my Pilates class or my weekly session with fitness trainer Wendy, and I’m really looking forward to resuming my early morning walks once our Romanian rescue dog Sophie decides she is brave enough to venture out. And let’s face it, skiing is far from an ideal form of exercise, with the calories expended often outweighed by those ingested, and the constant risk of serious injury.

I have great memories to look back on - the exhilaration of wonderful days in sparkling weather, taking on la face de Bellevarde in Val d’Isere, touring the Sella Ronda in the Dolomites, enjoying a vin chaud at La Tete des Cretes bar before the last run down to the Super Morzine lift. But on every skiing excursion you learn that it is wise to resist the temptation to have “just one more run" at the end of the day - and I think the same applies once you decide the sun has set on your time on skis.

Huge thanks to all my friends on my last skiing trip and especially to Mary, Charlotte, Dolf, Viv and Caroline who hauled me up time and again and saw me safely to the bottom of the mountain.

This post is dedicated to the memory of my dear friend Dr David Thomas, with whom I shared many a day “pootling around the slopes”, as he put it, with both of us possessed of little elegance but bags of enthusiasm.