h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

At last ! Someone who really understands skiing.
All that rubbish about how to ski and execute parallel turns is useless if you can't get more than a few feet higher than the nursery slopes.
Coming down is natural, if undignified, but getting up is against all the laws of gravity (i.e., Newton's Eighteenth Law : 'Elevators work, lifts don't').
There is, however, a simple way to come to grips with chairlifts (which must have been invented by the Germans). In Italy, a group of us were learning how to exit a chairlift painlessly and as humourlessly as possible. Julie didn't make it, so the chairlift had to be stopped, and a burly Italian helped her off. She seemed to quite like it. Wendy fared similarly, and was helped off by the same big Italian. Nigel, however, wasn't too happy about his being helped off, so we all learnt pretty quickly after that (at least the men did - the girls seemed a trifle slower to pick it up : it took them most of the morning, in fact until the big Itlaian had his lunch break and was replaced by a short spotty Italian student).
And, don't fotget, there are always the T-bars, the button lifts ...