When you have your Skis and gloves on and everything else is hermetically sealed, you are ready to start sliding or traversing slowly across the slope, before going straight down it.  This will give you time to get the feeling of Skis, which are clumsy at first.  Slide one foot forward, then the other, but do not lift them.  Now try a kick turn and come back across the slopes to the top and face straight downhill.  Keep your Skis closely side by side, one foot leading by about twelve inches and push yourself off with your sticks.  Try to imagine that the Skis are only a moving staircase and that all you have to do is to stand upright on them and let them do the rest.  If your slope is only 10 deg. and there is nothing steeper below you, the Skis won’t do much.  Indeed in deep snow they may refuse to move at all, in which case try pushing yourself along with your sticks.  The great thing is always to want to run faster than you are going and, therefore, only to choose slopes where you feel that you can keep up as fast as the Skis go.  It is a mistake to start immediately down such a steep slope that the Skis run away with you.  At the same time it is also a mistake not to increase the angle of your slope as soon as you can compete with it.

Stand upright, press the knees together and try to feel that there is a spring in your knees.  Let one or other foot lead so that, if the Skis stop, the front foot takes your weight and prevents you plunging forwards and if the Skis suddenly plunge forward, the back foot is equally ready to take the weight and prevents you from sitting down.

Whatever you do, avoid the hideous doubled-up position of a runner, who bends at waist and knees, with feet parallel and far apart, looking like a note of interrogation and leaving what we call tram-line tracks.  By his tracks shall a Ski-er be judged!

Look back and see the line you have left.  If your two feet have left two tracks with more than six inches apart in soft snow, you must not be contented.  In a good track, the two feet should leave one track, but some bindings make this impossible, so that unless you are wearing a toe binding you need not worry about a gap of two or three inches between your feet.  This only applies to soft snow running.  On hard or crusty snow, it is almost impossible and also dangerous to keep the feet together.

When you have begun to feel at home on Skis, go off to a much steeper slope and try traversing.  Choose a slope which has flattish ground below so that you have an easy out-run and nothing to make you nervous.

Remember for your comfort that if you go across a slope leading with the upper foot and with most of your weight on the lower foot—­standing upright and, if anything, leaning a little outwards away from the slope, you can traverse across almost any slope without difficulty, so long as it is not too steep for the snow to bear your weight without slipping itself.  Nothing is more comforting to a beginner than to realize this.  It takes away the feeling of giddiness and gives confidence, but it needs learning and should be practised at once.