There’s S-no Xscape
In this article Edd McCracken describes how Glasgow’s Sno Zone offers young people the chance to improve their snowboarding skills all year round.
1 It’s the hottest day of the year. Like over-excited footballers, the good people of Glasgow are celebrating by shedding their clothes. Builders work on their lobster-red tans, while young men walk down Buchanan Street dazzling passers-by with their porcelain torsos. The Clyde looks almost swimmable – it’s that hot.
Considering these extraordinary circumstances, spending today inside a giant fridge where the temperature
5 never creeps above -5˚C is rather perverse. But that’s where I find myself, snowboarding inside Xscape’s Sno Zone in Braehead. On real snow.
My guide through this faux-winter wonderland is ten-year-old championship skier and snowboarder Nicole Ritchie. Nicole is already a regular at Sno Zone. Within five minutes of meeting, she’s throwing snowballs at me while we are on the lift.
10 “The snow is really good here – it tastes exactly the same as real snow too, very nice,” she says, this time sucking on a snowball, as opposed to throwing it. Nicole should know; she’s trained at the British Ski Team camp in the Alps and has a room full of trophies and awards. In some ways, the Sno Zone is better than the mountains, she says.
“The snow here is like real snow, but if the snow wears away there’s artificial surface underneath, so you can
15 still keep going whereas, on the mountain, if the snow wears away, you can’t keep going. It’s just rocks. The Austrians can’t train at the moment because there’s no snow there, but we’ve got an indoor place.”
It snows every night at Braehead. A total of sixteen snow guns fire cooled water into air chilled to -2˚C making 1700 tonnes of real snow to cover the 200m slope and 50 m nursery slope, the biggest in the UK.
Sadly, you can’t just launch yourself onto the piste. For safety reasons you need to be able to control your
20 speed, link a turn and use the Poma lift before the staff will let you run riot. But fret not, lessons are available on the smaller 50m slope to bring you up to scratch.
Nicole doesn’t need any lessons. She whizzes up and down the slope, over the rails and table tops, doing jumps and putting people three times her age to shame.
Peter Kelly has nothing to fear form Nicole yet. He grinds down one of the rails, creating enough heat in the
25 ice box to send sparks flying, before doing a 360 over a jump. He is in awe of the younger kids whizzing about the slope.
“It’s the same with any sport – start young, grow up to be a genius,” he says. “Some of the kids can bounce and flex, unlike older people. Young people bounce, old people break.”
As ever, the continuous sound track to the frost festivities is rib-shuddering hip hop, its relaxed bass thud the
30 perfect accompaniment to a sport that is devilishly hard to make look laid back and easy. There’s a healthy mix of dare-devils busting extreme moves, with plenty of people taking baby steps (more like stumbles) off the table tops.
Families look on from behind the glass, their faces a mixture of wonder and bemusement as the gaze at a
35 mini-Narnia scene, hidden in the corner of a retail park just outside Glasgow. From the slopes it’s like being a performing dolphin on the inside of an aquarium.
The session draws to a close. The boarders make their way outside into the balmy air. Snowboard boots are swapped for sandals and baggy trousers for baggy shorts. Amongst them all the excited chatter is the same – it’s going to be a long, cold summer.
Questions
1 The writer creates various contrasts between paragraphs one and two. Explain one of these contrasts.
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2 How does the language of paragraph one suggest that the people of Glasgow are not used to hot weather.
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3 ‘On real snow’ (line 6). How appropriate do you find this sentence as a conclusion to paragraph two?
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4 Explain how the content of paragraph four demonstrates that ten-year-old Nicole Ritchie is an expert skier and snowboarder.
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5 Explain how ‘Nicole doesn’t need any lessons.’ (line 22) forms a link between paragraphs seven and eight.
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6 In paragraph 11 (lines 29- 32) the writer describes the different types of people who take part in activities at Sno Zone. Analyse how the writer’s word choice is effective en conveying a) the risks taken by the more experienced and b) the beginners’ lack of skill.
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7 Referring to any two feature of the writer’s language in lines 34 – 36, explain how he effectively conveys both the scene’s appearance to spectators and the feelings of those on the slopes.
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8 Evaluate how effective the final sentence is as a conclusion to the article
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