Skiing: the art of catching a cold and going broke while rapidly heading nowhere at great personal risk. The only sport in the world where you shell out an arm and leg for the privilege of breaking an arm or a leg. Never tried it before? Honestly, there are only a few things to learn: how to pull on your boots, how to slide down the hill, how to stop. And how to walk down a hospital corridor, in agony, on your way to the bank-breaking Swiss A&E.

It is, however, the rules, manners and codes of conduct that offer the biggest challenges in the world’s swankiest resorts. Skiing etiquette is built around a tacit understanding of a mostly unwritten set of rules that apply to you for one week or so every February or March. I’ve been skiing for than 35 years, and this is what you need to know.

Don’t go on the p*** on the piste

For the British, booze is always an emboldening constant, both on and off the slopes. The great American humorist PJ O’Rourke once described skiing as ‘wearing three thousand dollars’ worth of clothes and equipment and driving 200 miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and get drunk’. And yes, a glass of wine at lunchtime can loosen up parallel turning, just as a cocktail can turn a wallflower into a expressive and fluid dancer. However, a whole bottle over a long and loud outdoor lunch, with shots of schnapps as an après-cremeschnitte digestif, will turn one’s Oakleys into actual beer goggles and have the opposite effect.

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Around one in five Brits believes skiing after four or five drinks is acceptable. On any given Alpine day this winter, it is estimated that nearly 400,000 British skiers and snowboarders will take to the slopes under the influence of alcohol and 23 per cent will still have up to seven units of alcohol in their blood the morning after the night before – that’s nearly twice the UK drink-drive limit.

Over a week’s winter sports holiday, Brits who drunk-ski will consume a whopping 105 units of alcohol. This is the equivalent of 53 pints of beer or glasses of wine. Which is, when you add snow and ice, scary-steep gradients, newly waxed Rossignols and thousands of other people to the mix, quite a dangerous combination.

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Around one in five Brits believes skiing after four or five drinks is acceptable

Consider hook-ups carefully

Is it ever OK to get it on with your ski guide? To unmake the bed with one’s chalet girl? Traditionally (i.e. ever since the 1970s) the ski instructor has been regarded as the undisputed stag of the piste map. If he is French or Italian he will see it as part of his contractual obligation to flirt outrageously and indiscriminately with his female charges (young/old, married/single etc) perhaps making unnecessary glove-to-hip contact as he encourages beginners to ‘bend zee knees’.

He might also linger for some après-ski and even show up at the local disco later on. This is where the ladies might be disabused of the instructors’ dizzy charms. With their Patagonia gear, shiny salved lips and perfect parallel turns while on the mountain, guides have a habit of looking like wind-tanned gods… suddenly becoming wizened, nerdy creeps in their civvy clobber on the dance floor. So best to hold off until you see them sans goggles and de-booted.

Sex in a bubble lift? Possible, and a lot of fun. But illegal. Gondolas from the resort up to the mountain usually ride for the longest times and furthest distances, so offer the best potential for sustained, if chilly, swinging pleasure.

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If you must fornicate on a funicular, do a dummy run first, checking in advance for a) potential over-look from family skiers riding in bubbles at the front and rear. And b) the possibility of surprise, unscheduled mid-station mountain stops where the gondola doors will suddenly fling open to let on some ski-school toddlers. Being caught with one’s salopettes down at a lift station will be humiliating and might result in your arrest. (This happened to someone I know, btw. In Verbier.)

Chalet staff? It’s bad form to sleep with the young workers who do your hospital corners and prepare your breakfasts. Your randy grown-up sons on the other hand… (I have experience of this – coming back late from a mountain village bar to find a friend’s eldest entertaining Sloaney Sophie from Clapham on the scullery floor. There was an atmosphere at breakfast the next morning.)

Avoid comedy clobber

Do try to resist the perennially unfunny ‘Chelsea yeti’ look (‘hilarious’ false dreadlocks protruding from a woolly Rasta hat and a cuddly Wookiee fleece), tutus, tuxedos and wedding dresses. (I am afraid these really do appear – Sloanes, Germans and gap-year types are the worst offenders.)

Instead, choose proper ski wear made by reputable performance-apparel manufacturers: North Face, Arc’teryx, Salomon etc. Wearing high-fashion brands like Moncler and Goldbergh will mark you out as an Instagrammer chasing likes rather than an elegant alpiniste.

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Fur? That was a Russian thing. A Gstaad and St Moritz essential. But in recent seasons the Rus-skiers have all but gone from the most exclusive resorts like Courchevel and Megève.

Now it’s the Saudis that dominate the mountain restaurants and designer stores in the upmarket villages. On social media, self-proclaimed ‘Saudi Stylist’ Yara AlMosaad gives specific ‘Prep for Courchevel’ advice: predominantly, Bond girl-ish catsuits by Fendi, Louis Vuitton and Loro Piano. Mostly black. Goggles must be Chanel or Bottega Veneta. Moon Boots are an essential. (NB: skiing is something you do at around 11.30am for one hour. Then it’s back to the posh pastries, which have now replaced magnums of vodka as the decadence signifier.)

Approach other skiers (even your own family) with caution

Don’t try to talk to any strangers, especially the Swiss, on your way up to the slopes. These people hate you and would really rather that you weren’t here spoiling their beautiful country with your hangover breath, bad clothes and terrible technique.

If your family is divided up into beginners and skilled skiers, may I, as a father, former husband and skier of than three decades’ experience, offer some sage advice: do not be tempted to eschew the services of a professional instructor and try to teach your kids/wife/ husband/friends yourself. Honestly, this will end in tears, resentment, swearing and some very audible public bickering.

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There is nothing uglier than a spousal shouting match playing out in the middle of a piste. (The first time my 12-year-old daughter dropped an F-bomb on me was when I was coaxing her down a black run.) With the still Alpine air carrying sound with hi-fi clarity and the mountainsides acting as an echo chamber, every curse and insult – ‘Henry, I am planting my f***ing poles’ – is clearly heard by the moving audience in the chairlifts above.

Once during a barney with my eldest daughter in Avoriaz, we actually earned a round of applause from the people in the chairs overhead. Best to leave the wife/husband and kiddies until lunchtime, then speed off with your own fast and loose crowd.

How to overtake without offending? Remember that highly entertaining Gwyneth Paltrow v Dentist court case in 2023, where the whizzing Goop entrepreneur was accused of crashing into a slower skier on a Deer Valley slope and breaking four of his ribs? The judge ruled in favour of Gwyneth, but she really should’ve known instinctively that the man in front had skier’s right-of-way.

If you are fast and competent, overtaking at speed is best done at the far extremes of the run. A gentle warning via clicking poles as you approach is considered polite by some and passive aggressive by others. Ditto the spoken word, no matter what the language. ‘Left’, ‘rechts’, ‘pista’ or, ‘on your right!’

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Don’t worry too much about what people think: pole clicks are less painful than a nasty collision. And in seconds you will be far too out of sight to ever know just how much offence you have caused anyway. Perhaps Gwyneth’s now-infamous ‘I wish you well’ sign-off to her losing litigators, whispered as one whooshes past, would be apt.