I did lots of skiing in that area. When we were kids we had fun with the British mountain infantery that had to learn skiing there. They simply kicked them out of a helicopter into some tricky deep snow departures after letting them practise for a few days on normal slopes. Most of those boys from the East End in London never saw a ski before and naturally they had a hard hard time there.
Our "Schadenfreude" was limited since most of those Brits were really nice guys.