Dry Slope Decorum: The Unwritten Rulebook for Button Lifts and Indoor Snow

There is a specific kind of chaos that lives on a British dry slope in late autumn. The snow is a bit slushy, the Dendix is a bit unforgiving, and roughly a third of the people on the hill haven't clipped into anything since March. Everyone's keen. Nobody's sharp. And into this combustible mix arrives the pre-season menace — the person who treats a 120-metre indoor nursery slope as the final run of the season.

Nobody writes these rules down. So here they are, written down.

Rule One: The Queue Is a Covenant

The lift queue is not a suggestion, a huddle or an opportunity to reunite with your group. It's a single, ordered line, and your position in it is sacred.

This means: don't drift forward to "see what's happening", don't wave a friend in ahead of you (nobody behind you consented to that), and don't stand sideways across the whole funnel deep in conversation about where to get lunch. The queue moves in bursts, and the person behind you is balancing on one foot with a board attached to the other. Be ready to move when it moves.

Rule Two: The Liftie Is Not Your Personal Winch

The button lift operator has seen everything. They've seen people grab the wrong part of the mechanism, they've seen people try to sit on it, and they've seen someone attempt the whole thing with a rucksack on backwards. Be kind to them, and be ready before it's your turn.

That means: goggles already down or sorted, poles out of the way, both hands free, and a rough idea of how a button lift actually works. The liftie will help you. They should not have to rescue you.

Rule Three: Never Stop in the Funnel

The exit of the lift is a launch zone. Clear it. Even if your mate is shouting something at you. Even if your goggles have fogged. Even if you've just realised your boot isn't clipped in.

Move ten metres, then stop, then sort yourself out. People are arriving behind you at speed and with limited options.

Rule Four: Overtaking Is a Signal Sport

On a busy indoor slope, faster riders overtake slower ones constantly — that's fine, that's the deal. But do it with intent and with noise.

Pass on the downhill side where there's room. Give space. And if you're the quicker rider coming up behind someone who clearly hasn't seen you, say something early and calm rather than at the last moment at volume. A cheerful "coming past on your left" beats a startled beginner falling over every single time.

Rule Five: Button Lift Sharing Is a Delicate Art

Two people on one button is a friendship test. Three is a rumour. Here's the working etiquette.

Agree who goes on which side before the lift arrives. Keep the conversation minimal until you're both up — mid-tow chat while one of you is holding the button between you is how people end up in a heap. If your partner is obviously nervous, offer to go on the bar and let them take the easy side. And if you're the strong one, don't let go abruptly at the top without a word; that's how the other person gets catapulted headfirst into the exit barrier.

Rule Six: Give Beginners the Whole Nursery Slope

Everyone was a beginner. Most people remember being one more vividly than they admit.

So: if there's a dedicated beginner area, stay out of it unless you're instructing someone. If you're riding with a beginner, don't tow them somewhere beyond their level to "push them". And if a novice falls directly in front of you in a slow zone, that's a slow zone for a reason — you had time to stop.

Rule Seven: Kids Go First, and They Go Loud

Children on a dry slope are unpredictable in a way that's genuinely charming and occasionally dangerous. Give them more room than you think you need. Don't weave through a school group. And if a small person has lost a glove on the button lift, the entire queue will wait, and that's correct.

Rule Eight: The Fall Line Is Not a Picnic Spot

The middle of a slope is not a place to stand, regroup, check a phone, adjust a binding or have a snack. If you need to stop, get to the side. Not slightly to the side — right to the edge, facing uphill, visible.

And when you do stop, look up before you go again. Nobody owes you a warning.

Rule Nine: Respect the Snow, Whatever It's Made Of

Real snow, dry matting, indoor artificial — it all costs money and effort to maintain. Don't walk uphill in hard boots on a groomed surface, don't drag your board through the lift queue sideways, and don't sit down in the middle of a busy run to take a photo.

Also: if you drop a glove, a pole or — as happens — an entire phone, retrieve it when it's safe, not mid-run while a queue of people bears down on you.

Rule Ten: Don't Be the Pre-Season Menace

This is the umbrella rule that covers all the others. The pre-season menace is the person who is technically capable but socially oblivious. They're fast, they're confident, and they've entirely forgotten that the slope is a shared space in early November with an unusually wide range of ability on it.

You can spot them easily. They're the one who launches off the top of the button lift without looking, carves through a group of six-year-olds, and then loudly diagnoses everyone else's technique on the chair back up.

Don't be that. Be the rider who gets off the hill with the same number of friends they arrived with. In practice, that means slowing down when it's crowded, apologising when you get it wrong, and being the person who says "go on, you go first" to the nervous-looking one at the top.

The Full Bingo Card

Queue jumped behind you? Tick. Liftie had to physically steer someone? Tick. Someone stopped dead at the top of the button lift and caused a pile-up? Tick. Two mates had a full argument mid-tow and both came off? Tick.

You'll see most of it between now and December. The trick is simply to make sure your own card stays blank — and if you manage it, the dry slope becomes a genuinely brilliant place to spend a Sunday. Cheap by mountain standards, twenty minutes from the car park, and the best pre-season training you can get without a passport.

See you in the queue. In the correct order, obviously.