The truth about rope tows

OK everyone, it's time to take a deep breath and calm down. Rope tows are not that bad.

Before I came here, everyone was warning me about rope tows. The internet makes it sound like rope tows are only marginally more pleasant than being wrapped in tinfoil and put in the microwave. Common complaints are:

They're hard to ride (e.g. people say that riding a rope tow is equivalent to skiing black diamond runs in Australia).
They're steep (just yesterday someone claimed that the rope tows at Craigieburn are on a 45 degree incline).
They're exhausting (complaints range from sore arms to hands so fatigued they can no longer hold their nutcracker closed).
They're scary (some people won't go to ski fields with nutcracker tows).
They're dangerous (I've been told of broken fingers, elbows, etc).
They wreck your gloves.

First off, let's be clear. I'm not a snowboarder. Riding a snowboard on a rope tow looks abominable, and my sympathy goes out to those of you who are inexorably drawn to sticking both of your feet onto a single slidy thing and facing sideways (note the sliding sideways thing, because a nutcracker would be easy to ride on a monoboard). But as a skier, rope tows are no problem. If you're thinking about heading to NZ to ski at the club fields, take heart.

Rope tows are easy to ride. Despite their fearsome reputation, the ones at Craigieburn are fine (yes, they're a little steeper than some of the others, but they're also nice and slow so it's easy to get sorted out) and they're nowhere near 45 degrees. They're not exhausting if you actually listen to what the clubbies and patrollers tell you to do when you're using them. There are 80-year-olds riding these tows at Broken River, so if you find it tiring you're probably doing something wrong. They are scary in the same way that escalators are scary. If you think about getting sucked into that gap where the moving stairs go under the floor they maybe that's scary, but you probably couldn't get stuck in that gap without really planning it out in advance. They're only dangerous if you get your fingers stuck in the pulley, and all you need to do to avoid that is not hold onto the rope with your hands (that's what the nutcracker's for). I've whacked elbows and legs on the pulleys without breaking or bruising anything. And finally, they only wreck your gloves if you don't use glove protectors. Given that every place that has tows also encourages you to use glove protectors (and provides them) you don't have an excuse.

So, there you have it. Rope tows are a friend to all those who face forwards on their slidy things. They may not be as genteel as a chairlift, but you can get off a rope-tow halfway up the hill, and doing that on a chairlift is not recommended. In my experience with rope tows, getting up the hill is usually much easier and safer than getting down.