On 11 Feb, 12:09, Pip Luscher
wrote:
Well, this year's unplanned solitary week is over. Unplanned, that is,
in that it was solitary.

We stayed down in Brides-les-Bains because Herself wasn't planning on
skiing much and we wanted somewhere non-skier friendly. We went for a
package holiday and this option had a hotel with facilities she could
use, too. Brides is pleasant enough, though I reckon in retrospect
that we could have stayed up the valley. The real downer is the long
gondola ride - about 25 minutes from getting into the cabine to
getting out at the top. I seriously considered taking a book along!
The other downer with this is that it closes at 5.00 ni the afternoon,
so one can't afford to be late. There's a bit of a queue come 4.30,
too, so I didn't risk skiing down to the mid-stations.

The snow was initially fairly hard on piste with several runs closed.
I went over to Val Thorens to play on a couple of the less
intimidating mogulled blacks the one was fine if a little icy, the
other was almost a forest of rock marker poles so I only did it the
once.

Snow came midweek: yippee! Unfortunately it was accompanied with high
winds. The tops of the ridges at worst had odd patches of sheet ice,
with mixed hard snow and wind-blown powder for the first couple of
hundred metres below. This was... interesting in the flat light!

I didn't venture off-piste until the last couple of days: first with a
ski instructor and on the final day with Alan, the Méribel SCGB rep.

I really thought that I was past the "sitting back on my skis" thing,
but no. Every time I left the comfort of the pistes I was doing it big
time. This was a pity because there was some nice powder in the more
sheltered spots my instructor took me to on the Thursday. He was less
than impressed with my performance, especially as we'd been blasting
around fine on-piste.

On the Friday we found some nice un-intimidating slopes but I was
really skiing badly.

One surprise was Mont du Vallon: we thought that the wind direction
would have left the off-piste slopes shielded, but the snow was
actually somewhat heavy and rather character-forming.

All in all though, thoroughly enjoyable now that I'm safe behind my
keyboard.

Oh, if anyone spots a blue mobile phone somewhere between pistes in
the Méribel valley...

--
-Pip


Nice TR. What's the mobile number? Well busy this week with half term
holidays - let's phone it, wait for someone to pick up and ask "Oh, hi
- what's the snow like?" or we could comment on their skiing technique
- that would freak them out.

Matt