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#1
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Back from the 3V
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 |
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#2
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Back from the 3V
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 |
#3
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Back from the 3V
I was in Val Thorens a couple of weeks ago and some of the runs were
just starting to get rocky. How much snow did you get while you were there? Tom |
#4
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Back from the 3V
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