Skiing Etiquette

While the verdict on my new Head MoJo XP boots is still out, i thought i'd spend a moment reminding the world at large of appropriate skiing etiquette. The boots, so far, are great, too good for me, i think, and they're digging into my ankle a bit but so far in a totally different league to my old Salomons. Extremely comfortable, very flexible, and i really feel more confident in them. Anyway, the full review will happen only once i've had the heat moulding done.

The purpose of this post is to remind the (expletive removed) today that wiped me out in Chatel of what he should have done, instead of just skiing off like the (insult removed) he so obviously is while i lay fuming in the snow. i suppose the chances of him reading this (because he probably can't read) are slim, but you've got to try.

According to ski-injury.com the most common way to remove yourself from the gene pool, after avalanches, is to impact with another person or (non-snow related) object, like a tree.

And after doing and watching a fair amount of skiing, this is self-evident. All you have to do is watch a pisted slope, any slope for any period of time. The slope will be empty, and then, 2 seconds later, seventeen million people will come down it at the same time, all at different speeds, with different abilities, in different directions, then nothing, then oodles of people again.

People on a ski slope tend to bunch, like cars on a highway, so this is the point where you're most likely to have a collision, and therefore, where you need to take the most care.

Some easy rules to get you (and me) down safely:

Axiom 1: The skier in front has priority.

• Quite obvious really. You can't see the people storming down the slope behind you, so you always need to look out for the people in front of you.

• Adapt your speed to the conditions and the size of the crowd. Blue slopes are slow slopes, reds are fast, and blacks are fastest. If you want to go fast, do so on a slope reserved for "Bon Skieurs", of which there are plenty and which are usually empty. Anyone can go fast on a blue, and no one is impressed if you do.

• Usually, you only need to look out for the skiers down the slope from you, however, if you are traversing the piste, then "in front of you" now includes skiers both up and down the slope. If some excellent skier is making nice tight turns down the fall-line on the side of the piste, and you traverse in front of him or her, then you can't expect him or her to stop - gravity just doesn't work like that.

• When setting off from a stop, always look up and down the slope, and preferrably don't set off at all if there are other people close by.

• If you do have a collision (but really, how could you if you obeyed these rules?) then you need to stop, and make sure your opponent (?) is OK, before setting off again, even if it was their fault.

Axiom 2: Stopping in the middle of the piste is dumb.

• Always ski predictably. If you're skiing the fall-line and suddenly remember a dental appointment, don't just stop. There's probably twenty people behind you expecting you to just carry on.

• If you need to navigate, catch your breath, check your email, or ponder why you've elected to throw yourself down a slippery sheet of ice on a cold and wet day in an environment that wouldn't normally sustain human life, then this can all be done from the side of the piste. Try not to make an impregnable line across the whole piste. That just makes the target easier for a skier ignoring Axiom 1 to hit.

Axiom 3: Safety signs are always right.

• Because you aren't insured if you ignore them. If the sign says "falaise" then there really is a cliff there. If the off-piste you love so much is closed because of avalanches, then is it really worth skiing it? Read this if you think avalanches only happen to other people.

• If the sign says "Ralentir" or "Slow" then this is so that you don't kill someone at high speed. Slow is not putting in one turn. Slow is using your poles to move forward.

• If the sign says "Danger - Croisement de Pistes" then, surprisingly, there's a crossing of pistes ahead and you don't want to hit someone doing the same speed as you, so slow down and remember that, since you're now traversing, you need to look above and below you to get across in one piece.

Actually, besides the incident with the hit-and-run retard in Chatel, we had a really really nice morning. We tried the Brocheaux Snowcross, which was really awesome.


And yes, sadly, once in a while, we do get some cloudy days in France. This is taken on the Chaux Fleurie off-piste on the way down to Lindarets.

I got my MoJo back!

Being on a sabbatical clearly provides us with ample time, if not the necessary resources, to do plenty of shopping. Pretty much from day one with my old Salomon Performa ski boots, which i've put up with for the last four years, i wasn't happy with them and after much moaning and fiddling with clips and a nasty ankle incident on some bumps yesterday, we finally headed down to the ski shop to just have a look and see what they've got.

They had quite a lot. After trying on every single pair of boots in the shop, the ski shop man finally relented and brought out the award-winning Head MoJo XP boots.



And they look and feel just fantastic. So much more flexible than my last set of boots, we'll see how they perform tomorrow, so stay tuned for the review. They are rated for "top skiers" which i am obviously not, so, i'll just have to go easy on them, i think.

This is Natalie hard at work about five minutes ago, slowly paying for my boots. Very kind of her!

Present Tense

Lately i seem to be writing about past events. Even so far back as two whole days ago. This is an attempt to correct that.

Yesterday morning we glared at our laptops, but they refused to go away, so in the afternoon, we blinked first, and headed down to Evian-les-Bains: source of all those image-enhancing bottles we carry around with us. The nice thing about the Alps is that we literally did head "down" to Evian as it's at about 200m above sea-level whereas we're currently at 1000m. This isn't the same thing at all as heading "down" to Tesco, which may indeed be at the altitude as your house. And we definitely headed down, because my ears popped. Do your ears pop when you go to Tesco? i don't think so.

Evian was shut. Yes, obviously, it's open Tuesday to Saturday. So we window-shopped and looked at the hazy lake with Lausanne in the distance. Very pretty town, would be even nicer when it's open.

And today, present tense at last, again the pointless staring competition with the laptops in the morning followed by a "quick burn" (skiing lingo for doing a lot a runs in a very short space of time) round the Plaine Dranse area of Chatel. We like Chatel and discovered two new runs today. The incredibly steep (at the top) red run called Rhododendrons (which really should be black as its steep (very steep - did i say how steep it was?) and icy. And rocky, in fact, quite a lot of the snow at the top was gone and we had to do some rock avoidance, which on a steep is not so easy. It flattens out into a really great red piste further down though.

No really, at the top, it's very steep:



Notice that, in this photo, you can only see one red piste marker? That's because the other's are hidden over the ridge below and behind Natalie. In other words, even when you're on a steep part of the slope you can't see the steeper part because it's so steep. It was steep ok?

After that we bravely attempted a new black run we'd never done before called Les Renards. Great fun - very bumpy and a bit reminiscent of The Swiss Wall in places (another steep black guarding the entry to Switzerland).

On our way to the black run we noticed this which is a perfect example of how the runs are totally incorrectly graded. On the left, a red run. On the right, the blue run. Notice how the blue run, which should be easier, is actually steeper than the red, and that they go to the same place. Conveniently, the lady in the red one-piece was showing us how difficult this makes it for beginners who would avoid the red because its red, even though you eyes are telling you that the blue really is harder. i really do think the piste graders need to look a little more closely at the actual geography of the slope rather than the stats on how many of each colour run the resort has.



All in all it was just a fantastic afternoon. This was just before sunset on the Col du Bassachaux:



However, we need more snow. The tree-lined off-piste in Lindarets is getting very littered with tree-debris and there are plenty of rocks sticking up where they shouldn't. So, snow-dances please, and make them count!

And now a public-service announcement as part of my learn-to-ski programme. For the benefit of my viewers, i thought i'd give you a classic example of ski jumping. Notice how, in mid-air, i'm waving with one arm. Well, i'm sure i don't need to tell you how skillful that is and what a tricky, err, trick that is to pull off. Be sure to be off balance when you first take air, and perhaps a little yell at the apex to get the crowd's (Natalie's) attention. It really makes this trick stand out. i call this: The One-Armed Bandit(s).



(PS. i did land it, but that doesn't really count does it?).

Kandahar!

On Saturday we went to the Mens Downhill race of the Chamonix Kandahar World Cup. i've decided that Alpine skiing is the best sport in the universe and also the best sport to watch live. Ever been to a cricket match and felt like playing yourself? Well, when you go to watch a skiing competition, you go on skis!

We were standing right up at the starting gate and saw Hermann Maier (The Herminator!), Bode Miller, Didier Cuche, and Benjamin Raich set of about 5m away from us. We also saw Bode (first name basis obviously) riding on a chairlift right above just like a normal person, which he clearly isn't.

This is The Herminator setting off on his run.


Marco Sullivan won the event (who we also saw set off) which was kinda cool considering this (caution: sensitive viewers may not want to watch) happened to his teammate, Scott Macartney, last week in Kitzbuehel and Marco dedicated his win to him. Scott apparently had some minor bruising to the brain, but was recovering well back home.

This is a competitor about 5m into his 20-30m jump about 500m after the start of the race. If you can read the number off the vest, i'll tell you who he is. He lands well below the Chamonix sign written in blue paint in the snow.



The competitors must all be clinically insane because they launch themselves off 30m jumps down near-vertical sections of the piste, land on one leg, and somehow make the next corner at 140kph.

Even more awesome than that, this is me doing a 0.3m jump. Cannonball!

And this is Natalie with photographic evidence that we really went to Chamonix.


And, in case you've forgotten, this is what we look like with our helmets off. And also a reason why i keep mine on.

Ski Resort Review: Chamonix

At last, my long-awaited, much-anticipated review of the famous Haute-Savoie Alpine ski resort of Chamonix. For the purposes of accuracy, specifically, we visited the ski domains of Brevent and Flegere and also Les Houches. We went to Les Houches yesterday to watch the Kandahar Mens Downhill World Cup race. In this post i'll be sticking to the resort, and in a later post, i'll rabbit on about the race itself. Bet you can't wait.

To start with, we had a fabulous day. It was hot. You know it's very very hot when you need to de-layer your clothing at 2000m in the middle of Winter. It was so hot that on the pistes in direct sunlight it was more like water-skiing than Alpine skiing. Also, the contrast between the sections of the piste in the shade of a mountain spur and those in the direct sun must have been about 10C, which meant that you'd ski from slush into chunky ice and then back into the slush. Tricky!

The day began in the car park so already we knew it would be a good day. Actually, it started in two car parks so even better. First of all we parked in the Saint Michele covered parking and headed for the Office du Tourisme to find out where to go. It took us a good 10 minutes to figure out how to get to the tourist office thanks to Chamonix's rather optimistic signage. Once there i felt a bit stupid because it turned out that there is parking at the Brevent lift itself, and if i'd just carried on up the hill, we would have found it easily.


And that brings me to my first comment on Chamonix itself. It's really spread out. There are about 4 main ski domains: Brevent/Flegere, Les Houches, de Balme, and Grandes Montets. You can connect to Courmayeur in Italy as well.

These domains are only connected by bus. On roads. So, if you want to get from one to the other, you have to ski to the bottom (which we couldn't do because there's no snow on the lower slopes so we had to take the bubble lift), walk to a, ugh, bus stop, and then get on a bus. An actual bus. With wheels. On a road.

Yes, despite my celebrity status we were forced to pay for our passes.

In the Portes du Soleil, where we are now, if you want to get somewhere, you Ski!

Well, i suppose i can't ask the management of Chamonix to change the geography of their valley just because i don't like busses, but, coming to my second point, i really think they need to open up more of the existing domains, because both Brevent/Flegere and Les Houches are really small. We easily covered Brevent and Flegere in a day, repeating a few runs along the way, and Les Houches was no different and we spent a good four hours of the day in Les Houches standing watching the Kandahar.

That's Brevent in the background. The lift to it has a vertical drop of over 1km in the middle. i tried not to think about this as we rode it.

More lifts is possibly not too environmentally friendly, but from the top of Brevent, we looked longingly at some gorgeous off-piste that we couldn't go on because there are no return lifts. We did see people going off on it, but i assume you need a car waiting in wherever these runs go to get back to civilisation. i very much suspect that, given how small the domains are, that you need a lot of local knowledge for finding the cool back-country runs. We'll definitely be returning to do the Vallee Blanche which i'm looking forward to apart from the Arete (scary snowy ridge with cliffs on either side you must first decend on foot before getting to skiing the glacier) - so long as we can get a guide to do it.



By the way, my hot tip for eating is Chamonix is to avoid the Restaurant Panoramique at the top of the Brevent cable car. Firstly, the restaurant has seating outside with truly spectacular views seen safely behind toughened glass screens that the owners have written the menu on! So, in your holiday snaps you can see Mont Blanc in the shadow of the cost of the Soupe de Jour for 8 (eight) Euros. Stupidly high prices and rude staff with smelly toilets made it a great lunch time! The view was really really awesome though.

It was a bit sunny in the restaurant and we didn't have our sunglasses, and i wasn't going to wear my goggles while eating.

The ski down from Brevent brings me to my main point about skiing in Chamonix. The people who graded their runs are delusional lunatics who probably decided the colours from the comfort of the chairlift. Some sites give Chamonix a 1-star rating for beginner skiers. Well, i give Brevent/Flegere a black-hole-star rating for beginners. Firstly, you're on the edge of quite a big scary mountain. Next, the blue runs there are red and the red runs are black.

Just setting off from the top of Brevent.

We saw some beginners (including a couple in jeans and jackets that wouldn't be uncommon on Oxford Street in the Autumn - crazy) who were really struggling. Not surprising considering there's one green run that's only about 200m long, and then one blue, which is very steep in places and again, quite short. After that you need red runs to get anywhere. So, if you haven't read this anywhere else: Don't go to Brevent if you are a beginner!

Still on Brevent with Mont Blanc sneaking into the shot behind - poser!

Ok, so the blue runs are quite wide, and so are the reds, but, regardless, the colour grading for each run we did was definitely off by one. One red run we did, Combe Lachenal, was seriously steep, and very long. Relentless, i'd call it. And yet another red run, Combe de la Charlanon gave me sweaty palms just looking at it from the top. i had the deep burn (Ooh, it's the deep burn!) when we'd got to the bottom of it.


Strangely the black runs are still black, but then i guess you can only get to a certain point before it's so vertical the snow doesn't stick anymore! Actually, the "black" run down from Brevent was not as steep as two of the red runs we did elsewhere in the resort. i think they just let a bunch of kids with some crayons colour in the slopes on the piste map any way they wanted.

Natalie making a cool turn on Combe Lachenal - how's the angulation Phil?

The situation was completely reversed at Les Houches where the blue runs are green, the reds are blue, and, despite what they day about "le Verte" (the World Cup run which is supposed to be black), no black runs. Flattish easy skiing. i like to call it cruising. Les Houches is very pretty, tree-lined with nice bits of easy, bumpy off-piste, but again, the resort felt really small.

So i think Hermann Maier graded the slopes at Brevent, and Bridget Jones graded the slopes at Les Houches and, since then, no one has bothered to reconcile the two.

Having said all this, the pistes are extremely well taken care of. Perfectly flattened out, with no bumps, and the signage was really good too. So, even on the steepest slope, there were no unexpected bumps to crash into. Clearly they spend a lot of money their piste bashers (massive machines that "comb" the piste into a pristine perfectly flat slope and compact all the powder).

Also clearly, they spend no money on their chairlifts, which were horrible. My least favourite being Parsa, which took delight in squishing the (very muscly, of course) flesh between the back of my knee and by ski boot as it trapped my ski between the chair and the silly moving carpet they've put there to help you get on.


Anyway, all sounds a bit negative, but i guess i'm just spoiled by the Portes du Soleil (which is much bigger, cheaper, and less crowded). However, we had two totally awesome days in Chamonix with really excellent skiing and i'd definitely recommend giving it a try. You'd have enough to keep you busy for a week, if you don't mind busses. The view from the slopes is simply mind-numbingly fantastic.

A crazy Australian saw me trying to take a photo of the two of us and took pity on us.

Ski Resort Review: Chamonix: This isn't it

i know you're all (my faithful 3 readers) desperate to hear about our trip to Chamonix yesterday and, of course, to hear my informed and unbiased review of the skiing to be had there, but, owing to the best bout of coding i've had in years, from which i'm still glowing, that won't be published just yet.

Yesterday i was just too completely exhausted to do anything requiring any kind of coordination of my basic motor functions - let alone manipulate my phalanges for the complex task of typing. And yes, the reason for the exhaustion is Chamonix - they aren't kidding around over there, but more on that later, and not in this post.

Tomorrow we are returning to Chamonix, site of the first Winter Olympic games in 1948, to the ski domain of Les Houches (which i think is pronounced Lay-Zhoosh, but feel free to correct me) to observe the Kandahar Mens Downhill World Cup race. It should be spectacular. We're planning on trying to observe the race from a few different points, but failing that will be watching from the finish line. So, tune into Ski Sunday and you might just see us there ringing our cow bells!

Here's a quick glimpse of the absolutely fantastic day we had in Chamonix yesterday to whet your appetite for the main event.

That's Natalie in the distant foreground and the white moutain in the distant background is called Mont Blanc. i get vertigo if i look at this photo for too long.

Spaghetti Hierarchies

Some years ago i invented a new anti-pattern - the Spaghetti Hierarchy. This is where your inheritance path gets so horribly tied in knots that adding a simple new feature takes about hundred days. This is because that feature is implemented by cutting-and-pasting into all the children - which have multiplied exponentially - and of course randomly dropping important parts of the feature as you go.

So today was spent banging my head against this "al dente" mess of end-of-life code and trying to at least get the spaghetti to resemble fettucini, without wasting too much effort on it, and therefore make it a little easier to comb into neat strands. You may have noticed that almost anything in Computer Science can easily be defined and explained using pasta.

After removing the more stubborn strands of now semi-linguini from my forehead we made for the slopes. The snow in Fornet was excellent and, for once, it wasn't blizzard or whiteout conditions. Rather pleasant actually.

The sunset view from the Combe a Floret run was, well, you can just look at the photo.


And finally we headed for Champion where we bought no Italian foodstuffs whatsoever.


Ok, so it's a photo of the supermarket. i think it adds culture and depth to this online diary. The more we use this little (palm-sized) Ixus camera, the more impressed i am with it - it seems to get the exposure just right most of the time - i'd have to recommend it if you're looking for a cheap point-n-shoot. Just don't buy it in Geneva.

Tomorrow we're off to Chamonix - a one hour and twelve minute trip from Montriond. We're going to, after much research, ski the Brevant and Flegere ski domain. i've been warned that blues are reds in Chamonix and quite a lot of the ski runs i can see on the piste maps i've downloaded seem to be coloured in black - so either the printers ran out of the other colours or it's a bit steep.

We're going to take it easy and see what we can find. It's a very strange phenomenon that piste difficulties vary from region to region. In Les Gets, black runs are really red, but in Avoriaz, many blue runs are probably more red or at least purple and some of the red runs really could be black. It's not just steepness that seems to determine the colour, some are marked red because they're isolated, very long, or involve a difficult drag-lift, or have a short tricky section somewhere on them. It seems that some blue runs are only that colour, when they might otherwise be red, because that's the only way home!

In short, the colour of the runs seems a little arbitrary sometimes and very subjective, so we'll just have to make up our own minds about Chamonix.

Pas de ski aujourd'hui

Later on this week we're planning a day in Chamonix so today we were taking part of the exhilarating activity of Downhill Alpine Coding. During the 1 hour of sunlight we get in this part of the valley we walked up to Lac de Montriond.

On the way there Natalie took some rather awesome photos.

i don't know how to put this but i'm kind of a big deal.


And this is my lovely wife.


We call this one: Tree Noise.


And this one: An Icy Branch.


Finally, on our return to the apartment, we saw that the (just about) full moon had risen.

Action Shots!

Many of the photos thus far uploaded to this diary have shown us, mostly stationary, admiring some of the more spectacular Alpine peaks around. While this activity (admiration of Alpine peaks) is certainly high on our agenda, it may lead to the mistaken impression that all we're doing out here is riding chairlifts to high points, getting our photos taken, and then returning to the safety of the nearest creperie.


The above photo being a classic example of this. Oh, and did you notice the 4808m summit in the background - that's Mont Blanc. Consequently, and once we'd figured out how to use the continuous-shot feature of our Canon Ixus 75, we felt the need to get some photos of us actually skiing.


This isn't a photo of us skiing, but yet another example of our laziness as we admire the Roc d'Enfer (2243m).

Today we explored a new region of the Haute Savoie. That says quite a lot about the vastness of the Portes du Soleil ski domain that we've been out here for the last 4 years on ski holidays and for the last month and a half continously and there's still huge areas we've never been to.

This morning we visited the Mont Chery area of Les Gets. And because i'm getting slightly peeved with English tourists out here who know perfectly well how to pronounce these places but seem unable to, let's just be clear: Mont Chery is pronounced Mon-Sherry, and Les Gets is Ley Shay (although where the 'sh' sounds more like a 'z' crossbred with a 'j').

Pronunciation aside, Pointe de Mont Chery gives you spectacular views of Mont Blanc (Mon-Blonk) and shelters a cute valley which looks out onto the Roc d'Enfer (Rock-Donfay). The skiing was less fabulous, however. The dark side of the mountain very icy and the side in the sun very slushy. Actually, it was apparently +8C at Les Gets at 12 noon today. That's quite scarily high and left us baking in our 5 layers of clothing. It also meant the avalanche risk was 4 (out of 5) and that most of the lower slopes at Les Gets were filled with grassy patches that our poor, freshly waxed, skis had to navigate.

However, all this talk is getting us no closer to our goal of Action Shots. So, look away now if you're easily frightened.

This is Natalie negotiating Marmottes (a red run). She was doing about 400mph in this photo.

Next, this is me on the same run, lower down, doing about Mach 6. Look at that cool ice dust i'm spraying up!


Natalie hammers down le Chevreuil, a black run over the back of Pointe de Mont Chery. This photo was taken by a specially adapted high-speed camera. She is travelling at 0.6c which some thought impossible while still within the mesosphere.


And finally, going so fast, you have to go back in time just to look at this photo, it's me again, back on Marmottes:


Just a reminder that you can now click on these photos for a larger image - and you may be able to make out the huge grin on my face which is usually the way it looks when i'm going super-sonic.

Blogger Photos

The more careful reader will have noticed that certain photos are clickable and yield, on a new page, a beautiful high resolution image (usually of me). However, some photos trick you by showing you the little hand, daring you to click it, only to be dismayed by the lack of any action whatsoever.

Using my brilliance, i have determined that Blogger occasionally forgets to wrap the images with their hyperlink pointer to the original photo. i have corrected many of the uploaded images and future images will all point to decent sized photos.

For the interested, Blogger stores all your photos on one of a number of servers indexed by a long, mostly unintelligible, key. Something like this:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl_gYM1r08Pj9exarko4wNge2Q8tcXd103QTdgsTPT-xI9LvOjx9ZtJJNXXU6zdK9kquZ9A2fOnwkapYSYqDuCHtpUOG2YNWvlBKmSVp0n9GmPVG6VDqFSmd1fAjOah4232yGlH6C2Mpx6/s400/IMG_0090.JPG

Conveniently, the "s400" indicates the image size (s400 is the large size, s1600-h is the largest size) and happily Blogger stores all the different sized images in the same place, so, if you are also a Blogger user with this problem, simply surround your images, using the Html editor, with anchor tags and point the href to the same location as the src of the image, except change the s400 (or whichever size you uploaded the image as) from the src to s1600-h.

Voila.

Lac de Montriond

After viewing a house in St Jean d'Aulps this morning as a potential purchase Natalie and i entertained ourselves at the Laverie Automatique before heading to Champion for supplies. In the afternoon we found ourselves glued to our laptops and, later on, on a stroll (through fairly deep snow) around the now frozen Lac de Montriond. If i were a geologist i'd probably remark that it's a classic example of an Alpine glacial lake.

i'm not a geologist.

It is a very pretty lake though. You can go plongeuring sur la glace in this lake in winter if you really want to.

Phil and Simon's Last Day

And what a glorious day it was.

(Taken at the top of the Fornet chair looking back at Avoriaz.)

Swiss Potatoes

For what is about to follow, it may be useful to first study this. All great stories start with a map, and this is no exception.

The day started in the Ardent car park. All great stories start in a car park.



For the interested minority, when i refer to the "bubble" in "Ardent", it's got nothing to do with detergent, it's this:



The view from above Avoriaz is only slightly better than the view from the car park.



So much for a half-day out in the mountains. At about 14:00, when we realised we were at least 30km from home, it became apparent that our half day was rapidly maturing in to a full day out. We did the "full" Swiss Tour today taking us from Avoriaz, through Point de Mossette to Morgins down its 11km long gorgeous valley, which i've probably mentioned before is like standing on a moving platform and being whisked through perfect Alpine forest. Then we travelled up and down Morgins a dozen times in the sun and fabulous snow.

And when i say gorgeous valley, i mean this:



(Gorgeous, aren't i.) And this is rather a spectacular shot of the Dents du Midi (about 3200m).



On the way down to Morgins, Phil spotted a Snow Leopard making a kill in the nearby cliffs. Or, he saw some boarders being truly insane, i don't recall which.



From the top of Morgins there's an excellent view of the awesome lightning bolt stripes on the handles of my Bandit Earth poles. Neato.



After lunch, which consisted of about 600kg of rosti, we headed up to Super Chatel where we observed the Comedie Ecole du Ski Francais which consisted of several men falling over each other and down various slopes and a totally disinterested ski instructor who was skiing with the skis of another student on her shoulder who'd decided that skiing wasn't for him and was walking down the pistes in his ski boots.

In the midst of this we noted another spectacular shot of the Dents du Midi (still about 3200m).



From the Chatel village we took the bus to Linga where we ascended right back up to 2100m before dropping down to Plaine Dranse (and burying my head in some super-fine powder on the way) and then climbing over the Col de Bassachaux, heading down excellent off-piste to Lindarets and finally to the l'Escapade bar at Ardent.

(i don't know if you noticed, but Chatel is rather pretty.)



After that we rushed off down to Seytroux, where we're renting an apartment from the 2nd of February, to fix the WiFi there (essential). That accomplished we whizzed through the Champion (a bit like an Aldi or Spar) and did our shopping in record time (the advantage of having been a seasonaire) and headed home for tortillas!