Summer Skiing

This weekend Natalie and i, suffering from withdrawal having not skied since May, took ourselves off to Tignes to ski, according to them, the World Capital of Summer Skiing. Since there were only about 10 runs open and i don't actually know of that many other places where you can ski in the Summer i think this similar to the US having a World Series of Baseball.

That aside, i can happily report that it was totally awesome. All those nay-sayers claiming it wasn't worth it were completely wrong. It was absolutely brilliant being at 3500m with an air temperature of about 10 degrees in the brilliant hot sunshine on snow with hardly anyone else around. And the snow really wasn't that bad - I've had slushier, slower snow in the Porte du Soleil in April than we had in August in Tignes.

It took us 3 hours to get there from our front door via the Mont Blanc tunnel and La Thuile and San Bernard in Italy. The way back was via the Col du Cormet which was spectacular but extremely busy with traffic and of course packed with narrow "tornantes" (as hairpin bends are called in Italy) so the return trip took four hours.

You drive right up to the lake at Tignes and then buy your lift pass (35 Euros for the day) and then take the funicular inside the Grand Motte to 3032m where a cable car takes you the rest of the way to 3500m. It was a bit annoying to have to wait around for the funicular which only runs every 30 minutes considering it runs almost all the time in the winter. Anyway, once we got there all that was forgotten as we completed our first downhill pisted run since May. The snow was crispy, quite fast, perfectly pisted and excellent for carving. You can't ski off piste because your on a glacier and you might ski into a crevasse and die. This is a good reason not to bother with it. Other good reasons include really awful off piste snow. And "no", i didn't try it, i could see it was awful.

So it was a day of practicing carving and tight turns. The brilliant thing about Tignes Summer Skiing is that it is all above 3000m so it's always snowy. We considering skiing at Glacier 3000 (in Gstaad near Saas Fee) but i think it it closed. There was no snow at all below 3000m in Tignes so i can understand why Glacier 3000 might be closed.

Anyway so it was totally awesome and i would go again in a flash. I love living in France!

Sverige

I got sent to Sweden at the last second late last week so I'm now sitting in a traditional Swedish steakhouse called Texas Longhorn eating fajitas. The local food is really unique.

I don't know where they've taken all those nice artistic photos of Stockholm -- all I've seen are factories and super highways. Added to that I've seen an actual street fight between a gang of drunks and been briefly followed by a crazy old man who was laughing to himself. Awesome.

The best bit is that I get to come back next week. Can't wait! I don't think I'll be starting Ian and Natalie's Scandanavian adventures any time soon. This is the problem with living in the most amazing part of the world... Everywhere else, to put it in formal literary terms, is totally pants.

I miss my wife, my dogs, my lake, and my mountains!

I should start a travel book telling people what places are really like. Stockholm is easy. Stockholm is a city filled with buildings and people and cars. There's also some water. All the buildings looks pretty much the same as in every other city you've ever seen except very slightly different but only if you look carefully.




All the people look Scandanavian and speak Swedish unless you speak to them in English when universally they all magically switch to English too making me wonder why they bother having their own language. Either they are all naturally blonde or someone has put a lot of peroxide in the water.

The water is pretty too but there isn't enough to wash the city away which is my recommendation for all cities and also why I live at 1000m. I'm staying at a lovely hotel (the Clarion) where the TV and Wifi don't work, the room is so small I can be on both sides of it at the same time, and where the breakfast water (referred to locally as 'juice') emphasizes colour over taste. I'm havingva great time.

Waterfalls and Sandals

Here's that waterfall I was talking about. I think this further proves my theory about snow. Even once it's melted it's still the most awesome substance.

Telesiege

Now that the snow has gone it's possible to see the way that the ski industry has destroyed huge parts of what would have been pristine Alpine landscape. I realise that the world has bigger problems than a few filled in gorges and some denuded forests but this is my home now and I want the mountains back the way they were.

This picture is of the lower slopes of Mont Chery in the resort of Les Gets. It might be difficult to make out but the photo is of two concrete pipes that carry water under what is now a piste and over what used to be probably a beautiful ravine.


Here's an example of what that ravine might have looked like.


Beautiful huh? The ravine's quite attractive too. Instead it now looks like this:


Landfill rubble and some chairlifts. Awesome. So you may say that I only have this opinion because we now randonee ski and don't need chairlifts so rest assured I'm not proposing the wholesale removal of all chairlifts.

However you have to ask: Does the Portes du Soleil really need the 650km of pistes it is so proud of advertising? Would people really stop coming if they reduced it to 400 or even 300? How many kilometres does the average skier actually use while they're not drinking vin chaud or eating saucisse frites?

I propose that chairlifts are systematically removed in two ways. Firstly, there are many places where there are two and sometimes three lifts to the top of the same ridge or peak. Unless there's no other way, I think there should only be one lift.

Secondly I think that, where possible chairs should be replaced with drags. Lightweight, less concrete and less of an eyesore which could be removed in the summer. Probably cheaper to run and maintain too.

Generally, at least in France, I think that pisted ski domains should be reduced in size by about 50%. I don't think that anyone would come out of the bars long enough to notice the difference.

The lift companies could put the money they would save from having fewer pistes to bash into back country avalanche management and charge a fortune for personal guiding, which would in turn create more jobs and give people an even more amazing ski holiday!

Vote with your skis and go rando next winter and don't give them your lift pass money!

Prolays

I'm having difficulty deciding whether I love it here more in the Spring or the Winter. We've been out walking every day of every weekend and never walked the same path or even the same valley twice.

This last weekend, on a rainy Sunday, we headed up to Lindarets which surprisingly is now a goat village with actual goats in it rather than a ski village. After waiting for the goats to decide that they were smaller than the Touareg we parked near the top of the Ardent bubble (which is being dismantled and replaced this year) and walked up the path that you can see in the winter from the Lechere chairlift.

This is Prolays now.




After marvelling at the most impressively powerful display of melting snow and heavy rain down an amazing series of waterfalls we walked back down the famous Prolays blue run. There's still snow on it and I tried some sandal skiing which is great fun until you get ice between your bare foot and the base of the sandal after which point it becomes unbelievably painful and you have to hop around like an idiot trying to dislodge the ice while your wife laughs at you. Then again skiing wearing sandals might be considered idiotic by some in the first place.

Intrepid

This awesome photo was taken on my iPhone a couple of weeks ago. It features my beautiful wife looking intrepid and atmospheric on the Arete des Intrets.

Working in Geneva

Is really not so bad.




Some of the time, anyway... However, I don't remember being able to do this during my lunch break in London. My commute has come down to 1 hour 15 minutes now that all the skiers have gone home. It's a long way but it's definitely worth it to live where we do.

The dude in the photo is my work buddy Aurelien who gives up a lot of his lunch-break time to teach me French. Carrément!

Interestingly, the bike he's riding is freely handed out by the City of Geneva to get people active, encourage tourism, and also provide work to asylum seekers. What a brilliant scheme!

In other news I've discovered the best way to learn French is to read the original Tintin comics in the original French. Mille sabords! Did you know that Snowy is really Milou? And that Calculus is really Tournesol? Weirdly Captain Haddock's name stays the same - not very French.