Apres Ski

Roger feeling at home in Bourg

and so on to Tignes, staying in the chalet (Chalet Sauterelles with SnowBug) which I first stayed in in 1981 on the first Inmos ski trip!

Two More Sunny Days

Changes in La Rosiere

The new Plan du Repos chair lift is fine, but (perhaps to ensure that it justifies its existence), Choucas has disappeared. The top part is now Mouflon, but it then routes you down to the Plan du Repos lift, so there is now no way to get from the top of the Fort to the Maison du Ski without taking another lift (the Plan du Repos). This change will also make the top of the run back from Roches Noires to the Maison du Ski even more congested at the end of the day. I'm not convinced it's an improvement, even though Choucas was tedious!

Coffee Survey

An espresso coffee in France is generally 2Euro up the mountain, though cheaper in town (e.g. 1.80Euro in Aux Trois Ours in Les Eucherts). The best deal therefore seems to be at l'Antigel, where you get a macaron with your coffee.

Espresso in l'Antigel

Espresso in the pass

Lunch

We ate in Lo Tata in La Thuile which is indistinguishable from its previous incarnation as le Rascard. The Pizza remains as good as ever. Getting there is hard at present, since there is very little snow and only one run down into La Thuile. Here's the state of the slalom piste!

You have to walk right down from the piste to get to the restaurant; no skiing down to the road!

After lunch, to la Cremerie for an ice-cream

Unfortunately no pistache on the ice-cream menu this week!

Today we had lunch at Le Meleze; Roger was unable to resist polenta...

Stats

Yesterday: top speed 83 km/h 58.3km travelled

Today: top speed 86 km/h ~70km travelled (approximate since my logging is incomplete as "Ski Tracks" doesn't seem to record tracks when running on my phone. A whole 89p down the drain unless/until they fix it!)

Miscellaneous Photos

View at breakfast

Sunset over the Maison du Tourisme

Le Mont Pourri

Another Sunny Day in La Rosiere

A good day's skiing in the sun including a lunch at the Relais du Petit St Bernard. The snow in the pass seemed the nicest in the afternoon, though some of the runs in La Rosiere and Les Eucherts were good in the morning.

Here is Roger in front of Mont Blanc.

Progress so far...

Travel

A fairly uneventful trip. Roger and I left Bristol at about 8am, and were at the channel tunnel at 11. We were offered (and took) the chance to travel on the 11:50 train instead of the 12:36 and reached Le Val Moret as it was getting dark.

We resisted the lobster menu and the deconstructed crunchy irish coffee, but had a very pleasant meal.

Unpleasant fog from the off on Saturday most of the way to Dijon, but no traffic or road problems, so we were in La Rosiere about 3:30pm.

Skiing

A rather unpleasant day on Sunday, doing two runs in zero visibility, which made me completely sea-sick, so I retired to bed for the afternoon.

A good day today, over to La Thuile in bright sun all day for coffee at La Cremerie, so here's the traditional picture of coffee there.

La Cremerie Coffee

A lot of La Thuile is closed, all of the Arnouvaz area is shut, and some of the lifts in the pass are also closed. There's even a pond on what is normally part of the piste in the centre of the resort!

Roger in front of Mont Blanc

We came back through the pass and had lunch at the fort restaurant. Then tried to find Choucas to get back to the front de neige, but it no longer exists! My theory is that they're funnelling you down to the new Plan du Repos lift to ensure that it has lots of traffic and can be shown to be useful!

"My Tracks" reckons 51.78km travelled in 5h 37m with a top speed of 75km/h and 4,863m of elevation gain.

Another sunny day is forecast tomorrow!

Getting Ready

2015 is my tenth year at Intel, so the way Intel "sabbaticals" work here in Europe, I have another. I therefore have a place booked through the Channel tunnel at 12:36pm on Friday to head down to the Alps. The first week will be at Mike's Hotel La Roz . Since it has now (finally) snowed in the Alps, I'm looking forward to some great skiing. 

I have also persuaded Roger Shepherd (man, it was hard) that he wasn't doing anything important next week, that Mike is offering a great deal and that Roger needed to come skiing, so you can expect a bunch of photos from him next week that explicitly don't contain Mont Blanc.

More soon...

We got to Italy

Amazing powder snow in La Rosiere, but grey light and poor visibility. One excellent run, first down the top of the black run from the Roc Noir lift; powder so deep it fluffs up into your mouth and over your goggles! The couple of French guys who were also there agreed that it was "Incroyable" and "Magnifique".

However the sun in Italy was calling so off through the pass and down to La Cremerie.

The pizza oven in Le Rascard was broken, so we had lunch at Maison Carel.

As expected, the snow in Italy was very different. Icy low down, and blown off higher up. Still, nice to get in one day in something approaching sun.

On the way back along Choucas, in poor visibility, I hit a snow drift (on piste!) that knocked me backwards so that I ended up still in my skis but lying backwards with snow over my head! Apparently I just disappeared.

Back in La Rosiere

Back in La Rosiere with the family, but in a new (to us) chalet. This year we have the chalet to ourselves. Food and hospitality as good as ever, with Alex and Emma doing a great job.

Tea laid out ready for tired skiers

The weather hasn't been great so far this week, with lots of grey clouds on the pistes and snow, so we haven't made it to Italy yet. As the sign said "Italy is closed" (which may be a slightly extreme view!).

Alison threatened by a mad marmotte

We had a good day today despite the grey weather, with an off piste lesson in the morning with ESF. Ashley got stuck in a tree, and Jennifer is probably now ahead of Alison on points in the "Breaking ski-poles" competition, since she managed to break one of the instructors poles, which counts for three points as against Alison's two for breaking both her own poles. (Breaking someone else who isn't an instructor would be 2 points). By the end of the lesson everyone more or less had the idea, and was enjoying themselves.
After lunch more just off piste, with nice snow everywhere.

I wanted to take a picture of Mont Blanc for Roger, since he's so keen on them, but we haven't seen it yet...