Let it snow!

As alluded by my cohort, we hit the snow last week – We were both a little nervous about heading there, as I broke my wrist last time I went (Thanks to Jerome’s Cursed Boots), and Robyn cause she’s not yet confident on the board – sideways motion doesn’t come naturally, apparently. We booked through Neilsen, which in hindsight we won’t do again – it’ll be cheaper and just as fast for us to organise it all ourselves, I think. One of my colleagues went to the same resort by car, and it took 14 hours – door to door it took us 12 hours to fly (Including tube, train, check-in, flight to Lyon, luggage collection and coach to Motarret), so really you gain nothing. In any case, we made it there, and found our accomodation, which I highly recommend – it’s cheap, a little nasty and very 70’s, but we walked out the door and on to the slopes – you had to go downhill to get to the bottom chairlifts, and we had one right outside our door. It was really nice being able to head back to your accommodation whenever you wanted, as opposed to Turoa or Whakapapa where you are stuck with the expensive food…

I spent the first three days getting my confidence back, so by wednesday I was sashaying down the slopes fairly well. Robyn hurt herself on Monday unfortunately, we think either an Abdominal muscle or a rib… So as a result, she spent most of the week lying in bed enjoying the slightly smokey-smelling apartment. She did go for a few walks, snapping a few pictures though…

That last shot is quite indicative actually – apart from a few runs, it was a realy quiet week, there were times when I was completely alone on the piste, which was very cool, no one in sight at all.  Unfortunately I think the injury has put Robyn off snowboardnig, as it’s hurt her confidence quite a lot.. maybe if we have nice soft powder next time, she’ll enjoy it more, but it’s very temptig for her to go back to ski’s.
Later in the week I felt I’d actually managed to improve quite a lot over last time I went – I’d gone from tentatively going down blue runs to being fairly confident on red runs and a little bit off piste. I didn’t stray too far from the runs though, as I don’t reckon it’s a good idea to head off piste on your own.

So apart from the boarding, it was really nice being in french culture again, even if it is tourist French culture!  It’s fun learning little bits of the language, we may have to make a concerted effort to learn it if we keep going back there.  The only down side to the whole trip was leaving as it dropped 4 inches of powder…

Ah well.  Next time!