2013/2 Snowed in Yet Again.(And Again, and Again!)

Had several great days skiing in Val Thorens, the highlight being the trip through the Trois Vallees to Meribel and Courcheval and back. Brilliant weather, fantastic skiing, the snow squeaky and crunchy, tired legs. We really enjoy touring around new skifields, sort of makes an adventure of it. We seem to go for miles. I need to get one of those apps where you can track where you have been, how far, how fast, how high etc.

 Snow, snow and more snow seems to be the story of this ski trip. Great for when you can ski, but being fair weather skiers these days there have been a lot more non-ski days than ski days. Everywhere we go we get another new dump of snow  and spend lots of time digging out, keeping pipes unfrozen,  engine responding etc. All very pretty, but starts to wear thin after a while. Even staying in the valley at Bourg St Maurice it snowed. Stan is warm and cosy and we get out and about, the odd Plat du Jour in a cosy restaurant. We seem to fill in the days quite happily. Have covered a few resorts now, Val Thorens, Meribel, Courcheval, Les Arcs, La Plagne with some epic skiing in-between the snow dumps. Hope to do a few more if it stops snowing!

Saturday is changeover day in ski resorts. A great day to ski –if the weather is fine – because people are either coming or going, but not skiing. The streets and supermarkets are thronged with confused tourists, tour buses blocking the way, baggage everywhere. We have also learned not to travel on changeover day – taking over 3 hours to cover 30kms between Bourg St Maurice and Moutiers after fetching Katie from Tignes where we delivered her earlier in the week to watch the X Games (all that impossible stuff in the air). Everyone was full of advice after the event –“Mais bien sur Madame, on voyage jamais le  Samadi!”

Sunday night is the big night out at Val Thorens (according to our young informers), because by then the new punters know their way around and hit the night clubs. Again the streets are thronged, not that we know much about it, it starts late and you really shouldn’t partake if you are over 30. The nightclubs are often underground and we wouldn’t even know they existed if we didn’t have young people to inform us. Kind of like a whole other world going on. Our apres ski consists of the odd drink in a bar and tucked up inside before dark.

One unlikely advantage of all this snow is that we don’t have to set the alarm any more as we regularly get awakened by the boom of avalanche detonations. Sometimes big enough to make the van shake. Avalanche risk is huge at the moment, someone died at Les Arcs yesterday, the next resort to us. Not much risk for us as we haven’t skied for 3 days.

We are in a great park at La Plagne right now. A good place to be marooned again! Great view, ski in, ski out to our door, fireworks right outside. Hope to report more skiing, less snow next time. At least David’s new shovel is earning its keep.

By the way our phone contact in Europe is +447799740394