We will confess to a late start this morning. As predicted, Liz & Rick's dinner party was a late affair. Her poor brother, his wife and their 2 children, who had flown all the way from Perth the day before, did their best, but they were all starting to fade, as the conversation flowed well after midnight!!
Liz treated us to a Haute Savoie traditional raclette. Well actually, it was not technically a raclette, as the appliance used included a hot plate as well as a grill under which you melted cheese. For some strange reason, I can't remember what this appliance or stlye of eating is called even though I am sure that I asked Liz last night?
Hubert & Marie have included one of these raclette machines in our flat and we were a little unsure what we were supposed to do with it. We know now!! We also have a fondue! He is a very trusting landlord as I think both appliances have significant potential for fire!!
As we were 10 people, Liz had set up 2 raclette appliances and we had a fun time cooking our thin cuts of meat (beef, lamb, chicken and bacon) on the top hot plate while melting the delicious savoie cheeses under the grill. To accompany the meat and cheese, were potatoes, bread and salad. Yumm! Dessert was the apple crumble that I had made earlier in the day. Luckily, the crowd seemed to appreciate my improvised ingredients!!
Even though we had low cloud in our village, it was bright sunshine at Flaine today. We enjoyed a terrific afternoon exploring more terrain in the fresh snow that had fallen yesterday. There was still plenty of untracked off-piste. It would have been rude not to oblige!
As promised, a photograph of Mont Blanc from the top of Flaine was mandatory. However, our little digital camera really cannot do the vista justice. The sharp craggy mountains with their immense snow fields stretch as far as the eye can see. At over 4800m, the wind was obviously howling, as we could see the plume of snow streaming from the summit of Mont Blanc.
Towards the end of the day, we thought we'd explore a new route. In hindsight it may have been a little ambitious. As we followed the ski tracks of those who had gone before, it occurred to us, that in fact, we could be following the troupe ski parapenters we had seen earlier in the afternoon. If so, they would be heading towards...the cliffs! Hmmm!!! ...totally fine if you have your own parachute...not so good if you don't.
Luckily for us, the tracks had been made by your ordinary earth bound skier and although they had chosen quite a gnarly route down through the rocks, it was totally fine. However, the snow could have been a little deeper in places and we learnt a hard lesson about rocks at Flaine! They are sharp and hard. Graeme has carved a decent sized hole right through to the base of his brand new skis. Not happy!! Good thing he brought a lot of his ski fixing gear with him from NZ.
1/ Andy - down through the rocks 2/ Aaaaah - the damage!!
Tomorrow our home resort of Les Carroz "officially opens". It still remains to be seen how many lifts they will actually open. "Being open", we have learnt, does not necessarily mean that all slopes have been groomed or lifts are operating. What can we say? It's a french thing!
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