The Italian Job - Courmayeur

The Mont Blanc Tunnel - truly amazing!!
Andy being slightly claustrophobic,
really liked the exit!!!

Warning: Serious Ski Day coming up. Non skiers skip to last
paragraph & photo of car to avoid boring ski discussion.

Buongiorno!!!! Ciao! We made it to Italy today. We drove through the engineering marvel called the Mont Blanc Tunnel and within the hour we were trying to find a place to the park the car at the Courmayeur ski resort.

It took us "green horns" a little while to figure out that the innovative italians had designed a superlative ski resort. Very cleverly hiding the car parking underground, you drive in, park your car undercover & then catch an elevator to the gondola. Oh how civilised!! We are are able to ski at Courmayeur on our Chamonix Pass which also give us a cheap toll fare for the tunnel...so long as you read the fine print! Unfortunately for our bank balance on this inaugral trip, we forgot to read that "small print" about the Tunnel discount offer. You have to pick up special tickets from the ski office in Chamonix. Given that there were half a dozen cars behind us in the queue, there was no way we could back out.

Courmayuer was excellent. According to the main lift attendant there was only about 150 people who had gone up on the gondola that morning and about half of those were non-skiers. So we had the place to ourselves!!

It's a small resort, but with great terrain. Not super difficult - there are only 2 black runs on the mountain which we skied and found pretty mellow. But the piste grooming was some of the best we have ever seen. So a few "blast" runs with the "pedal to the metal" were called for. Especially since there was not another single human on the whole run!! The italians on the lifts and in the bars and cafe's were wonderfully friendly and we picked up a new friend, Sue, in the car park when we arrived. Originally from the UK, (is there anyone except Betty left there?), Sue now lives in Aosta teaching English. She proved to be a great guide and fun person to the spend the day with. See the picture above. We also managed to find some deep off-piste accessed from the second top cable car (Cresta Yula). See Graeme "whooping it up" it in the second photo.

One of the main reasons we chose to go to Courmayeur today was to say our farewells to our friend John. We thought it fitting to get as high up in the mountains as we could to say goodbye to our "Mr Altimeter". We took the Cresta d'Arp cable car to the very top of the resort (2755m). The weather was closing in and we were the only ones on the observation deck to look over the mountains. We each spent some time to say a few prayers and to share our favourite memories of a dear and inspirational friend with each other. It was a special and private moment. We will miss John very much, and most importantly as a key member of our adventure seeking quartet - Meg, John, Graeme and I.

On a lighter note. I mentioned before how the clever Italians had designed this great underground car park. Only problem is that they haven't quite finished it yet. It actually proved to be quite tricky to find the exit. Not all the direction markings had been completed. As a consequence, when Sue left before us, she mistakenly thought that the pedestrian stairs was the car exit ramp. As we were packing the car, we heard an horrendous series of "clangs and scrapes" as poor Sue took the wrong exit and drove down the stairs. To be fair, the stairs fell away so steeply that it was difficult to see that it was stairs & not the exit ramp. Especially since it was actually wider than the car ramp at the far end of the floor. It was like something out of the "Italian Job" movie and of course quite fitting that we should witness something like this while we were actually in Italy.

We ran after Sue, but the poor lady was so embarrassed, she didn't stop, but kept on driving out to the exit, with bits of the undercarriage dangling!!! We hope that she has not damaged her car too badly! We will ask her next time we catch up with her for a ski in Courmayuer.