A Striptease, A Lesson and A Delicious Dinner in Livigno

1/ An uninspiring Strip-tease!!

The La Skieda crew of telemark skiers (all 1,300 of 'em) are an eclectic bunch. Racers, jibbers, old hippies, the young & the old from all corners of the globe.
And today we were treated to a wonderfully extroverted group of telemarkers from Sweden (where else?) who liked to get naked in public. Standing on their tables during the peak lunch hour at the Refuge Carosella, they put on a fine show. It's always a time consuming process to rid oneself of all your ski gear. Personally, it was taking so long, I lost interest and went for coffee. I think from the few photos Graeme took, he wasn't that impressed either. I mean to say, looking at the photo, we are not talking prime beef cake here..are we??? Nevertheless the crowd, egged on by the band, went suitably wild.

We confess to a late start to the day this morning. We didn't get to bed until midnight (very very late for us) after seeing some of the award winning films from the most recent Banff Mountain Film Festival. All manner of extreme mountain sports were featured, climbing, skiing, paragliding, speed skiing, skydiving and base jumping. The main feature film was about 3 Base Jumpers (An Australian, American and Norwegian) who travel to the heart of China to freefall 2km into a gigantic cave. An interesting armchair glimpse into the psyche of men with a serious death wish!!

2/ Andy : "You want me to do what? On Telemark Skis - you gotta be kidding?"

After lunch we joined John Falkiner again for a Telemark Clinic called "Balance before Power". His theory is that, if you are balanced, then you use much less "power/energy" to drive the telemark skis. Sounds great in theory. I'm keen to learn any technique that will reduce the excrutiating thigh burn I experience every time I don the "Misery Sticks".

The afternoon consisted of some hilarious exercises : - handclapping, buddhist chanting (Om Bar Cha, Cha, Cha) and arm waving. Most of the exercises had to be done with our boots completely undone, in "walk" mode and without our poles. Other routines included skiing on one ski while lifting the uphill ski and placing it down as gently as possible during your turn - The "Cat Step". Lastly John had the whole class hurtle down a mogul field yelling "Ding Dong" over each bump like a bunch of crazed Avon sales ladies! By this stage I'm starting to get suspicious that we are secretly being filmed for the "candid camera" segment of the La Skieda festival?

I still have a long way to go before I am truly efficient at this telemarking caper, but Graeme enjoyed the clinic and found a number of the exercises really useful. But the best thing about the afternoon was meeting up with a lovely Italian couple from the Aosta valley (near Chamonix). Daniela is a psychologist and Luciano a ski instructor. Interesting combination to be sure. But they were delightful. Daniela spoke perfect english and Luciano spoke perfect "ski english" as he called it. Just don't ask him to explain Italian politics in English!!

We had plenty of time to get to know each other as part of the lesson also included stopping for a beer at a mountain top restaurant. Typical La Skieda fashion!! Needless to say the last lesson on the run down the mountain was fairly challenging with loose boots, no poles and a beer in our bellies!!

2/Andy, Daniela and John & others on the "beer stop" part of John's Clinic!!

And finally after a good cup of tea and a lie down, we frocked up for a special mountain top dinner. Graeme and I, are constantly in awe of the organisation of this huge event, but it was entirely due to some lucky connections that we managed to get into this dinner. Let me explain.

We are staying in the home of the Zini Family- a 3 story old fashioned apartment complex which, apart from our flat, is occupied entirely by Zini's. Aunts, Uncles, daughters & son-in-laws. Truly the European way. The Zini family, as we have been learning, are quite famous in the Livigno Valley. Everyone in the village seems to know Genni, who manages our apartment for her family. Genni's sister, now retired, was a famous speed skater and won a bronze medal in the last winter olympics.

As it happens, Genni is a telemark skier too, and she has taken the week off work to go to join the party that is La Skieda Festival. We keep running into her at various events and have enjoyed snippets of conversation with her. On the night of the special mountain top dinner, we realised that although we had booked the dinner when we registered, the flustered receptionist had failed to give us the tickets we needed to gain entry. We were with Genni when we realised this. We were so lucky that she was able to explain what had happened to the door attendants and plead our case for us...in Italian! We would have been lost without her help and doomed to have missed an incredible experience in the mountains. What luck to have been staying with her!!

As I have mentioned before.. these Italians really know how to cater. I guess I always knew this having grown up in Melbourne with many Italian friends, but this mountain top dinner for 200 or so people was really something. 4 courses, with wine and coffee all included in the price of our festival ticket. What a bargain!

Ours was a truly multi-cultural table. To our left were 3 young french couples from Geneva, and to the right, an older (60's) immaculately dressed Swiss mountain guide (Fritz..yes seriously), and then a team of wild french/spanish boys from the Pyrenes and La Grave who produce hand-made wooden skis. [I still didn't find out which one was Vincent!! ]. Across from us was a German chemistry professor, a mountain guide from Conneticut and his aircraft engineer wife. I told you that telemarkers are an eclectic bunch!! Needless to say the conversation was wonderfully interesting.

"Guess the German?"

To top off the night we caught the cable car down with Genni's father, Guido, who unfortunately does not speak a word of English. But also sharing our cabin was another lovely local couple who were also friends of Genni's. They had been to NZ and Australia and we enjoyed a lively conversation about their experiences on the long ride down the mountain.

What a day, what a night? How are we going to be up at the crack of dawn for the next ski tour??

Back in Araches, but still pining for Mario!

1/ A delicious curry with David and Georgina in Les Carroz.
Forget the date - something wrong with their camera!!

Somehow, we actually managed to make it back to Araches after our long day of ski touring in Italy, shower, shave and change into clean clothes in time to join Lucy Sellick's sister (Georgina) and husband, David, for a casual curry dinner. G&D have rented an apartment in Les Carroz, just up the hill from us. Sans les enfants, they have enjoyed a tremendous week of good snow and glorious sunshine.

We must have been running on over-drive! Limbs aching and noses glowing from 3 days of snow & sunshine, we wolfed down Dave's delicious curry. G&D must have wondered "who" or rather "what creatures" they had invited to dinner!

As the night wore on, there was some vague plan hatched over the second bottle of wine about catching up for a ski with G&D around mid-morning in Les Carroz. At the time we must have felt invincible to make this suggestion. I certainly must have forgotten all about the grinding ache in my knees, blisters on my feet and a general light-headedness from too much the sun. Of course, that's what did it...too much sun!

Needless to say that by daybreak next morning, our grand plans of the night before had evaporated, leaving only the aforementioned sore knees, feet and heads! Not only that, but my feet were so badly blistered I couldn't put on normal shoes, let alone ski boots! We feel a little badly that we didn't get more of an opportunity to ski with G & D. We hope they will forgive us!!

So our day was spent with the usual domestics and a very early night. But all through the day we reminisced about our trip to the Mario Bezzi Refuge. Here's some more reflections on the trip!

2/ How cool! Mario Bezzi has his own monogrammed crockery!!
The funniest thing is that, Mario, does, actually look a bit like a marmot!

Christophe our Guide

Christophe is an excellent guide. He pushes us just enough to make us feel that we have achieved something without taking us beyond our limits. He is very safety conscious and explains why he is making a particular decision at a particular time. He is keen to share information with us but even more admirably he readily seeks out information from others he respects. His interaction with the Mario Bezzi, an old man of the mountains, was delightful.

He has a wicked sense of humour and the patience of a saint. Apart from having to nurse me up some of the more exposed parts of the mountain, he was also forced to listen to my tortured attempts at the French language. I figured, since we were going to be spending 3 days in close quarters, I had a perfect French tutor on hand.

However, Christophe quickly developed two very effective techniques to encourage silence from me. First, if my attempt at french conversation was getting too long, he would subtly increase the pace of skinning, slowly pulling further and further away from me. To keep up, I would have to markedly increase my leg speed, by which time I was huffing and puffing so much there was no chance of any further witty repartee.

His second technique was a lot less subtle. As I struggled to find the correct words or pronounciation he would initially feign interest and then suddenly drop his head making loud snoring noises. Hint taken!!

3/ A Christophe speciality: Crushed Crisps for lunch?

Another Christophe classic, was his choice of touring food. He had endless supply of pototo crips and would offer them to us at every opportunity. Take it from us, pototo crisps are not ideal ski touring food!! OK, I will concede that they're light, but if the packet doesn't burst from the reduced air pressure, the contents resemble oatmeal by the time they have been shoved repeatedly into a pack.

And the very last observation about our fearless leader, Christophe, is his habit of donating head torches to Refuges throughout the alps. At the Colle di Giasson, he was rummaging through his pack to discover that yet again he had left his head torch at Refuge Mario Bezzi. I am not completely sure about the exact translation, but I did understand that over the years, he has left 36 head torches at various refuges and mountain bivvies around the alps. He used to be sponsored by Petzl which covered the first 20 or so, but obviously (given the level of swear words) the "freebie days" are long gone!!

But all jokes and observations aside, we would seriously rate Christophe as a guide. He has a "nose for the snow" and we've thoroughly enjoyed our touring with him on this trip and also our first trip closer to home. We have been lucky to have found him as our guide.

4/ Our handsome guide - Christophe!!

Ski Tour #2 - Comment ca va?

1/ Skinning up to Pointe de la Rateliere

So how was Ski Tour #2? Well, words fail us!

Today we enjoyed a breathtaking tour with the head of our local guiding company - Christoph. He is a personal friend of Rick & Liz's. A mature fellow (ie, our age!!) - he was very much our kind of guide. Good sense of humour. Laid back but conservative and safety conscious - he was very much the "old" and not "bold" type of guide that we like!

Another superb sunny day with freezing overnight temperatures ensured that the snow remained light & dry. We headed west with Christoph from the top of Flaine - 2480m down into an area called the Desert de Plate. It is called this because underneath the snow it's a plateau comprised entirely of stratified rock. Unlike the alpine meadows of the other high mountain areas, it must truly resemble a desert in the summer when the snow has gone.

We headed down to the bottom of the valley, along with many other Frenchies who thought that today would be a good day to go ski touring. Fair enough! It was Saturday after all. But, that is the reality of Europe. People everywhere. However, the valley is huge and there's actually plenty of room for everyone. And of course the advantage of having a guide is that they know all the secret locations.

Christoph led us away from the people and back up again on the far western flank of the valley. From there we skinned and climbed up to a small peak - Pointe de la Ratelliere -2708m. Lunch was spent gazing out over the alps. The views from the top were incredible. To the South West, Mont Blanc and the Chamonix peaks dominated the skyline and to the west was Les Houches and in the distance Le Grave.

On the way up, we skinned through some amazing rock formations. It was like walking through a canyon or ice-seracs on a glacier. It was eerie and beautiful at the same time.

"The Rock Canyons"

And the skiing? The photo of Graeme putting in a nice set of tracks pretty much answers that question. Lovely frost dried, well consolidated, boot-top powder. Great fun to ski in!!

Graeme : "completing the set"

Inevitably, there are too many photos of today! For the enthusiast - click here.

After our second descent we continued down the plateau to Chalets de Sales. A collection of small farming chalets, it is abandoned in the winter except for a 72 year old fellow named Raymond. Christoph is a friend and regularly visits with him. Raymond refuses to leave the valley in the winter. There is no road access to this area and the walk from the nearest village Sixt-Fer-a Cheval is a hard one with a roped descent down through a steep icy gorge. Or a walk up & ski down to Flaine. The mind boggles how Raymond manages to get his supplies but apparantly he skins up and over into Flaine most days!!

Passing through Chalet de Sales, the plateau ends abruptly in a narrow gorge with a sheer cliff towards its end. As we travelled through the gorge we were privileged to see Chamois and the rare Alpine Ibex ( a long horned alpine goat) grazing the steep sided gorge far above us. Christoph has the eyes of an eagle and it sometimes took us an age to find the animal he was pointing to.

4/ The Frozen Cascade de Sales

At the end of the gorge, is a sheer cliff over which a waterfall tumbles 50m to a second terrace.

Hmmmm. Interesting! It's been a while since I have done an abseil. I certainly have never had to do one with my skis and poles attached. 48m doesn't sound very high, but when you are peering over the edge of a cliff, it is still a little daunting. Again a picture is worth a thousand words, so if you'd like to see Christoph and I repel down this ice cliff click here. Graeme has made some funny commentary, so it's definitely worth a look.

Following our little dabble in mountaineering, we continued down the gorge and the wooded forest to Sixt. We struggled to follow the nimble Christoph with his tight turns. I lost count of the number of times I had to use an emergency snow plough to avoid wrapping myself around a tree or hitting a big boulder in the frozen streams we were descending!

And in typical French fashion, our adventure ended with a beer in a little mountain cabin while we waited for the free resort bus to take us back to Les Carroz. How civilised!

It was a long day - 8:30pm - 7.30pm! Great value and we are well pleased to have made Christoph's acquaintance. We hope that we'll have a few more adventures with him along the way!!

Glen Plake's Father Lives On!

1/ & 2/ On tour with "Eric" our "French Semaphore Guide"

Yeeeeee... hah! We are back on the snow again! Although shadows of our former selves we managed to survive most of the day at Les Grand Montets ("LGM").

We had enrolled in the free safety briefing offered with our Chamonix Pass. The briefing involved some introductory information about the RECCO system and the use of personal transceivers. We were then taken by a Chamonix mountain guide for a tour of LGM. But it was also a day of "Kiwi Connections". Firstly, the lady running the course, was none other than Claudia Riegler, the champion NZ Slalom skier and we also met up with Johnny Benson's sister-in-law, Laura.

Graeme and I had always been quite sceptical of the RECCO avalanche victim recovery system. Given the size and weight of the detection equipment (several kilos and about the size of a car battery) we thought that the RECCO System was pretty lame. It seemed to us that by the time the Ski Patrol brought the cumbersome equipment to the location, valuable time would be lost and its only use was for body recovery (and we don't mean alive & kicking!). But today, the Ski Patrol showed us the "latest" system. The detection unit is only 1kg and about 20cm2 in size. In the Chamonix valley all the patrollers carry this new system in their kit. They showed us how it operated and we were well impressed.

After a short practice with our transceivers we were assigned Eric, the french mountain guide who took us for a quick educational tour of LGM off-piste. We suspect that Eric, was rather keen on the semaphore code or he was a calisthenic instructor in a former life!! Before commencing our run down the mountain he made us perform all manner of complicated arm waving exercises. Ostensibly it was to help us warm up. But I am suspicious! I think he actually had a bet with his fellow guides that he could get a bunch of people to perform the "YMCA dance" at the top of with telecabine! Tragically I wasn't quick enough to capture it on film, but it certainly stopped the passing skiers for a moment or two.

We ended up liking Eric immensely. He had a good command of the english language and a cheeky sense of humour! He interspersed our ski down with useful snippets of information about the Chamonix valley and the current snow conditions.

After lunch, Graeme wisely found a warm spot in the cafe to chill while Laura and I went for a long run from the top of LGM. Laura was a great guide and found some lovely soft pockets of snow. We had a good swap of Scottish/NZ news and we look forward to meeting her husband - JB's brother, Pete.

3/ Laura - JB's sister-in-law

So what's the reference to Glen Plake? And who is Glen Plake? For those who don't know, quickly take a look at this link http://www.glenplake.net/ to get some background.

This morning we rode the cable car with an old bloke who was sporting a "Mohawk" haircut. Now, it's not everyday that you see a man in his 60's with a Mohawk. Graeme was just impressed that the man still had enough of his own hair and it was located in the middle of his head to make such a haircut possible!! I was determined to get a photo. Truthfully, I wanted to go up and talk to him and find out his story, but a certain party pooper wouldn't let me! Can you imagine? ...How anyone would think I was going to cause an embarrassment - Moi??? I just wanted to know if he was related to Glen Plake (the famous extreme skier) or if he was just a fan? Fair question I thought? Unfortunately "GP's Dad" proved remarkably difficult to secretly photograph. My attempts to crawl under the cafe tables and hide behind the pillars proved spectacularly unsuccessful. Finally, after many attempts I was able to catch him coming down from the cable car. Unfortunately it's not the close up that I wanted, but look carefully and you'll see a man who is not afraid to try new things....at any age. Rock on "GP's Dad!"

4/ The elusive - "GP's Dad"