Hey! Who Stole the Snow?

1/ What happened to the snow? We were only gone a week!!

Hey! Who stole the snow! We have only been in Italy for a week and look what happened to our Grand Massif while were away.

Apparantly, speaking with Hubert & Marie, every day this last week has been sunny with temperatures in the high teens and early 20's. The snow has been positively pouring off the hill!! It's like someone has turned the dial from Winter directly to Summer! But Rick and Liz have warned. Don't be fooled! In past years there has always been a late dump of snow. I'm not sure whether I believe them though. It has been such a strong winter, I think it's only fair that those poor hedges along our lane get a chance to stand upright and stretch their limbs!

We have a few important tasks to resolve this week. Firstly, according to our car contract with Peugeot we need to arrange for its 10,000km service and secondly we need to figure out how to get home all the stuff we have accumulated over the last 5 months.

But the day dawned sunny and warm and the weather forecast is for rain for the rest of the week. The thought of wasting such glorious weather messing around with car dealerships and DHL couriers held no appeal. Even Graeme reluctantly agreed. I think he was secretly looking forward to a day off the skis. Hard to imagine isn't it?

Procrastination seemed like the best plan, and so we headed out for a ski later in the morning. Unless you like slick, icy groomers, there is absolutely no point being first out on the hill at the moment. The best skiing is between 11 & 2 when the snow pack has softened but not completely deteriorated.

2/ Graeme about to head into the Ger Bowl

The most amazing thing about our visit to Araches, is that we still have loads of runs and areas that we haven't yet skied in our local Grand Massif area. We are at a loss to understand how this could be. What have we been doing all season???

3/ The Ger Bowl

One of the best areas in Flaine is the Ger. With only black runs (navy blue by NZ Standards), the Ger bowl is serviced by an old poma but it's rarely open due to avalanche risk. While we have skied in the valley a couple times as a ski tour, we've never lucked the lift being open.

Time and time again, we wanted to ski the Ger, only to find that it was closed. In fact, we started to get a bit of a complex. Everytime we'd go away, it opened, and by the time we returned - it had closed!!

Finally, today...the Ger was open. And for a magic 3 or so hours we pretty much had the bowl to ourselves. North facing, the snow softened to a lovely spring corn around midday and we enjoyed lapping every possible line until the melt went too far and the snow turned to gloop and it was time to head home.

Tomorrow....we'll definitely get to those admin matters!!

4/ More Ger!

Dolina - A Slovakian Ski Resort Experience

1/ The Slovakians like their skiing. There were some good size lift queues at Dolina!!

We have been left to our own devices again today. Tibor is taking Tomi to a karate competition today and Dana and Mischa are cleaning their rental cottage. All offers of assistance from us to help them with the work were firmly rejected. I'm hoping that Dana wanted some mother-daughter time with Mischa and it wasn't that she'd heard about my poor cleaning skills!! After all, I was the only one at Te Wanaka who scored 4/10 for room cleaning!!

While there is a ski resort in the High Tatras, about 15 minutes from their house, it's very small and Dana thinks its poor value. She wanted us to go to a ski resort called Dolina in the low Tatras about an hour's drive east. So this is where we headed today.

We actually managed to get there all by ourselves without getting lost. A first!! We were hopeful of a good day as the morning had dawned fine and sunny. We were directed to a car park at the foot of the mountain and duly loaded ourselves on the bus. Arriving at one of the entries to the ski resort, we got off the bus, bought our tickets and were ready to get the chairlift when Graeme suddenly realised that he had left his backpack on the bus. Hmmm!! Small problem!

Fortunately, Graeme had taken all the important things out of the pack and there was only a few chocolate bars and some water left in it. Dana kept warning us that Slovakia was not NZ and we had to be careful with our belongings! At the time, I was uncharitably suspicious of Graeme's motives! All morning he had been talking about buying a new back pack. At last count we have 7 packs of all varying sizes and shapes and so I was understandably unenthusiastic about any further pack purchases. I thought maybe this was a sneaky way of getting a new pack. But to be fair, Graeme was very upset and keen to recover this one.

Hmmm! What to do? The only thing we could do was wait on the road and check each shuttle bus as it went by. After an 1.5hrs, Graeme was going to give up and make a claim on our insurance. I had a funny feeling and suggested that we wait for one last bus going up the hill and check if the pack had been given to a lost property office. When the bus finally arrived, I realised that it was the same one we had travelled up on. Getting on, we were disappointed to see that the pack was no longer in the luggage rack above our seat. Damn! Lost forever! But no....as I scanned the bus, I spied a black strap hanging down from a curtained off area behind the bus driver. Looking more closely I saw the DaKine label and realised it was our pack.

Now what to do? After speaking to all the bus drivers going up and down the mountain, so far, none of them spoke english. Trying to ask about our pack might cause some serious problems. We were not confidant that the driver would understand that this was our pack and we wanted it back. We really didn't want to start any sort of confrontation. So we confess that we chose to perform a sting operation!! While I distracted the driver asking for directions to the ticket office, Graeme reached up and pulled the pack down from behind the curtain and made off through the rear exit. Poor bus driver! He probably was going to do the right thing and was just safe keeping the lost pack until he got back to the bus terminus. And now it had been stolen from under his nose!! Hopefully he was not too distressed when he found out! We were certainly very pleased to have it back!!

With all the standing around at the bus stop, we were chilled to the bone. Unfortunately the sunny morning had clouded over and most of the mountain was covered in a deep freezing fog. After 2 runs down the mountain we were icicles!! Finding a nice restaurant at the top of the mountain we tucked into a hearty lunch while we thawed out. Dolina is Slovakia's largest resort and has some very modern and fast lifts. The terrain is pretty good too. However, they seem to be obsessed with snow making and despite the lovely powder snow off-piste, all the runs were covered in icy man made snow. It didn't take us long to hunt out some good snow through the trees and of course we had it to ourselves, as the Slovakians, followed the European trend and rarely ventured off the piste. Our favourite run for the day was under the big new 6 seater chairlift. Here's the film footage.

2/ Another area at Dolina

Mother, (Dana) was worried when we arrived home later than she expected. We explained that due to our late start this morning with the "pack drama" we skied right through until last lift. Nice to know that someone is looking after us!!

Another lovely night spent with the family and chatting with Dana and Tibor. We feel that we've been part of their family for ever. I wanted to take a picture of Mischa. But she is 12 (going on 22) and very self conscious about photographs! Tomi too, was very camera shy! I did manage to get a photo of Tomi and Tibor doing a crossword puzzle together. I had secretly taken a photo of Mischa tucked up on the couch in her pyjamas, but she vetoed use of the photo. I promised that I would delete the photo only if she promised to let me take another one tomorrow when she had "done her hair". Classic!!

3/ Tomi and Tibor and a crossword

Les Contamines & the Yoga Continues...

"Look at that!!" But wait...there's more! A photo of Graeme pointing to a tenth of the total Les Contamines ski area.

Yum, Yum....Les Contamines. What a deliciously divine ski area! And we didn't even experience her in the best conditions. A windy and cloudy afternoon, followed a warm and sunny morning. As we mentioned yesterday, the weather is finally starting to change and while the Meteo is predicting snow, the temperatures have been increasing steadily every day. Fingers crossed, we'll get some of the snow that is currently crippling Britain.

Situated at the end of a valley running alongside the western flank of Mont Blanc, Les Contamines has amazing fall line, huge areas of ungroomed and, what looks like, endless touring!! Hmmm...our kinda hill! Definitely a place that we'll be coming back to!

2/A few Racer Kids too! This is an 8 year old doing 80kmph!!

3/ A view of the village from the access gondola

Les Contamines ("LC") also wins the award for the weirdest gondolas we've struck so far in Europe. They must have got their lift system from the Poma sale catalogue, either that, or LC was an experimental installation by Poma. Their gondola's are double sided and designed to take 6 midgets or 4 normal sized humans, or 2 rugby players. (Actually, strike that. The entrances are too narrow for a front row'er even if they squeezed in sideways!!). The shell is made of fibreglass and both the rear and front doors open & close on their own random timetable. An adventure in themselves, I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to use these gondolas in a busy period when everyone is pushing and shoving. Maybe that's why they don't fit rugby players?

4/ "The experimental Gondolas at LC!!"

And finally our day ended with a chance meeting with a lovely frenchman, Daniel, who was trying to learn to telemark. As the clouds were rolling in and the visibility drove us further down the mountain, Daniel came over to say hello to us when we stopped half way down the run. It was day 2 on telemarks for Daniel and he was obviously looking for some pointers. "Voulez -vous venir avec nous?", I asked. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I hoped he understood that I meant we'd be happy to help him, rather than any other scary interpretation!

What ensued was an hilarious telemark lesson conducted in "franglish" as Daniel spoke no English and we no French. But somehow he got the drift and he followed Graeme down the slope 3 or 4 times. At least by the end of the afternoon, he had the downhill ski forward and his turns were looking less alpine and more "telemarky".

Daniel shouted us to a coffee afterwards and we learned that he was 55 and a strong alpine skier. He had spent all his life in the mountains, skiing and climbing and he now works as a Lift Engineer at a ski resort near Annecy. Didn't quite catch on where it was exactly. But we did get that he was separated from his wife, with 3 sons (30, 26 & 22). He skis all the year on the high glaciers at Tignes & Val d'Isere. He wanted to learn to telemark to keep his interest in skiing alive. (Some may think that telemarking has just the opposite affect! They are not called "Misery Sticks" for nothing!!).

A delightful man, we hope that we'll catch up with Daniel again when we return to the little gem that is Les Contamines!!

A "Tele" Fest Today

We spent the day skiing at Flaine today. Flaine - 1600 - 2480m is the highest area of the Grand Massif.

It was an uncertain start to the day as the weather is finally starting to change. The temperature has risen and the wind has started up. We admit to being so spoiled with the snow and weather conditions that we were both a little reluctant to don the skis this morning, especially since the skies were grey and it looked like the weather was going to crack up any minute.

Au contraire!! In fact, the sun came out at lunchtime and it remained sunny and warm all afternoon. What do we know about the weather?

The weather in Europe is quite different than NZ. Everything happens very slowly. They have a gentle weather pattern. No howling NW'esters or 4 seasons in one day! We can almost predict what the weather is going to do by what the council workers routine. If they are busy moving lots of snow and clearing the road edges, then it's going to snow. If they are clearing drains...bother it's going to rain!!

2/ "8 -seater Telesiege "Grand Vans"

Today was a TELE fest kind of day. Not tele as in telemark, but "tele" as in Telepherique (Cable Car), Telecabine (Gondola), Telesiege (Chairlift), Teleski (Poma/Drag lift) and finally the very unique Telebenne. We went on a "lift tour" of Flaine today!!

We have never seen a lift quite like the "Telebenne". You ride it standing up. It takes only two persons and in Flaine it's used as a short access lift from the village to the main lifts. The best way I can describe the lift is to think "chariot". You climb into the little half cabin and hold your skis vertical. The back closes automatically behind you and you're away. Getting off is interesting! Easy than it looks, you step off backwards and the telebenne continues on it's merry way.

Our aim today was to see if we could manage to ride all the different kinds of lifts at Flaine. Mission accomplished! See the photos below, although we missed out taking photos of the telepherique and telecabine - you'll just have to take our word for it!

We also did a bit of skiing - here's todays footage!!

3/ Teleski de Veret

4/And... The "Telebenne"