For a short time this morning, #wearingmymothersoldskisuit was one of the fastest growing trends on the mountain with at least 100% growth in participants overnight. However it was soon overtaken by #itissnowingreallyhardandmymodernjackethasbetterwaterproofing

Skiing mainly in the cloud but with the odd sunny intervals. Most sensible people were in the warm somewhere so not too many crowds and lots of fresh powder to play in.

Some of our group hate not being able to see and some never really got behind this whole “looking where you are going” thing anyway so are less bothered.

Spotted a great accessory for people learning to snowboard.

Apparently you can have turtles on your knees and elbows as well.

The run we use to get back to the apartment is accessed by the same lift that goes up to La Follie Deuce, which despite the heavy snow was in full party mode. Let me see you put your hands in the air!

As you get on the lift they have security checking rucksacks for illicit alcohol… I offered mine but they just waved me through! Deeply offended that I don’t look like I am going to a party.

What’s the weather like this morning?

The snow stopped as we had breakfast and the sun came out. We found some perfect red runs where one half was groomed and the other half had 20cm of fresh powder. Ideal for practising.

We’ve been a bit disappointed by the lack of people in silly costumes, so we decided to start a retro skiwear trend.

Here is the same suit in 1992

#wearingmymothersoldskisuit anybody?

Looking down to the lower resorts you can see that spring has firmly arrived.

The slopee are even turning green at St Martin…

We have a significant birthday in the group today, so we are trying to bake a cake with whatever random equipment the apartment has. Liquid measures are to the nearest shot glass….

Might be edible if we can get the candle wax off.

Much more promising start.

We had to drop smallest group member at ski school and so we listened to the announcements for parents. In English someone explained to the parents that she was not going anywhere, would be there for any problems all morning that the children were perfectly fine with them and to just give them the children, and enjoy a few hours off… The French version of the talk seemed to skip the 3 or 4 minutes of reassurance!

As we were out early we were some of the first people on the lifts, and had loads of fun in the 20cm of fresh powder snow. With a few incidents..

The cloud returned in the middle of the day so we ended up skiing in amongst layers of cloud including one lift which we were thinking had been a really bad idea until we came out of the top of the cloud right at the top of the lift.

Trouble is you have to ski back down through the cloud.

It brightened for the last few runs and we headed back to the resort. The Easter Bunny was out and about handing red and white pills to young children.

Which turned out to be VT branded m & ms. Apparently you are supposed to sing some traditional Easter Bunny song to be given these, but they widely waived this requirement for me.

If you wonder why the lift passes are so expensive at least we know where the promotional budget goes!

So the forecast today was always pretty rubbish and sadly for once it was right.

What that picture fails to capture is the horizontal snow and birds flying backwards past the window.

After the complexity of dropping off the youngest member of the extended family at ski school, not helped at all by the blizzard conditions, we headed out to review which lifts were open.

As you can see our options were limited, and they open the lifts because it is technically possible, not because anybody in their right mind would go up them. They did open one more lift for a bit. We tried it and the lift was OK but the run had patches of wind polished ice which were not.

We got a few runs in before retreating to our apartment for a leisurely lunch.

Tried again in the afternoon, as there was a bit less horizontal snow. There was fierce competition for the role of staying on the magic carpets with the youngest member of the party. The rest of is had a  couple more runs while the lift company kept changing there mind on which lifts were safe to run in some conditions perhaps best described as ‘unpleasant with sunny intervals’. Minor incidents including one member of our party face planting on a sheet of ice which clearly stung a bit as they stood up asking us “is my face still there”. No apparent lasting damage done.

Looks nice now… because you can’t see the 40kmph wind still howling past the window….

Anyway it has been a dream to ski with our extended family for quite a few years so we are not going to let a bit of weather spoil our mood. Forecast for tomorrow is much better.

The runs down into the resorts have been really suffering the last few days as it has been warm and they have become quite slushy. This picture doesn’t capture it really, that is not fluffy snow.

The bashers have been working really hard to repair the runs every night, it looks like as they have a really good base, they cut right down into the ice and break it up. We were headed to a restaurant the other side of Mottaret and had to walk across the piste they were working on, which allowed us to get up close and observe them in their natural habitat

Two of them had spend a long time ploughing this area flat and they were now grooming it smooth. You’ll notice half way through the video one trys to run me over…. just being playful, I’m sure.

They don’t seem afraid of humans at all and were happily working on the main pedestrian area as quite a few of us were heading back from dinner.

They are cutting 30cm into snow so hard packed you can’t stick a ski pole in it and moving it somewhere else..

Anyway, once the bashers had spent all night bashing, Friday dawned thoroughly overcast, again with a few centimetres of snow having fallen overnight. We skied in layers of cloud but got lucky and found some great snow we could actually see, with only a few bits of icy stuff we couldn’t.

Sought out an indoor spot for lunch this time, it has a handy hammock outside for an after lunch snooze. The safety instructions say no more than 6 people.

Then the wind really picked up enough to close some high lifts, so we went and did some relaxed skiing in Rhodos, with the obligatory coffee in the Rhodos cafe, before heading down to bring a great week’s skiing to an end.

After a dusting of snow the day dawned ‘semi wholemeal’

The picture above is the view from our apartment so we should explain where it is.

We chose it purely for its central location. It is tiny and everything we need to work works. What the picture above does not show is that directly below our bedroom window is a bar that some nights has live music starting at 5.30pm and some nights starting at 10.00pm… We’ll if you have to listen to it you may as well be there.

The cocktail list is interesting.

Anyway back to the semi wholemeal weather we decided to ski over to 16 (formerly known as Courchevel 1650) where we found the fresh snow and warmer temperatures made for great snow conditions, just sometimes in the cloud

And then a sunny interval

Stopped for a coffee on the way back. The table behind us ordered a Giraffe of beer….

I thought I had seen every way of serving beer, maybe I have now?

We have discovered a new kind of bread. It is called Savouet and was only launched in 2011. It is made with “a semi-wholemeal flour rich in fibre and slow carbohydrates.” Apparently it has all kinds of health benefits and the wheat is all grown in the Savoie region.

This was a bit complex for the lady in the bakery to translate so she simplified it to “slightly grey”.

Which we feel is slightly underselling it but I fear we will now always refer to it that way!

Suitably full of bread and jam we decided to go up Mont Vallon before it got too crowded and nearly succeded.

Almost makes you feel sorry for the people down in the valley under the cloud.

In our ongoing quest to seek out picnic spots we found one above Les Menuires with a great view (i.e. away from the resort). If you look carefully you can see that some people go to enormous lengths to get here before the last table goes.

We could not go Les Menuires without visiting La Masse. They don’t have the fancy electronic selfie things here they have a far simpler solution, big mirrors. (see last year’s blog for the other one they have, not sure what is behind this one or what exactly is coming soon, or when).

They also have an exhibition about the telecabine, with lots of information about how it works and how it was built, and this lego model.

Feels like it is missing a bar with people dancing on lego tables but otherwise pretty impressive!

With the weather set fair we headed to VT in search of the best snow.

The summit of Orelle at 3250m did not disappoint, although a couple of the runs could use a going over with a basher.

Orelle was surprisingly busy with the one restaurant completely rammed. But we have a secret picnic spot behind this place where we managed to get a seat (no I am not going to tell you where it is)

Back over Cime de Caron, I can’t resist photographing this view even though I have done it many times.

Due to some carefully planned navigation we just happened to go past Chalet Val Thoren as we were headed back, but the waffle man was having a day off! Apparently this place is ‘Le 360°, concept de « fooding-clubbing » posé à 2400 mètres d’altitude à Val Thorens au milieu des pistes, ce lieu est unique au monde, une ambiance hors du commun avec des DJ’S réputés !’

Apparently it is Belgian Week.. no, I have no idea either. We thought about going and making some shapes on the dance floor but there was a queue to get in.

We think they were probably checking ID and only letting in people under 30..

The queue for La Folie Deuce was longer than the queue for the lifts, so dancing on the tables is ski boots will just have to wait.

Anyway a great day’s skiing, 39KM and 5800 metres vertical.

On the piste map and the signs, Courchevel 1650 seems to have rebranded as Courchevel Moriond. Perhaps their marketing folks thought people would see 1650 as not as good as 1850? 1850, meanwhile, has rebranded as just Courchevel, but listening to people in the bubble it seems that all of these are waaay too many syllables to be cool, and so refer to 1650 as 16.

There is a good depth of snow, but there has been no substantial fall for a few weeks so it is hard and icy in places and in the past in these conditions 16 (formerly known as 1650) has been less icy so we headed over there.

Sure enough, some great snow. Yet another new children’s fun park has appeared. This one is western themed with the theme carried all the way to the signs on the toilet doors…

We stopped for lunch at the top of the Signal chair. Now some people will have noticed the rather dodgy looking benches in yesterday’s pictures. Nothing like that here. It looks like the lift company maintenance team have made these from welded steel box section, and they are going nowhere. They even have brackets so they can be lifted and moved by a basher, because they didn’t get there any other way!

And yes, that is someone wearing a kilt, and yes, he is drinking whisky and no, I didn’t ask….

So another new innovation we have is the ‘moment’. Some of the lifts have a camera that takes pictures of each chair as it goes up. They show you a number as you get of, assuming you are not concentrating on not crashing in to people, and then near the lift is a place where you can select the picture, swipe your lift pass, which gives them you email address, enter your email address again and they send you an email. You click on the link, give them your email address one more time…. and then you get the picture!

It seems that real life is catching up with Wii ski… we’ll try and do the expressions next time.

Now this is the view you want to be greeted with out of the apartment window. Sadly I can’t admire it over my coffee as the supermarket was closed by the time we arrived last night so we need to go out and get some…

We decided to take it relatively easy today, so we stayed in the Meribel valley. Lunch was a sandwich at the bottom of Mont Vallon.

A bit more skiing and then an afternoon coffee at Pierre Plats. We have moaned enough about the demise of the brilliant ‘self’ that used to be here. It is now a coffee stop with a great view and still well worth a visit.

Our apartment comes with an unexpected benefit. Standard procedure for an apartment building ski room is to have one wobbly bench to sit on while you put your boots on. The bench is usually occupied by several squabbling teenagers and is located as far as possible from the timer for the light, which has been tuned to ensure that when you finally get to use the bench the light goes out just when you have a boot half on. This is so normal that I have always assumed it was a planning condition and no other configuration was allowed.

In a radical break with tradition, this building has several benches just outside the ski locker room with real lights and racks to stop other people’s ski raining down on your head when you bend down to tighten your boots!

According to my phone we skied 26.8km today, and 5KM vertical. My top speed was 37mph but I don’t think that was intentional.