Day 3 of the sunny interval promised on Sunday that started on Tuesday dawned bright and clear.
We headed over to ski La Face, the run built to be the ladies downhill for the 1992 winter olympics. It is a nice black run but was quite challenging as it had not been bashed recently so the snow was quite bumpy. Over in this area we found our first real lift queue. We probably waited just over 5 minutes, which is not really a queue but longer than we have seen up to now.
The other interesting observation is the absence of snowboards. There was a time in the late 90s when you might have thought that snowboarders would soon outnumber skiers. But we now only see a handful of them, even in a snowboarding stronghold like Val Thorens. Can you spot any here?

The other things we have noticed is that almost everyone wears helmets, but you’ll find more non helmet wearers in Val Thorens and Courcheval than in Meribel we have no idea why this is. You’ll find vastly more fur trimmed hoods in Courcheval as well as a little more retro 80s skiwear. I’ll make a chart….

It is possible that the lack of popularity of snowboarding is linked to the rise in popularity of freestyle skiing, and certainly the number of ‘fun parks’ continues to grow. In Courcheval 1650 they have made a ravine into a massive half pipe like run. You cannot imagine what this does to your knees.

In Courcheval 1850 today we came across one of the “giant airbags” that you can use for jumping into wearing skis, but also one that you jump onto sitting in a giant innertube.

Despite all of these distractions we still managed to ski a lot today.