Ski Legs
This has easily been our quietest week in Tignes so far. It feels like we’ve been non-stop for the past two months so a bit of a break from liver-damage has been very welcome. I am only speaking about me & Pezza for Stuoobs & Cazzie spent Wednesday to Sunday drinking La Tania dry and befriending more Kiwis.
Pezza & I took advantage of having the place to ourselves and it was great for a few days being able to sit in the lounge in my pants and scratch my balls for a bit without being afraid of ‘popping out’.
There’s a farm in Tignes – a very productive one too – that is open all year with the poor cows being kept inside during the winter as the grass is under a metre of snow. This hampers productions somewhat and part of their diversification has made them one of Tignes most unique restaurants where all the produce is their own and you eat in the farm house. Karen & I had a meal out there, it was a really nice meal as long as you don’t mind eating next to the dog’s bed!
A few things have been going on; it’s the start of the French holidays and that means that over then next four weeks the resort is going to become full of fearless French children (ten points if you can wipe one out) and the resort is getting busier generally. This has all coincided with the Skiing World Championships that are being held in neighbouring Val d’Isere – unlike most linked resorts, the links between Val d’Isere and Tignes are great by ski and road and many people head over daily to see the action. We waited until Saturday to head over as it’s the quietest day on the mountain (transfer day). We were told that other days the links are like the M25! Getting to Val was a doddle and once there the atmosphere was apparent, despite it being transfer day many had made the bus journey up from neighbouring resorts and towns to see the ‘blue riband’ event of the Championships, the Men’s Downhill.
We locked up our board and skis and picked out a vantage point just by the start of the final descent, it was about a 25 metre climb and it nearly killed us, I was nearly sick and Pezza took two hours to recover. What was worse was the fact that once up there we saw an old couple looking fresh as daisies!
All in all a great event and we may pop over again this week for the Giant Slalom.
The mountain has been great recently, regular snowfalls have kept conditions superb and we’re all growing in confidence, most notably Pezza who now sees the point of this boarding lark; she has gone from trying to get down the mountain without killing herself to actually enjoying it!
Yesterday was a brilliant morning and Stuoobs & I ventured out and found some great powder up the Aguille Percée. Stuoobs manned up and shussed through some powder expecting a gentle transition onto the piste. I was following but applied the brakes as I saw Stuoobs disappear down a little dip but then rapidly reappear up a jib (a natural ramp made by the wind – translation provided by a local 18 year old) and fly ten feet in the air and land in the powder beyond. It was an epic effort, albeit totally accidental!
We took a trip down to 1850m, Les Brévières which was very picturesque following the recent snow – I only managed these pictures on my phone on the lift on the way back up (Snowy trees & the Barrage de Tignes):
As I write we’re in the middle of a huge dump, and I’m not talking about Cazzie’s many rushes to the bog this evening. The weather this week is ‘shitty wezzer’ as René, my radio colleague, would say. Yesterday was ok in the morning but we are experiencing gusts of well over 150kph a the top. Today has therefore been a bit of a write off and Pezza & I took the opportunity to go to Bourg, the village a few miles down the mountain for our monthly shopping trip, we took a couple of suitcases and got the coach which is free at the moment for the World Championships. Pezza described it as being similar to the scene out of The Beach where Leonado and that slag go to the mainland for rice – it’s so unusual to see traffic and general civilisation. The main topic on conversation on the coach between all the seasonnaires was what they were going to get in McDonald’s; it’s no McDonald’s Albertville but very welcome nonetheless!
So, we’re all well rested and dry and hopefully tomorrow the upper runs will be open so we can get out there and into knee-deep powder before it’s Bring Your Sisters time at Loop tomorrow night!!
xxx
