March – Après Heaven!
March in ski resorts is always fun; before this season every time I had been to the Alps since the February Half-Term school trips have been in March and they’ve always been boozy affairs; the families have gone and the boozers are arriving!
On top of that the locals here are beginning to realise there’s other stuff to do in the resort other than ski or board. We had a great dump of snow a couple of weeks ago but that weather changed almost instantly and the fantastic off-piste conditions changed to icy crud (crud is another youth term meaning chopped up, icy off-piste crap that’s hugely unpleasant to ski on).
What we are left with is superb on-piste conditions but by far the best place to be in conditions like this is on the sun terrace of one of the many bars offering happy hour in the sun. A typical day would be to venture out at around 11am, do a few runs and hit the Après well. It’s one of the main ways the Alps differs from North American resorts, you can often find live bands and great drinks offers in the afternoon. North American resorts can party like no other but if getting mashed between 4pm and 7pm is your thing then the Alps is for you! There’s going to be snow this week so today is the last chance of some sunny Après-ski and we may give the legendary Folie Douce in Val d’Isere a go today, if we do then expect some videos on here very soon!
This week has seen the arrival of our only returnee of the season thus far, Captain Kevin Liability Watson, he is here for this week’s Guy Wednesday. He arrived at a far more reasonable hour than last time and didn’t turn up hungover from his journey so we ventured out first to Brasero where we relieved them of a bottle of gin and then to Loop for their weekly snowboard raffle. I am delighted to announce that for the first time this season we can boast a winner, Miss Caroline Bell is now the proud owner of a new Nitro snowboard so well done to you for (a) winning the raffle and (b) for not caving and letting Stu swap them for a lovely pair skis!
Kev decided we needed to have a ‘quiet one’ on Saturday so I cooked up a curry and we settled in for an evening of Ant & Dec and other generally trashy weekend television shows. Kev was quite eager to have a full day on the hill on Sunday so the order of the evening was a few glasses of wine followed by a good eight-hours sleep. Somebody forgot to remind Kev of this plan and he proceeded to demolish vast quantities of vin rouge, the best guess we have is that he had two bottles and for those of you who know Kev will appreciate that this isn’t a recipe for a ‘quiet night’. He did his best to break the coffee machine and lounge light and then had to be put to bed by Stuoobs after lots of debate about whether The Big Lebowski should be in the top eight comedy films of all time.
So, yesterday morning we were all full of the joys of spring (happy Spring by the way) and raring to go but poor Kev managed three runs and then had to retreat to the sofa for several hours kip in a darkened room. There was a period of time in the last couple of years where Kev has threatened to shake off his ‘Liability’ title but Saturday night’s actions, coupled with his admission that he gave his BOTT wristband to a girl, has meant that Liability Kev is here to stay!
That’ll probably do for now, I’m currently at the Radio station about to do my final broadcast of the day before heading home and finalising today’s Après plan!
Speak soon, it’s probably right that I leave you with my al time favourite picture of Liability Kev, from January.
xxx
