MegèveSki

After the storm

This morning the skies were clear as we arrived at the Catedral base area for first lifts.

The lifts up to mid mountain were open as usual, perhaps even a little earlier than usual. Unfortunately the lifts from mid mountain to the top didn't open until around 2.30ish this afternoon due to the amount of snow and, probably, the amount of wind. We headed up the 6 seater and hoped to take the quad to the top and warm up with a few runs down under it.

One of the advantages of always being up on the first lifts is that we get to see the sunrise over the mountains. We leave too early to see the sunset, but the light and colours are just as impressive early morning as the alps are late in the day.

Unfortunately they were digging the quad out of the snow when we got there so we skied down under the 6 seater in some rather wonderful powder. The snow was a little wind blown in places, not too surprisingly, and there were various levels of niceness and nastiness (technical skier speak) about the snow at various points but you can't really complain about the quality or quantity of the snow today; the only thing at fault was my technique for adjusting to the changes in snow condition.

After our warm up run under the 6 seater we took the lift again and headed over to Condor II. Unfortunately due to the limited number of lifts open all of them had reasonably large queues... Another warm up run under Condor II and then we split into the ad-hoc groups that had been formed yesterday and did some video analysis. Unfortunately I was a little late getting to my group and so missed out on the first video analysis run. After the video work we skied over towards the 6 seater again to avoid the queues at Condor II. A run down towards lunch with some technique analysis and technical tips and then an early lunch.

The afternoon saw more technique work and tips, I suppose it's good that I didn't get as many tips as the others and that the tips that I did get I've had many times before from Lucy. I just need to actually fix the problems and this afternoon I felt that I started to fix some of them. As usual it was a hands up higher all of the time and lean down the hill with the downhill hand when carving afternoon.

As usual we skied hard and fast with a mix of technique work and 'go fast, ski anything, survive and stay balanced' work. These first few weeks are designed to get us comfortable on our skis in all conditions and it seems to be working well. By the time I got back to the hotel I was exhausted, as usual... By the end of the day the snow was back, hopefully we'll have a bit more fresh for tomorrow!