MegèveSki

Free ski and practice - Day 2

The mountain was covered with cloud this morning and it was raining up to the top of the sextuple and snowing above. Visibility was pretty poor, the snow was pretty wet and the pistes had just enough fresh snow to make the hard pack underneath 'interesting'. Neil suggested carving practice so after a couple of warm up runs under the quad we headed towards Condor II as the nice blue carving practice run next to the drags was still being used by the racers.

The run under Condor II was a little too steep and hoppy near the top but we managed to do some carving practice on the lower section. I worked on trying to keep my legs at the same angle and Neil worked on some more fundamental carving stuff; I tied a bit of instruction by trying to point out what I thought he was doing wrong and it seemed to help.

Once we got down to the nursery slopes we did a bit of Central Theme practice and then took the long T-bar back to the top. After several runs like this in the wet snow and rain we decided that we fancied a coffee break and that we'd then head over towards the gondola to see if conditions were better there. It's Paula's 21st birthday today and the plan was to meet for lunch at the restaurant at the top of the Lynch chair at 1. We decided that since it was on the way and since the others may have already decided to stop.

James and Simon were there, having coffee, after doing a very small amount of boarding. Neil and I had coffee and cake and sat and chatted and dried out whilst James and Simon went off for another run. Eventually they came back and it was almost time for lunch, the others arrived and we had steak sandwiches and chips and some beer. We had quite a good turn out and Paula spent most of the time using her magic wands to zap people.

After lunch most of the gang headed straight down to Mute for more apres ski but Neil and I decided to go and take a look at the off-piste over by the drag lifts. The racing was still taking up a large amount of the piste over that way and the visibility was still pretty poor but it had stopped snowing and the snow conditions were pretty good. We skied the blue run once and then headed up to look at the steep stuff. We traversed across to the gulley in poor visibility and were standing there debating what to do when suddenly it cleared up. Nobody else had skied it yet and we messed it up pretty nicely as we came down, nice and controlled but the 3 inches or so of new snow on the hard base meant that we brought a lot of snow down with us with each turn. Having done it once we decided to do it again and then head down. I think my line was better the first time.

After the off-piste we skied down to the Princessa III chair and took a slow and cold ride to the top. Then we took the same route home as I'd done yesterday, down to the gondola and then down the Pista 6 bumps. The bumps were good fun and I think I skied them better than yesterday...

After dumping our gear we wandered over to Mute and joined the rest of the gang for some champagne to celebrate Paula's birthday and then it was back to base for a first aid lecture...