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Published: January 16th 2009
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So I know some of you have been complaining about how cold it is at home but believe me when I say that you are having completely tropical weather to what it is out here.
After two days of snow the temperature dropped and for the past two days it has been cold to point of being unbelievable. For example this morning it was registering as -24 however the wind chill took it down to -32. Its a temperature that I really don't think you can comprehend till you are out in it.
So what does this cold mean.....!? It means that when you venture out you have lots of layers on and do not leave any piece of skin exposed. My standard daily clothing has been underwear, long johns, wet/dry vest top, long sleeved t-shirt and my windproof neoprene jacket. I also have my buff, face mask and hat on. I am then wearing the ski school allocated salopettes and jacket as they are of a quality that they are geared up for these temperatures and the wind chill. I can see that when I ski in Europe on the future it will seem suitably tropical.
It
gets that cold when your out that you are physically only able to do three or a maximum of four runs before you have to head inside to warm up. Honestly I don't think I can even do any justice in describing how cold it is out here or what effect it has on you. We are told that it wasn't this cold last year but they did have an above average load of snow over the season. It is said that the coldest period lasts between the 15th Jan and 15th Feb. Fingers crossed we have more snow forecast for Sunday so it should warm up!
Yesterday ski school started off in the classroom where we were given our course guide notes and reading material. We are currently doing what is meant to be a four day course spread out over four weeks. Once the classroom basics were finished we headed out onto the snow and in the afternoon we went back to basics and had to set off with the snowplough and were given the initial lesson as to how to snowplough and snowplough turn - which was mad since I can't remember the last time I
had to think about how to snowplough.
Ski school has been hard work this week although I cracked my nemesis run this afternoon. For some unknown reason I have had an issue with a blue run (equivalent of a red run in Europe) called Le Beaupre. Everytime I have skied this run I have fallen over at least once however the most frustrating thing is that it isn't the hardest run we have done or do I just have a mental block with it. Anyway I cracked it today which was cause for celebration however we then headed down a mogul run which meant I didn't get to keep my record of not sitting down for a day... I actually did an impressive fall that caused Pat to take a deep intake of breath and I think he thought I should have hurt myself more given I landed hard on my shoulder. However no panic I am still in one piece and the only potential injury is a sprained right thumb.
Anyway enough of the skiing talk..... last night we went ice fishing which was an experience and a half. I wasn't too sure what to expect as
we had been told that it was a hut on a frozen lake with a hole in the ice inside. Anyway we drove south of Quebec and met up with another group of "gap" students who ski out of the resort Le Massif but are living in our resort. We then arrived at the lake which didn't look so much like a lake but a mini village. We drove up to our hut which was literally a wooden building which inside had four strips where the ice had been cut out and above these strips were various lines with hooks and weights attached. There were a few benches to sit on and a big heater near to the door.
We were then given a quick lesson on how to hook the bait (liver and prawns) up and then to dangle it down into the water it was then over to us to work our magic!! We were told that the first person to catch a fish had to kiss it thankfully I didn't have the pleasure of this. Once the fish were caught we opened the door of the hut and threw them out onto the ice and within
a minute they were dead due to the intense cold.
I had a poor start to the evening and then had a mini roll but all my fish were to small to keep so had to be thrown back in. In the end I caught about 11 fish of which we could only keep 2. The fish were all duly put in a carrier bag and are currently sat out on our porch until it is Marie-Eves and my turn to cook as no-one else is keen to de-head and gut them.
I have to say that ice fishing is one of those activities that I'm glad to say I have done but I don't need to repeat the experience anytime soon.
This weekend involves more practice on the slopes and running through the various drills that will help me improve. Such drills will include skiing on one ski - which proves amusing as I can only turn in one direction and my ankles really don't like taking me onto the wrong edge. I also need to keep practicing my hockey stops ( to improve my short turns) and trying to get it into my head not
to move my shoulders when turning as these are currently my biggest downfalls.
We are off karting on Sunday so it should prove interesting and very competitive!!
(Apologies for the rambling in this blog)
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Rachel
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WOW Finally a good use for prawns!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!