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Published: January 17th 2010
Almost As Pretty As The Reef
Les Gets, French Alps, FranceYou're back! Don't you have anything better to do? We need to be clear that this is going to be a big blog, as it was a very VERY big week in our lives. One that we won't forget for a very long time (from what we remember of it, anyway). But, once again, let's not get ahead of ourselves...
The 28th of December 2009 started with us realising that New Years was looming and it was time to get hold of Merv and Jenny to make sure they knew we were around. We sent them a text and almost immediately got one back as we were driving through Sennecy le Grand on our way back to Macon. Come over, they said! We're ready for you, no problem if you're in the area, they said! We needed no extra invitiation, being filthy skiving backpackers, and jumped on the tollroads into the Alps.
Aleks hasn't stopped complaining about this day yet, and it's still a point of contention. I picked the €22 of toll roads to take, rather than the non-toll roads. Why? Because like most people in Australia except for those who live in Jindabyne, I haven't got much
experience in ice driving. It's the final frontier in advanced car manoeuvring; if you can drive on ice in a normal everyday vehicle, you can pretty much drive a fighter jet or a submarine. I personally wasn't going to risk both our lives by going on some shitty little goat track covered in black ice, and was happy to pay the tolls for a nice wide open space which was essentially going to be clear of snow. I wanted a good road to take a car that is, at best, a barn on wheels. Wheels with balding tyres. And a crap front passengers side wheel bearing. And crap suspension. And the list goes on. Do you see my point?
We were on the toll roads for about two hours, driving in whilst avoiding Geneva and as much snowy cliff faces as possible. Slowly, inevitably, the scenery turned white. We were in and out of tunnels amongst the mountains like something out of a Bond movie, and really started saying “Wow!” when we saw signs to Chamonix-Mont Blanc. Mont Blanc! Like... THE Mont Blanc? I have to say this one it's own line...
Four thousand, eight hundred and seventy
metres at the summit. (!?!)
Gag! We were NEAR that? Are you serious? That's the highest mountain in Europe, and our little van with two stupid backpackers were in it's vicinity. It's like standing next to a cliff face and someone tells you it's 4.8km to the bottom. It was truly humbling. By that point, though, the snow was really starting to belt down and we had lunch in some truckstop along the way. When we arrived the roads were black, when we left the roads were white. Enough said.
We managed to get all the way to Les Gets with no hazards at all. Well... ALMOST all the way to Les Gets. About 5km out, on the icy, windy roads coming up from Tanenges, the car lost traction. Big time. We had no snow chains, or snow tires, or snow pads, or any snow gear, and the whole thing went sideways on a patch of ice. Luckily there was no one coming the other way. I haven't had that feeling since the old Datsun 1500 ute we used to drive to the bus stop went sideways into a barbed wire fence back home in Gunnedah. It wasn't
Just Another Day In The Alps?
Les Gets, French Alps, France for bad driving that the ice skid happened though, it was just super super slippery, and the tires on the Ark are as I mentioned, hardly in good shape. I drove it very gingerly the rest of the way, and felt better as everyone around me was doing about 10 km/h as well. We managed to get to a car park where Merv came and found us in his 4WD Mitsubishi Outlander, and then we transferred everything we needed and trucked off to their Chalet, Chalet Matilda. He was very impressed that we managed to get so far without dying.
It was really great to see the Merv and Jenny again, and James, and to finally meet Emily. There was a glass of wine in our hands almost straight away, and much catching up to do on what happened in the time between our meetings. We drank a bit more, and then a little more, then finally decided that it was time to take a crash course in Alpine celebrations up at “The Shack,” which was Merv and Jenny's first co-owned chalet with a couple of the guys that we met at the party in Ireland. There were so
Nemo All Kitted Out
Les Gets, French Alps, France many names flying around that it was a little hard to keep up, as there was almost 20 people there at one long dinner table. The wine continued to flow and was accompanied by some fantastic food including goose, ribs, chicken, steak, potatoes, and the list goes on and on... by the time we were done and completely stuffed to overflowing, dessert was brought out: blueberry tart, vanilla custard cake and ice cream. Wow. Somehow one of us drove home, and continued to polish off some wine. Jen (hungover from the day before) chuffed off to bed early and the rest of us hit bed around 3:30am. We did the math and it seems we drank somewhere in the vicinity of 12 bottles between the 4 of us. Ouch.
The next day we woke up feeling a little worse for wear, and the morning was punctuated by sounds of Merv wandering around the house going “Oh bloody hell... Oh bloody hell...” and looking rather shattered to boot. Apparently we Skyped with Mama and Papa Lips and also my Mum that night. I don't remember too much of it, funnily enough.
And it was on this fateful morning that
In The Chair Lift
Les Gets, French Alps, France Merv decided it was time for us to learn to ski.
I'm not kidding. Here I was feeling like a freshly shot wood duck, Aleks much the same, and suddenly our first lesson was at midday. Just to clarify too, neither of us had skied before. We booked our lesson down in the village at twenty past eleven, mind you, so we had forty minutes to go home, get changed into our borrowed ski gear, get our lift passes, and hire our boots poles and skis, before getting back to the “Ecole De Ski” ski school. We made it, somehow, and in record time. Our ski instructor Jerome was running a bit late anyway, and eventually turned up and threw us in “The Bubble” lift up to the first summit at 1300m. Oh, and I forgot to mention... by this stage it was absolutely pissing down with rain.
We started out doing some basic stuff on very shaky legs, like putting one boot in the skis and pushing ourselves along, feeling how the edges work, and soon we were in two skis, then moving along the flat sans poles. From there in the next 10 minutes we got
What Was This Cross For???
Les Gets, French Alps, France on a little ski escalator, went down the kiddies slope once or twice practising our snowploughing (the braking technique) and all the while Jerome skiing backwards in front of us egging us on and telling us what we were doing wrong. After no more than an hour we were going up the chairlift to the next summit, and somehow managed to get on and off with little misadventure! What? A kid from Gunnedah doing okay at skiing? We both had our fair share of tumbles, the first of which was Aleks doing a magnificent goat-on-ice move off the chairlift at the top. She was quickly caught by the chivalrous Jerome and saved from being barrelled by the next lot of skiers.
From there our progress was up and down. Thanks to my sprinting years I was having a little trouble with my knees, but while I did some falling over Aleks was powering on through, progressing in leaps and bounds. Jerome told us that we were progressing really quickly, and that usually it took student a day or two from brand new to get on the ski lift.
Sure. I bet he says that to all the students.
We're Going To Ski Down That?
Les Gets, French Alps, France By the end of the day though, we were so amazed that we could actually navigate our way down a slope without killing someone else, ourselves, or being killed by incoming speed skiers. The views from the top of the chairlift of the valley around were absolutely breathtaking. I really cant describe what it looked like once the rain passed and the clouds cleared away into the distance a little, and I felt like I was in the middle of a huddle with the New Zealand Rugby Team, surrounded , looming huge and imposing in black and white.
Jerome was such a brilliant instructor, and we found out that he was also a really good friend of Jenny and Merv's and would be catching up with us for dinner soon. It's so amazing to be the student again rather than the teacher, and it really gives you a great perspective on what the student feels like going in at the deep end. I think its the sort of story that I will tell my future open water students. He made us feel totally right as rain and was way away from that wanker ski instructor paradigm. I may
Ski Bunnies Unite
Les Gets, French Alps, France have a bit of a crush on him.
So we went home absolutely soaked from head to toe - Merv said he'd never seen anything like it. Everything was hung up and left to dry for next time while we dragged ourselves upstairs and had a nice hot shower. I was still feeling a bit precious as we hadn't eaten yet apart from an apple, and so I had a bit of a lie down. We had Spaghetti Bolognese for dinner at home, and you know how much I love that stuff, so I was stoked! Later in the evening we decided that it was a good idea to go out to the local nightspots, The Black Bear Bar, which was an imitation Canadian haunt, followed by The Zebra Bar, possibly the smallest nightclub in the world. We had a few more glasses of wine/beer/whatever, but it was jam packed with 16 year olds wearing too much makeup, and you couldn't move without touching groins with other people, so we gave it the arse early (midnight) and went home to bed.
The 30th saw us bumming around at home as there was not much going on. We found
Look At Us Go!
Les Gets, French Alps, France out that James and Emily are technology addicts on Facebook and XboxLive respectively, and so we consoled ourselves by watching pirated Irish cable TV, and you know what that means... TOP GEAR! Wooot! We also watched The Hangover, which is now up there in my list of favourite movies of all time. If you haven't already seen it, go watch it, but take a nappy with you - it really is THAT funny.
That night we were treated to a dinner that defined a whole new idea in meat consumption. The six of us, plus Jerome our ski instructor and his lovely English girlfriend Jemma, tucked into three massive 1kg steaks - Cot de Boeuf. Seriously, that's a LOT of steak to be eating in France. I would hate to think what it cost. But man, that was some of the best steak I've ever eaten, and it was well accompanied by ratatouille, greens and spuds. It will be a long time before I eat a steak like that again. In fact, I think that the first thing that I'm going to do when I get back to Oz is go to Wolfie's down in The Rocks and get
NYE And Still Sober
Les Gets, French Alps, France myself one of those big 400g grain fed Angus steaks.
'Ang on, won't be a tic... just mopping up the drool off the keyboard...
New Years Eve! Already? Didn't we just HAVE New Years Eve last week? Holy pantihose, Batman, where the feck did that year go? I'll tell you where it went, it went into my head. I reflected on that day as I geared up for our second day of skiing that it has been an absolute whirlwind of a year. Seriously, I've been gone since April 21. Wow. Anyway... We started out the day's skiing with Merv as our instructor to brush up before our lesson. We went straight up in the chair and started skiing down a new slope. It was a bit quick, but Merv's a good teacher and soon we were going down at a good pace. My knees however were really giving me hell, and after a few runs we had to go sit down at the cafe and have a drink of water. Aleks once again had it sussed, and was doing such a brilliant job.
Our lesson that afternoon was with Raf. Raf is one of those guys
that people laugh about knowingly and wink at you when you tell them that you're going skiing with him... they say things like, “Oh you've got Raf this afternoon? Ha... You're going to have a riot, he's completely mad.” That can be either very good or very bad. We soon found out what everyone meant, and I instantly fell in love with the man, just as I had with Jerome. Raf really is completely mental - he's loud, and twitchy and passionate about just about everything, and it's completely endearing. His teaching style really resonated with me, and I instantly realised that he's a very smart guy and knows a lot about a lot, not just someone who pretends to know a lot. Aleks and I both progressed so far in that lesson, and by the end we were using poles and turning quicker in the snow. The day was just beautiful and clear, sun streaming down. It was perfect. I'll never forget it.
And so the night arrived, and what an itinerary had we been given. That day, whilst on the ski lift, Raf pointed to a tiny dot on top of a mountain about a kilometre away,
on top of what looked like a slope only Heinrich Harrer could ascend. “That's where we're all going for dinner tonight.” How the hell do we get up there? “With your feet!” he roared, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. I gulped, and looked at Aleks. She just put her head in her hands and laughed ruefully.
We got home, got changed, Amanda and John (two more friends of M & J's) came over for a quick pre drink, and then we were off. The temperature was somewhere in the vicinity of -3 degrees, so it was relatively mild. We reached the bottom of the mountain and saw a lot of people putting snow racquets on. Snow shoes? What? What am I supposed to do? I only have my boots! I looked up the mountain, and said to Elliott (Amanda & John's son), “Dude, is that it just above the rise at the top?”... “Nah mate, you can't actually see it, it's a fair bit further than that.” Nevertheless, I felt confident, even though my legs were already smashed from skiing.
We started out together in a group of James, Elliott and me,
but soon I was on my own and the others had fallen behind. Somehow I managed to fall down some pretty big holes, but luckily they weren't wet and I dusted the snow off and kept hammering at it. Anyone who knows me knows I HATE walking up hills/stairs/slopes of any kind, and the sooner I get there the better. Soon everyone was a long way behind and I was wondering if I was going the right way. Luckily there were cylume sticks marking the path, and so I kept at it. After a 25 minute walk up a very, VERY steep slope, I reached the top... and I was the first person up there apart from the people who had skiied there earlier that day.
No really, I'm dead serious. A boy from Gunnedah, without snow shoes or any mountaineering experience whatsoever, and one ski pole, made it 439 metres vertical (according to Jerome's ski computer, and about double that distance over ground) up a damn steep slope to the restaurant by himself! Where was Aleks? She was walking up with the girls, as they got lost driving to base camp. She arrived about 15 minutes later on
the back of a snowmobile, promptly fell off, had a cigarette and looked like death. But all credit to her, she's never been much of a land rat; if we'd had to swim to the restaurant, I'd be coming home in a casket. Besides, she got a ride on a ski doo and I didn't. Not fair. (AW - Would like to point out that I made it 90% of the way there by foot, but why would I turn down a ride on a snow-jet-ski thing behind a hot French guy???)
The restaurant was epic, a total classical mountain house built of ancient logs of oak and yew and whatever else, and filled with mountaineering paraphernalia from days gone by, old skis and mountain rescue handbooks and the like. It was just great. There were about 65 covers set in that restaurant, and as soon as we arrived we were waited on hand and foot. There was SO much booze... the red wine rack covered a whole wall and there were six fridges of white and champagne, plus beer en pression. An alcoholic's dream world.
We milled around and talked, nibbling on crackers with tzatziki, caviar (berk!)
and olive tapenade, then a bell rang and we sat down to an entree of foie gras (which I ate with gusto, believe it or not, it was great), then scallops with a tarragon and white wine sauce. The main was another amazing fillet steak with a wild mushroom sauce, and was followed by cheeses of many shapes and sizes. I say this in a way that makes it sound like it was quick, but realistically it took hours. I sat next to Raf, who extolled the virtues of wine and cheese and food matching. That guy is an enigma... I was just blown away. Every time I turned around the bastard had filled my glass again. The food and wine was just delicious, and I felt so spoilt.
Midnight rolled on, and we were all nicely drunk by that stage and singing right up to the countdown when all the music stopped. The moment came, and suddenly it was 2010. Everyone did lots of hugging and kissing (three times in the French fashion, Aleks thought all her Christmases had come at once) and then the music started up again and we all went a bit mad. We were
given party bags with hats and streamers and those roll-out paper whistle thingies, and also little pea shooters with premade rolled up paper wads... and so of course, once those came out, it was on for young and old. A pea shooting war was declared and it rained paper balls for about half an hour. It was like paintball, but not as messy, and just as painful when you get hit in the eye.
Somewhere in the blur Jenny, like all of us, got drunk and we realised she'd never get down the mountain without a snowmobile, which no one was sober enough to drive. We all decided to get our shit together and make a move, and I've never laughed so hard in my life as watching Aleks try to put snow shoes on Jenny. The trip down the mountain started with just Aleks, Jenny and I, but about halfway down we were joined by Raf, Jerome, Jemma, the other Jerome (also a ski instructor), and Merv. We stopped so everyone could have a cigarette, and suddenly Raf pulled out a bottle of champagne from his home town and 8 plastic cups! I was absolutely astounded - local
There Was Much Kissing
Les Gets, French Alps, France bubbly in the moonlight on a ski slope in the French Alps and singing Stevie Wonder. Once we'd finished that, we kept going. It took us about an hour. Then at the bottom Raf pulled out yet ANOTHER bottle, and we polished that off too, toasting to good company and a New Year. After that, I drove us all in the Outlander back to Merv and Jenny's, while the ski team drove their car (drunk driving in snow anyone?) and we all partied on until 5:30am.
Just so you all know, this was officially my best New Years EVER. Sorry if that offends anyone 😊
New Year's Day, or what was left of it, was obviously a write off and there's nothing to comment on.
The 2nd saw us do nothing else much again, except for a walk through town in Les Gets in the nice weather to get some photos and see the town itself, as we hadn't yet by that stage. It was a beautiful day, and all of the Adam's family was off skiing (sooo jealous, but it was getting very much beyond our budget) and we had the car so we went over
Feel The Love
Les Gets, French Alps, France to see if the van was still alive. Sure enough it was in the carpark, covered in snow, and we used the free time to clean all the ice and snow off so that when it came time to leave the next day, we'd be in and gone in a flash. See photos!
When everyone got back from their day on the slopes, it was decreed that a spa party was in order. After some dithering about trying to find cozzies (not what we expected we'd need) we were in the 40 degree hot tub, outside in the snow, with the sun setting and drinking French Champagne. What an experience! Getting out was a bit trickier, as the floor was not only freezing but slippery as well, but we made it through without injury. So many new sensations in such a short time was honestly making us spin.
That night we got together with Jerome and Jemma again for dinner out at the local cheese restaurant. It all started off well, and I've never eaten so much melted cheese in my life: fondue, raclette, it was just superb. Aleks was possibly the happiest she'd EVER been. We managed
to damage a heap more wine, and then in their wisdom the guys decided it was time to bring out the viperine... yep, you guessed it, SNAKE spirit. I don't want to go into too much detail, but suffice to say I have never felt so INSTANTLY sick in my whole life. It was just nauseating. Ugh... I'm feeling crook just thinking about it. The nausea passed though and we got back to the normal booze, and later as we finished we said our goodbyes to J & J and went home. Those two are an amazing couple, and we'll definitely keep in touch. Aleks and Jemma got on like a house on fire, and Jerome and I too. They're thinking about coming to Oz for a bit, and it would be wicked to show them around our way of life.
We slept well that night after eating so much cheese, and the next day it was off on another leg of the journey, destination Barcelona. But that's another story.
I really want to thank Merv and Jenny, and Emily and James too, because it was so amazing that they opened up their chalet for us and fed
us so full of beautiful food and wine, and introduced us to a whole new world of snow and it's associated lifestyle, and loaned us the wardrobe to match. It was totally unmitigated perfect hospitality, and we are so grateful. I hope we can go back to see them again there someday, I just have to wait till all my brain cells grow back.
I'm almost done, but before you go, I just had a thought and I need to share something with you.
When I reached the top of the climb that night on New Years Eve, I felt great. Absolutely unbelievably great, in a way that I've never felt before. I don't say that just to make myself sound the hero; I was a little out of breath and sweaty at first. It's just that after a few moments I really felt strangely fantastic. I SHOULD have felt like I was about to die from exertion after a hungover day's skiing... but there was nothing. No aches, no pains... my head was clear, and I felt strong. To be honest, it unnerved me a little because I haven't felt like that in a long time.
All Of Us In One Piece!
Les Gets, French Alps, France To stand up on the deck of the restaurant, at an altitude of 1489m, and gaze down through the crystal clear mountain air and down the slope into the valley where Les Gets sat twinkling, was a feeling I'd never felt before. It was night of course, but there was this ethereal, otherworldly white/blue glow lighting the whole world around me. All of a sudden I felt like I was the luckiest, most privileged guy on the Earth. There was no wind, no sound, just the whole universe and one small human being in it's midst. To quote something I once read, “I felt, as if it were by some strange blessing of God, I was the only one alive in all the world to witness the phenomenal splendour of his Creation.”
Look, you know me, it wasn't quite a religious epiphany, and I wasn't quite baptised in the Alpine air yet. But I have to say that it was a moment that I don't think I'll ever be able to replicate again. It reinforced to me that there are places in the world where a person can go where the rush of real life doesn't matter. You don't
even have to close your eyes, because you don't need to; you find your own space on the face of the planet that is uninhabited by anything else but you. And in that one immeasurable moment you look around and realise it's just you, and your heart pounding in your ears, and everywhere else... beautiful, beautiful silence. And it's in that moment that you are, in all sense of the word, truly free.
Happy New Year.
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AW
non-member comment
WOW !!!
Always like to read you blogs, but this one was ...... can't find the proper word - amazing.