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Published: January 9th 2010
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Game face
Getting the game face on for the first day of skiing, someone was looking confident...not... Well, I'm still alive and managed not to ski off a snowy French Alp and plunge to a bloody death - (not that there was any risk of that mum 😊 and actually managed to have a fantastic first White Christmas considering we were away from our families.
Our skiing adventure started with a disgustingly early departure from London (which funnily enough was covered in snow at the time) and landed in a cool Swiss -9 temperature. Ike! I was a tad scared as although I've survived Canberra winters before which get pretty darn cold, I had never experienced cold like this; where in the middle of the day in the mountains it would be downwards of -20 degrees; so I was hoping all the thermals and layering I had invested in would do the trick!
We had a bit of a drive from Geneva over the border to France and then onto our chalet in the wee town of Meribel, situated in the heart of the three valleys. The three valleys is the largest ski area in the world, with ski lifts linking 8 resorts together with over 600km of ski slopes. I'd love to say that by
Waiting for our pickup
Waiting for our daily pickup to take us a few minutes down the road to the slopes - there was no WAY we were walking in our ski boots - muchos painful at the best of times! end of the week I was a pro and managed to zip around and explore the entire area on every type of run, but alas no, apparently I'm not a late bloomer destined for a belated Winter Olympic birth in speed skiing. I wasn't a total car crash either mind you, but I definitely have a new appreciation for the Winter Olympics which I confess, never really interested me before and therefore never really tuned in to see slalom skiing but rather was disturbed by the weird 'sport' of Curling and switched off shortly thereafter.
I digress. Anyway, we had a fair bit of variety to play with for our group, some of who were snowboarders and others who were skiiers, all at varying levels of experience. There were 6 of us who were the 'beginners' who had never skiied before or hadn't in a very long time, 2 beginner snowboarders and the rest were either proficient in on or the other (and left the rest of us to shame).
After getting fitted with boots, skis and poles the day before, our first morning began with Lee, or English instructor, teaching us the basics - apparently the first
Eject, Eject!
Carnage on the kiddie slopes - we still can't quite work out how Rochelle managed to eject herself from her skis, but I find this most impressive. key thing to learn is balance. That sounded easy enough - in theory - however was a tad harder than it looked. Then of course, you have to know how to 'plough' - basically how to stop - which I thought was slightly ironic, coz either way you're gonna stop by ploughing correctly (forming a triangle with your skiis), or by ploughing into a) the side of a mountain b) a group of kiddies, or c) the ground face first.
Lee left us on the 'kiddie' slopes to hone our ploughing skills and warned us to take the lift back down and to NOT attempt to go down a run just yet as we weren't ready. Now, a few of us were spent (one with a particularly bad hangover from the night before which had been magnified by the altitude) but then there was Adam who had picked up skiing at a phenonmenal rate (b@stard) and James and I who were feeling confident and pleased with our progress.
So, feeling a tad cocky, we decided to try our newly found skills on the green run around the corner from our kiddie slopes - green being the easiest level
View from the Rhodos
Our view looking over the Meribel valley of slope, then it goes up to blue, red and black. For the first 20 metres all was going quite fine, until we came to a large drop which was apparently a slope, and that's when it hit the fan. Ploughing was just not gonna do the trick, we really need to know how to turn which we hadn't really learned yet, but there was no turning back. Adam was off with no problems, James not far behind him, and then - SMASH. I went down. I managed to get back up and try again then, SMASH - James went down. Feeling the need to make him feel better, I decided to perform an elegant yet massive stack behind him, skiis flying everywhere. When I went to retrieve them, I found that one of the toe clips on the ski looked broken, and therefore I could no longer ski.
This left us in the middle of a mountain and no where close to a lift to get up or down. James was okay and was able to ski, but being a good man he stayed with me and we slowly made our way on foot down the slope. We
The Beginners Group
Our beginners team on the second day, feeling a tad more confident - but not by much! finally managed to get to a halfway point where they had lifts going up and one of the French dudes managed to snap my ski back into place so I could ski again (though they told me to swap them as soon as possible as apparently it should not have snapped like that) and we were given directions to get down. We managed to ski across a blissfully gentle green run and to the main lift to get down, however we came out at the bottom of the lift. Unsure how to get up and after a rude French dude waved us away, we realised we would have to climb up the 100m steep hill to get to the lift.
OMG, it was a battle and half getting up that hill - mentally and physically. After an hour of trudging down the first hill, we were now climbing another with skiis on shoulders, in ski boots that felt more like 3 bricks were strapped to my feet and through snow that was knee-deep and unforgiving. By the time we got to the top (after several breathers) we were totally knackered.
Thankfully we arrived home to our Chalet with
Christmas Eve
Clouds coming in on Xmas eve an open fire and oodles of duty free grog (aka painkiller) and a lovely 4 course meal to fill our stomachs. The food was absolutely amazing every night, and gave us the energy to try again the next morning. I swapped my skis over (to spiffy purple ones this time - apparently it was fated) and by end of the week we could actually turn (!) and were on the blue runs and really enjoying ourselves.
We truely did get a white Christmas after we had fresh snowfalls and there was lovely powdery snow everywhere - the likes of which I've never seen in Oz before - which were really cool to ski on. James and I headed up early on Christmas morning to the slopes which were practically bare, leaving us to have the green run all to ourselves which was awesome.
So overall, a fantastic trip - though I still have a few bruises to show for it even now - but well worth the effort! James and I ended up pretty much at the same level (though was a bit faster than me generally but only as I was a tad scared over going too
fast - not because I couldn't) but I am proud to say that I can 'schuss' better than he could. Schussing is where you really sit back into your skiis in a squat position, with poles tucked under your arms in order to go really fast/fast on the straight and which I'm proud to say overtook James and beat him on several occasions - not that I'm competitive much, heh heh.
I'm sure we will going skiing again, but next time I will definitely listen to my instructor when they tell me to take it easy! 😊
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adrian lance
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Hi Tanya!
You are ALWAYS travelling it seems!! Happy Christmas and new years! We are going to Europe in March and hopefully itll be slightly warmer then! Look forward to catching up with you sometime Super Tanya! Adrian.