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Jump time...
...instants before it became crash time and my dodgy landing left me sliding down the rest of the slope on my back!After a season's hiatus the (not particularly) annual skiing road trip to the Freitag family chalet was back on, and this time although numbers were down Mandi, Steve, Chris and I managed to beg steal and borrow my folk's car and start the long drive south to Switzerland.
It was a glorious day as we headed down through France, but when we arrived at the chalet the temperature had dropped to about minus 10 C, and we had thigh deep snow to dig out of the pathway dowm to the chalet - and plenty more to be tackled in order to clear the parking place. In my own usual style with anything to do with the cold weather, I started off shovelling and digging for all I was worth, but soon enough my frail, geriatric body had given out and just like in Borneo I had to lean on Chris for support to stop myself slumping to the ground after coming over incredibly dizzy (I probably should get that looked at!). Luckily for the boys, we had Mandi “Shovelly Joe” Mason on hand to finish off the job properly and complete what us boys were struggling to do!
The
Charmey cable car
Heading up in the Sun in high spirits next day we hit the slopes at Lecherette, taking on the the rope pull lift to get back up to speed. Unfortunately Mandi took a fall on her wrists during the morning which was giving her a lot of pain. Despite our rather tame showing in the shovelling stakes the previous evening, the boys were very much of the “stop being such a girl and get on with it” frame of mind – and we were pretty aghast to find out on our return to England that Mandi had in fact broken her wrist in that fall and it was pretty crazy that she was able to continue snowboarding at all! Ooops!
The snow conditions were some of the best I’d ever experienced in that area of Switzerland, and so we got some good skiing in, as well as some good falling too! I had started practising my jumps and the photo in this blog makes in look like they were coming along quite well. What Steve luckily didn't capture was the landing which involved skis and poles departing in all different directions and me sliding quite a long way down quite a steep slope on my backside.
Charmey in the snow..
At least we could always find Chris! Another comedy fall involved me trying to show the boys how it was done in the mogul stakes. After we had taken a slight wrong turn we had to go off piste to cut the corner and return to the run. The guys negotiated the bumps and moguls safely, and I decided to attack them with a bit more vigour. Unfortunately I managed to miss seeing a massive ridge at the bottom of the slope, and so with Steve and Chris watching I sailed off this ridge into the air completely unprepared, ski tips pointing skywards before landing heartily on my back. Apparently it looked so spectacular that Steve even had to wait until I had moved and shown I was alright before ripping the piss out of me!!
The skiing may have had its ups and downs, but hiring a snowboard for 2 days to give that a go was definitely a good decision. Fortunately the 2 days I had spent on a board about 10 years previously seemed to stand me in good stead, and I was able to make toe and heel turns and generally get myself down the slopes without too much difficulty. Steve and
Paris - view from the motel...
...unfortunately this is mainly due to my camera having a decent zoom rather than us staying in a good location!! I even made to crazy decision to take on the Moleson black together on my second day snowboarding. The technique wasn't pretty – but we made it down there in one piece! Although, the mogully second section was achieved with a combined total of zero turns between us! There's nothing wrong with slip sliding down a whole mountain!
Away from the slopes we had also discovered the delights of Swiss cheese and every journey home from the slopes involved stopping at every cheese shop en-route (and being Switzerland there were many!) to sample and purchase the local produce!
Soon enough our week on the slopes had come to an end and we had to head back home again, but as a final send-off we had decided to go via Paris and Mandi had managed to get us guest list entry to a club that used to be one of her old haunts. It was a great way to finish up the holiday before the inevitably hungover drive home the next morning!
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