Bluebirds

Well the weather could not be more different from when we last posted a blog. It has literally been wall to wall blue sky and sunshine, we even did a spot of sunbathing yesterday on top of one of the peaks. 

With the amazing weather we spent some time in the park hitting kickers and I managed to land my first backside 360, unfortunately not without a couple of bruised bottoms. 

  On our day off we took advantage of the quiet pistes after the holidays and travelled the breadth of the resort over to Les Arcs, a resort twinned with La Plagne and connected via a cable car capable of carrying 200 people across a valley which holds a nature reserve. 

 A few views from just below the Aguille Rouge, looking out across Les Arcs...

 

Les Arcs is more popular with snowboarders with its big parks and big off piste lines, it is also home to some beautiful tree lined runs where we enjoyed cruising along practicing our ground tricks such as some butter turns as demonstrated by Nina in the video below.

This coming week we only have one of the Chalets is in use so we have moved into to the larger one to enjoy some of the luxury features such as very very comfy beds, Jacuzzis and log fires. There is also a very nice restaurant/bar 200m away where we get seasonnaire discount and have even been practicing our French with some of the locals who we met last week whilst enjoying a pint of belgian beer after work. 


With just one Chalet in use and just 4 guests between us we can split the evenings and mornings between us and also have even more time for boarding. The plan is to go out out and build a good kicker (jump) in the powder somewhere with Dan whilst the sun stays with us as its forecast for more heavy snow on Friday so we'll definitely get the GoPro charged and update you with what we get up to.


In the meantime a couple more pictures to share with you...

Ta Ta for Now.


India Signing out

Total Melt Down!!!

Or rather, quite the opposite! Yesterday was forecast to have around 30cm of snow - I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually double.  The resulting chaos is the melt down I was referring to....

The car after being parked for six hours in the afternoon.

As well as continued heavy snowfall, the wind was forecast at 30km/hr so all the freshly lain powder was swirling all over the place and creating huge banks of snow everywhere...

The 'pavement' to our apartment

The drive down to La Roche was pretty hairy when the snow squalls occluded all vision for a good two or three seconds!  Coming back home wasn't much better as we got forced into the verge by a snow plough and then we couldn't get going again on the hill so had to turn around (hand-brake stylee!) to go back down to La Roche where there was a flat bit to get going again.  


Overnight the storm continued and there were quite a few power cuts, including in our apartment - luckily we had some candles (thanks Lauren!) so we had an unplanned candle-lit dinner!


Although today (Friday) was supposed to consist just of light snow showers, it has continued in pretty much the same way through the day and with the wind creating weird shapes and huge shelves in the snow banks, it looks like we've landed on the Moon!

The whole resort was shut for most of the morning and even now there seems to be just a couple of lifts open.  With the high winds and the sheer amount of snow on the slopes, they're not safe to open.  The avalanche risk was was already at 5/5 before this latest snowfall so now it's really tricky!  The piste bashers can't get out as it's not safe for them to be on the pistes, so the snow isn't being managed and even if they could get out more snow is falling so it would almost be a pointless exercise!  There have been dynamite blasts going off all day as the pisteurs try to sort it out for everyone to get back out there. I'd say off-piste is pretty much out of bounds for the next few days!


So, another afternoon in relaxing.  Not so bad really, although it is a little clearer - maybe enough for a little sneaky run or two!  Whilst we decide, we're enjoying an ice cold Fanta, chilled down in Natures Fridge!

November signing off...

2012 begins...

Happy New Year everyone!  Hope you all had a good one - we saw the New Year in by drinking champers (thanks Mum & Dad!) and watching the fireworks in Bellecote through our apartment window!  Who says we're not rock & roll...!!

Our new set of guests arrived on Saturday afternoon so the whole process has started again - Saturday was another really long changeover day so mot much of a break in the afternoon.  Really takes it out of us, so we definitely don't go out riding on changeover day.

New Year's Day was a lovely day and we managed to get out and have a really good day on the slopes.  We made our way over to the Snow Park too - a bit of that on the vid below...!

We've had quite a few 'stay-in' days recently, the weather has been bringing lots of snow - this is good in two ways 1) we get to stay in the apartment during the afternoon and sleep without feeling like we're missing out on boarding; 2) loads more powder for the good weather days!!  Today is such a 'stay-in' day as the winds are high (forecasts said 30km/hr) and about 30cm of snow was forecast.  It hasn't stopped day so I reckon that could be right - we'll find abut in about half an hour when we have to go and dig the car out!

Yesterday was our day off so we went out all day and travelled quite a way across the resort (just La Plagne side - we're saving Les Arcs for a proper sunny day).  The wind was pretty fierce on some of the lifts over towards Montchavin and there were a couple of snow showers whilst we were out, but other than that it was a good day.

We stopped for lunch in Le Dou Du Praz which is a mountain side restaurant frequented mostly be walkers - it's a bit difficult to ski/board to due to the drag lift which goes around 90° bends (a bit tricky!) and then it's an uphill walk from where the lift drops you off.  Definitely worth it though, especially on a sunny day as they have decking out side with deckchairs and panoramic views and it's really cute inside...

For the rest of the afternoon we just cruised around the regular runs that we always do, finding little kickers that had naturally appeared in the powder at the edge of the pistes.  Here's the result of one that took Ian by surprise!

We also went up to the glacier the other day which was literally a twenty minute journey in several bubble cars, only to find that the final chairlift was shut and so were all the runs down except for a black - we'd have had a go at this except that we'd seen it from the bubble car and there had been an avalanche which had run right across the piste - considering the resort in still on high avalanche risk, we decided to give that one a miss for now!  The views were spectacular though...

 

Ian had a bit of a Hamlet moment with his helmet... "Alas, poor Yorick!"

We had our first proper meal out last night, as we decide to renege on going to Scotties as it turns out that the band we saw on our first visit there, who we really enjoyed, actually do the same set each week so that's a little dull.  Instead of immediate apres-ski we went home, had showers and went out for a civilised meal at Chez Marie.  Very nice too.

Well, it's almost time for us to go back to work so had better scrub myself up and get back out of my pee-jays!!

Ciao!!