We had gust of wind last night up to 140km/h with another 15 to 20 cm’s of fresh snow and it all added up to a high risk 4/5 rating. The winds were still fierce this morning and only the lower half of the mountain was open with the new La Daille bubbles opening first. The morning didn’t start off very well as it was blowing a gale, you couldn’t see and I planted myself in about my second turn rendering my glasses useless for the rest of the morning. It did improve drastically thank goodness once we settled in to the day and the conditions and we ended up have a pretty good morning without a lot of options. My team skied the lower Triffollet three times and just when I was wondering what to do next Henry radioed to say that Bonnvie’s Drag had just open so we took the Mont Blanc chair and had seven great runs on Bonnevie’s before it became tracked out. Thanks Henry! It finished off the morning nicely and was a good reward for our perseverance.
I had a massive face-plant yesterday to win the ‘splat du jour’ award but today we had several candidates. Peter pulled off a beautiful head-plant-into-a-forward-roll followed soon after by another from Matt, which was equally impressive. TJ also had a couple today and we’re getting too old to be decking ourselves like that. Fresh snow with 100km/h winds and flat-light is a recipe for someone to be pilling in and today was the kind of tricky day were it was always a possibility. Fortunately everyone was fine and no one was injured.
I skied with Matt Brown today and his wife Catherine this morning for the first time. Matt is a good friend of Matt Chilton from their early days in Meribel together and says hello. Matt C is a regular reader of the diary so he’ll get the message.
Thanks to Geoff and Inga for the football yesterday followed by a curry. It was one of the best matches of the season, real end-to-end stuff, and it was absolutely brilliant. I was hoping for United for the first time in ages as I love Ole and it’s so nice to be rid of grumpy-guts Jose, and being with Geoff who is a life-long Man U fan it was incredibly tense. It’s always tense when you’re up 1-nil and your goalkeeper is putting in one of the best games you’ll ever see a keeper have. Fabulous!
The sun is forecast for the morning so hopefully people will behave as it’s going to be dangerous out there. Stay tuned!
PS Chris has changed some of the photos on the website so do browse through and have a look. Good work Chris!