Day 51

Woke up at 7.15am this morning, read for a bit then got up and met Matt, Lise and the others downstairs for breakfast at eight thirty.  I’m not a big breakfast person so all I had was a bowl of cornflakes and an orange juice.  By 9.30am we were kitted up and waiting to catch the lift up for our first run.

When I say lift, what I really mean is train.  Yep, they have a train (or funiculaire) that takes you from Val Claret, where we’re staying, to the base of the Grande Motte glacier.  The ride lasted less than 10 minutes and was much nicer than taking a chairlift!  We intended on starting the day with an easy blue run but somehow ended up on a black run instead.  The snow was beautiful but visibility was only so-so.  It had been snowing lightly overnight (in fact it was still snowing when we started the day) and we had about 10 cms of fresh snow.

We skied until about 12pm then headed back to the UCPA for lunch.  Headed back out around 1pm and skied for another four hours.  I was absolutely buggered by the end of the day.  The place is so big that by the time we decided to head back it took an hour to make the trip – up a lift, down a run, up another lift, down another run…

The longest run we did had a vertical drop of 1200 meters, so who knows how long the actual run was!  The runs seem to go for ages and the lifts seem to go on for just as long.  The trail map says the ski area, known as Espace Killy, has 300km of piste skiing, 2 glaciers, 88 chairlifts and covers an area of 10,000 hectares.  One of the best parts was that we never had to wait in line for a lift once which was a welcome change from previous experiences at Mt Buller.

Had a stretching session in the corridor with my room mates and the others when we got back, complete with beers and music.  Just had a shower and I feel refreshed – muscles are a little sore, but I survived the first day.

Headed downstairs for some ‘Welcome Drinks’ and music at 7pm, then dinner and probably more drinks.  I’m pretty wrecked from today so think I’ll sleep well tonight.  Lessons start 9am tomorrow.

Oh yeah, and I broke my camera today…