CRASH, BANG, PAIN - Must be Skiing 2010

The below is a combined missive from my last skiing holiday with friends from December last year (2010). It was originally two e-mails split over a couple of day but I merged it into one.

 
Just to let you all know we are still alive, albeit a little worse for wear. Internet access is limited here so I have not had a chance to do much online.
The ski resort itself is very good - excellent for learners as most of the slopes are green or blue. The town itself is massive - spread across a few valleys it could rival Basingstoke for size, although the skiing area is not as big as most we would go to as a family. The locals are not so friendly, most resolutely refuse to help if they hear English or are just a little rude. Apparently this area was a "Hidden gem" for a long time and has only recently started to receive foreign visitors in big volumes.

It’s fine though, we all speak fluent Foreign (To answer the famous question, how do you speak a foreign language? - Speak louder!) Ken is especially good at this.

The drive down was uneventful, quite slow as the Lolvo is not a rocket but steady and from my seat, very comfortable. To Dover I managed 37mpg and was not trying for economy, but the faster French Auto routes were not as kind and the average by the time we got here was down to 34/33mpg (It seems I will be returning with a high bill).
We arrived at silly AM, and slept in the cars in an outdoor car park. It was not all that cold (+4c) which explains the lack of snow…
There was very little snow when we first arrived, none at all on the roads and very little around the town. The first day we managed to get the rentals but not a pass for this area, so we went to the next resort along for a half day. The weather then was excellent, very sunny and although the snow was thin down low it was fine at altitude.
There were very few falls on that first half a day, and it filled us with confidence for the rest of the holiday and our utter invulnerability.
The second day showed that we were not as good as we thought for the most part, Stubby has a new nickname - Stack it Stubby. We all ached a bit after the first day - not a good sign.

We went shopping on Sunday night - Iddly you will be pleased to know I have bought my own goggles and no longer need to steal yours, Mum you will not be allowed access to steal them from me.

Monday passed almost incident less, Ken replaced Stubby as the least stable, Dom continues to fall often and Chris has been mostly boarding on his own as we can't keep up with his pace. We tried to find a bar at night, but everything was shut up in our area. We went to the lower and larger part of the resort to find something open - came across one bar, with no WiFi and a single beer on tap. Turns out the French don't party into the night, which suits me just fine.

Oh and I almost forgot, Ken cooked us dinner beforehand, a nice meal of Smash instant mash, baked beans and some locally bought very expensive sausages - which I am certain was, or contained horse penis. I ate very little, in fact I only ate the beans which has proved unfortunate for all of us. It snowed heavily at night, so it was a nice fresh layer of snow for the morning.

Today was another good day for skiing, except I have had my first "stack" of the holiday, in spectacular fashion. On a relatively shallow blue run I opted to pull next to Stubby and surprise him by shouting HELLO! in his ear (and smacking him with my pole), it didn't work out so well for me.

He panicked and immediately turned his snowboard level with the slope to stop, unfortunately I was right next to him, and his snowboard was now across the front of my skis, and not moving. It dug in, forcing my skis to stop but not my body, which had enough momentum to cartwheel me head over heels at least once, probably twice and possibly several times.

It hurt, quite a lot.

I seem to have taken a decent hit to the jaw on the way, enough to make me see stars for a second or too and cut my inside lip somewhere. Got a hell of an aching jaw and teeth so it’s probably going to become a nice bruise. For the official record it was a bar fight that caused this and the other guy is in hospital or something.
Anyhow now my entire upper body aches, more than it did previously. It’s ok though, because Ken got a bad hit on his bad knee, Stubby stacked later and hurt his rib and Dom is lazy so we used our collective pain as an excuse to stop for crepes. I like crepes.

Team Skoda (Bluntly, Stubby and Dim) were going to go visit a friend of Stubby’s in an Italian resort tonight, its 60 miles and two hours ish away but heavy snow has made them turn back. There is now about two inches on the previously clear roads and the temperature has dropped to about 0c so perhaps the drive home will be more eventful...
 
Well that's the story so far, we are all still alive at this point, if a little battered and bruised. Maybe I will find a WiFi spot later in the week and give you a further update later down the line.
 
Oh and for the record, at this point Ken has not done his car any mischief, nor has he rolled over anything but himself. Long may it continue.
 
Over (and over, and over again) and out.

Well, It turns out it’s that time again. Chris is adamant that I accompany him to the wiffi lounge again so I feel compelled to write another update, this time detailing only today.
 
As seems to be the recurring theme of this holiday we woke at 10 (Take note mum, no 8am Nazi wake up calls on this ski holiday). Stubby is mostly unable to move and not feeling the love for another day of boarding and Bluntley is complaining that his knee hurts. I can't lift my arms above my head and Dim is primarily a lazy sod so we were not in a hurry to leave the apartment. Chris for the record is fine, and left us to our own devices so he could board unhindered again today.
We lounged around for a while, and eventually decided that we should do something - but what? I suggested a relaxing day of sledding on the purpose made sled track at the other end of the resort. "How could it possibly go wrong", that’s what I said this morning.

So we padded ourselves up, beat on Stubby a little to convince him to come and opted to take the Lolvo rather than walk to the part of the resort where the sled rentals and the cable car that would take us to the start of the run was.
Renting was cheap, very cheap as it happens - €4 each for a half day. We had a couple of occurrences getting to the lift (There was a small slope). Of course we wrote that off to simple learning the ropes stuff then got on the lift. I must admit, I was expecting a more dramatic height to tumble down so when the cable car deposited us only quarter of the way up the mountain I was disappointed.
We followed the single sign we saw with a sled on it and decided this had to be the start point, right? So after sitting on the sleds and throwing ourselves off the edge of the made slope by the lift we were surprised to get only 50 or so metres before being trapped on the edge of a river. Some arguing later we agreed this was not the way we should have gone. We had to walk back up the near vertical 50m slope and make our way back to the beginning.

It turns out that was hard work and we all gave up after five steps (give or take) and chose to walk across to the nearby ski slope and go from there. Perfect we thought - a nice, wide, steep, groomed slope to start from.
Lots of speed and crashes later we found ourselves at the bottom with only some broken parts, and almost fit enough for another go. On the second run we found that to get to the start you had to walk all the way up a slope behind the lift exit and the sledding trail winds its way down a course only a couple of meters wide, with high banks each side and lots of bends. Overtaking became difficult, and normally resulted in high speed crashes. Obviously we crashed a lot. Which hurt – a lot.
Anyway, I am being kicked out of the WiFi spot now, French don't like to hang about when it comes to closing!
 
Suffice it to say we had a few incidents, but kept at it all day. Ken nearly went off a cliff into a river; he was only stopped by the crash netting which he got wrapped in. I have pictures because obviously I wouldn't help until he passed me his camera so I could take evidence.
 
The angry French lady just turned the lights out, bye.
 

Oddly this seems to be all I ended up sending out, no idea why as it was quite a while ago but we did eventually make it home safe, no one died and nothing was majorly broken.