Explore europe in a campervan

We’ve been up the mountain a grand total of three times now since arriving nearly three weeks ago!  There has been no more than a sprinkle of snow and conditions are generally not great.  I’m sure if we were here for a week’s holiday we would be making the most of it, but there’s no need to ride the ice every day when we have months ahead of us.

Our first run was (as you can see in the photo) rather late in the day to say the least.  We had to take the gondola up from Les Prodains after buying our lift passes, because the two chair lifts were both closed.  The short trip to the only chair lift open, which takes you half way up the Arare run was rock solid ice with barely any snow at all - nice little scrape for the first time of board-on-feet this year!  The Arare piste was not actually as bad as expected, with only patches of scratchy ice, and Simon even managed to get lots of side-of-piste jumps in.  Crot (the ‘home run’ down to Les Prodains car park) is also passable, as long as you watch out for rocks on the piste - usually a late-season feature.

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Here’s what we’ve been up to and some pictures…

Simon went to Chamonix to meet his friends Jamie and Becky for snowboarding - Jamie got stuck off piste on an icy/rocky hill and had to be rescued!

I went on some great walks around Seytroux - now I’ve seen - Bambou (the golden retriever I borrowed for a walk),  three big deer-type things in the garden, two littler deer with white fluffy tails, a black squirrel, a goat, three frogs, two huge atns nests, a couple of foxes, a badger and a cat with no tail (we climbed a big hill to see what that was!)

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Last week the doctor finally took off my plaster after 9 weeks in a cast!  This for an injury that is supposed to take 6-8 weeks to heal.  He didn’t really look at the latest xray - lucky really because I couldn’t discern any progress whatsoever from the last xray alongside.  No broken skin to report this time from that evil little circular saw they use (last time I had 3 cuts around my thumb).So what did I do next?  I went snowboarding!  The doctor didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no - he just made noises like ‘ppfffff’ which I took to mean, ‘It’s possibly not a great idea - if you fall on it your bone might just snap again.’  But I had been sent to the pharmacy to buy a (very expensive) wrist support and we were due to go on a day trip to Chamonix two days later to board with some friends of Simon’s.

(Random pictures to make this look more interesting)

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Since we now live in Seytroux, about 7km from the good slopes of Morzine/Avoriaz, I have taken to building a snow park in the back garden! I still drive into Morzine for snowboarding but only when the conditions are very good and the road is drivable.

On the first day I spent creating the first jump, I had my usual snowboarding gear on. Within 15 minutes I had my coat off, hat off and was down to just my hoody.   It’s hard, hot work collecting up snow and trying to compact it into a jump but good exercise I suppose. The first incarnation of my jump or kicker as it’s called in snowboarding was around 1.5ft high and really did kick you up in the air. So after the first run I had to build up the jump a little more, trying to make it longer and not throw you backwards/up quite as much. By the time it was getting dark the jump was much better, I had a few runs on it but as it was nearly dark I called it a day. More >>

It wasn’t until I wrote some notes that I realised we have actually been quite busy - so I will TRY not to go on too much…

On Jan 1st we drove to a nearby hotel to park outside and borrow a little internet, then to the Carrefour car park to park for the night and see if we could get any internet there. No we couldn’t.

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Well, the lift that used to carry people up the side of the valley from the car park below the gondola was unreliable last year…and this year they seem to have given up on it. To make matters worse the steps up the slope have been inexplicably removed so without snow it is like walking up and down a mud slide; when it freezes in the town it will be even more treacherous!

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We saw the season to an end with some style - but with one less person in our on-piste party.  Steele unfortunately had a pan-accident with some boiling water and pasta which badly burned his foot and he was unable to snowboard for the last few days.  If there had been any way to get on a snowboard he definitely would have done so his readiness to stay in the van told us just how bad his foot was.  No photos here because it’s too nasty-looking.

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I’ve just put some new photos in the gallery while we’re doing our laundry up in Avoriaz and having a beer and having some internet. Multi-tasking!

Started today with a great day’s boarding with Julie and Steele.  The sky stayed dry for once, despite some ominous looking clouds, and we got some sunshine too. It doesn’t look like we’re due any more snow, but we did get some last week on the higher slopes so we consider ourselves pretty lucky. More >>

The season is drawing to a close now and the snow is retreating.  Everywhere we go the rivers are raging with meltwater and there are waterfalls spouting out of the side of the mountains.  The pistes in Avoriaz are holding up ok and still all passable, but the final run at the end of ‘Crot’ directly to the car park is very patchy now and we may have used it for the last time.  Today we’re having rain, as forecast, and hoping that above 2000 metres altitude it’s cold enough for a bit of snow which would be a nice bonus.

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