Explore europe in a campervan

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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After drowning our sorrows in a large barrel (!) of red wine on Friday night in Julie and Steele’s van we didn’t set out too early on Saturday!  We needed to get a new strap for one of Simon’s snowboard bindings which had snapped the day before (when we tried to get back on the piste after inspecting the poor van!)  Bad idea.  Saturday is changeover day when excited fresh new holiday-makers arrive at the resort wanting to hire their skis, boards and boots.  But eventually we got to the front of a queue and the new part only cost €4 which was good news. More >>

While at Les Prodains we’ve waxed our snowboards.  This needs doing periodically; actually most people would probably have it done before each week’s holiday on the mountains so we’re a bit late!  We had the boards fully serviced at Big Dreams snowboard shop in Wareham, Dorset, before we came away, so after 7 weeks of boarding it was well overdue.

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The weather’s been so good that I’m starting to worry about the snow disappearing!  For the last 6 days we’ve had nothing but blue skies and sunshine, give or take the odd cloud here and there.  We’ve seen lots of people parapenting – they jump off the mountain with a hang-glider type wing and float across the valley for hours, as well as speed-flying – a smaller wing which enables them to skim the snow on their skies and jump off big drops.  We even saw a young boy flying a small kite while he skied down the piste – I can only call that snowkiting really!

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