Jumping, Kiting and Flapping
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!
We went over to the Swiss side of the Portes Du Soleil area, Les Crosets, to see if there was enough wind to get us going with a kite – there wasn’t really. As usual Simon managed a few runs while I managed to go a short distance in one direction and to let the kite fall out of the sky several times. There’s a fine line between enough wind to get you going and too much so it scares me! It was nice to get the kite out though and we’ll try to read the conditions better another time. We did laugh that our version of snowkiting is considerably less extreme than the footage we’ve seen of people scaling mountains and floating for minutes in the sky. We just potter this way and that way (if we’re lucky), then go home!
Every day in the last week we’ve been on the mountain – partly due to the lack of internet (which is thankfully back now). In the last couple of days we’ve spent most of our time in the snow park where I’ve been getting my confidence back going over the jumps – I lost it somewhere, but I’m not sure where. I can actually get a bit of air now when I hit the jump right – need to work on the style a bit though, with arms flapping everywhere! Simon’s progressed back up to the blue jumps, which just look enormous to me. There’s a couple of videos here so you can see how we’re doing.
At the weekend, after a good few hours on the slopes in the sun it seemed like a good night to hit the town – our first time out in the evening since we got here apart from a trip to the cinema. The effect of the credit crunch – or maybe it’s time to call it the recession now – anyway we were surprised to find the first bar we went to selling a bottled beer for just €3. Considering a beer anywhere here is usually €5 that’s pretty cheap and, of course, our drink of choice! Saturday is changeover day when people arrive to start their holidays so there were loads of (mainly British) people out in good spirits and the bars were packed. We went to Buddha Bar – standing room only and very cheesy music played by a pretty incompetent DJ; but cheap beer, The Cavern, also very busy and a few people like to have a bit of a dance, and finally Coyote Bar in the basement – dark and a bit seedy! They all play snowboarding DVDs on their big screens, so along with all the goggle-tanned faces you can’t forget you’re in the Alps!
