Jo’s birthday present to me was four days skiing in Argentiere, Chamonix, with my old partners in crime Paul and Quen – probably the best present I could have as I really really wanted to go skiing this year and just didn’t think it was going to happen. As it was, it was 5 years since the last time I went, way too long a gap and it crossed my mind that I might have largely forgotten how to ski and be totally left behind by the boys.
Despite going the week before easter it was already late in the season and the village was pretty quiet. After arriving we went to sort out our skis, which we’d booked online. There had been some ‘mix-up’ with the ski booking agent where by we’d been offered skis which we were then not eligible for at the price paid. Having said that, once we’d agreed a different set it did turn out almost 50% cheaper booking online and I was really happy with my skis.
Quen was on his old Salamon x-scream skis and Paul and I shared the same set of Dynastars. Paul was less impressed then me – they were wide and pretty stiff, which made them quite hard work to turn. Certainly there was little ‘bounce’ effect if you were trying to do the classic turn-turn-turn down the piste. The upside was that they cruised through just about anything at high speed and were the most secure feeling skis I’ve ever been on.
This was good, because with it being late in the season we experienced most snow conditions on our first day : everything was rock solid first thing in the morning; within a couple of hours it had softened up considerably and was really quite nice to ski. By the end of the day it had turned to heavy sludge. The skis handled it all no problem – the same could not really be said for ourselves however and we were suffering by the end of the day, which was classic injury territory – tired legs, heavy sludgy snow.
We were near the bottom of our last run, just coming in off some pretty horrible off-piste from the bottom of the aptly named herse lift when Paul took a tumble, went head over heels a couple of times and landed on the piste like a wet fish gasping for breath – not good. That was to be the end of Paul’s skiing, with a suspected cracked rib.
Seeing Paul in pain didn’t do anything to calm my nerves. This was one thing that I really noticed – I’ve never been one to be scared or anxious by skiing but pretty much the entire time I was out there I was conscious of what a pain (literally!) it would be if I broke my leg or similar. I was more thinking of the logistics/practicalities of what that would mean, probably coz I’ve never actually hurt myself, but nonetheless it was an unwelcome new experience.
We obviously did our best to put that behind us and the new 3 days left Paul in the hotel bedroom watching men’s dancing on ice, women’s curling or similar. There was only one English channel on the TV and it really wasn’t good. Poor Bomber.
There was however an upside: being late March I had decided that a big ski jacket was really not needed, it was going to be hot on the sunny slopes. The next 3 days however were not, they were windy, cloudy, bloody freezing and I was totally unprepared with the kit I had brought out, so thanks Paul for lending me most of yours!
The conditions were ‘difficult’ for the remainder of our time, with a lot of the lifts closed. We did however get quite a lot of fresh snow and on a couple of occasions had a little window of good visibility to take advantage.
We had one run down le levancher – a very long run with massive off-piste options – where the fresh snow was relatively untracked and the visibility was good. This was when the skis really came into their own, the feeling of security that they gave enabled me to really give it the ‘what the hell’ approach, point my skis downhill and go for it. They were not the best conditions, the snow was deep but not light and fluffy, more wet and heavy! Nonetheless it was probably the best fresh snow skiing I’ve ever done, certainly the fastest, when going on the downside of the large humps that characterise this side of the mountain we picked up some serious speed which we just had to hold together till we could slow it down. Fantastic fun, but we only got one run of untracked, the mountain is huge but the skiers who come here love their off-piste and fresh snow is sought out by everyone so it very quickly disappears.
After a lot more snow we had another opportunity on our last day – we went up the valley to La Tour, which I think turned out to be a very lucky choice. We tracked over to the other side of the mountain to Vallorcine (the road was closed so we couldn’t drive directly to it). The weather was atrocious but this one side of the mountain seemed relatively clear, I think it was the only spot in the whole valley. Going up in the chair lift we rose over acres of virgin fresh snow through the trees and we could not believe our luck – but then the chair headed into the fog and the wind. The conditions were shockingly bad the last 3rd of the lift up so we didn’t take long to decide where we were headed. This was easier said than done – the snow at the top had been blown so you had clumps of heavy snow followed by wind-blown ice, with zero visibility. Nice. We didn’t really know the mountain here at all so were pretty lost – eventually we got below the clouds but the experience of getting there had taken it’s toll and we didn’t really have the go-for-it attitude that the conditions – deep and heavy again – needed. We also hadn’t found the fabulous looking snow that we’d seen going up the lift so we decided to re-try. It took us three runs to get to the great field of untracked that we’d seen – which we finally whooped through.
This vid was taken towards the end of the day, quite low down. Our legs were shot but I guess you never want to stop and video when there’s fresh snow to put your mark on.
Thanks Jo, it was the best birthday present I could have asked for!
