This is a photo of some scary glacial ice, just to the side of the piste. When we were ski-ing on the glacier at Tignes in October '09 there was only a thin covering of snow over this ice, and by the afternoon there were patches where you had to ski actually ON the glacial ice. It's as hard as concrete and pretty much impossible to turn on.
We got stuck on a large section of it, at the top of the run, and my daughter was actually scared (usually she's the fast, brave one telling me to hurry up), but I told her we could side-slip down it, which we did until we got back onto some snow. And we saw one of those international ski training teams trying to ski on it as well. It was very funny. It was obvious the skiers didn't want to go down it, but their coach made them, and one of them fell over :shock:
You can also see a scary-looking hole in the ice in this photo. That's why they advise people not to ski off piste at that time of year, in case you fall in a hole or crevasse.
