Hi Everyone,
I have just got home too ...
And I'm really tired as well. It took me 3 hours longer to get back to London than it should have done, because of the snow at Gatwick, and it was 3 a.m. when I got to my parents' house in London last night.
Yesterday, Sunday, was the last day for Old Andy, CatP and me. CatP and I went a little bit off-piste crazy and spent the day ski-ing unpisted moguls :-)
It was a beautifully sunny day and it just seemed a perfect chance to really get to grips with the moguls, especially now that we understand a lot more about how to ski off-piste safely :-)
Old Andy was with us part of the time and showed us how to ski them in style :)
I'm afraid my method of ski-ing moguls is to concentrate on not falling over, and just try to reach the bottom in one piece! CatP is better than me, but nowhere near as stylish as Old Andy ...
I have learned something else about ski-ing off-piste - not to go too near the pylons that hold up the chair-lift! One of my skis suddenly disappeared down a hole that magically appeared by one of these pylons and I fell over :cry:
However, the slope wasn't too steep there and I managed to get my ski back on OK :-)
We went off-piste under the top of the Aiguille Rouge chairlift next to the red Myosotis piste, and skied the moguls on the Epilobe itinerary un-pisted piste (under the Chaudanne chair), and on the way back home we skied part of the itinerary Aiguille Percee route and CatP actually took off her skis and climbed into the hole - the eye of the needle :-)
Hopefully we've got a photo of both us perched up there (it's a very steep slope) - me on skis on the route, and her off skis in the 'eye' :)
And CatP and I both caught the Altibus back from Les Brevieres to
Geneva at 4-20 p.m. on Sunday - Catp by the skin of her teeth with Old Andy helping by taking some of her luggage to the bus - because she insisted on ski-ing back to the chalet down the renowned 10 Km black Sache run, whilst I took the easier, but longer, route down on blue runs. If anyone is interested to know, it took me 25 minutes to get down from the 'eye' at 2,748m to Les Brevieres at 1550 on blues, and I wasn't trying to zoom down as the light went and even the blue was pretty chopped up with moguls and strange holes etc. and I didn't want to fall over and miss the bus :shock:
CatP said the Sache was in a pretty bad mogully state and it took her a lot longer than she was expecting (she did it in less than 20 minutes a couple of days before!).
I have had a really great holiday, and it was brilliant having a group of 16 J2Skiers and their friends and family with me :)
I think I got to ski with all of them at some point during the week, except for one of the beginners. It was great being surrounded by friends, and very handy sometimes - like the time I fell over in the powder and had 2 group members to pull me back upright again :-)
Each group member got to do their own thing each day, but this always involved being with at least one other member of the group during part of the day. No-one was left to ski alone, and generally we skied around in small groups :-)
And we all got on amazingly well - the noise at supper time was quite deafening, as we all recounted the highlights of the day to each other :-)
I will write some more about the holiday tomorrow, but I'm too tired right now :cry:
We have lots of videos and photos etc. but they're on everyone's individual phones and cameras and it's going to take a while to get them sorted and posted up...
