This winter we are not skiing as I have just recently recovered from Pneumonia. I was sick the whole month of November while on holiday. December was a recovery month for me. At the onset of the new year I started working again fulltime. Normally we would go in January and since I just started working back to a 100% level, we thought its best that I go slow with my physical activity, thus, no wintersport.
Helaas. I can only reminisce the skiing holiday we had last year.
Coincidentally I still have a few entries from our last wintersport holiday that I haven’t posted. I was meaning on posting a review of the slopes in Valloire – Gallibier Thabor ski area. I did with Valmeinier ski area. But I am not yet in the mood to post my slope review of Valloire, so I will let that drop off for now. Yes, I sometimes blog topics based on my mood =)
So I was looking at our last years’ skiing holiday pictures and came across with the ones of our third day on the slopes. The sun didn’t shine and visibility wasn’t perfect, but it was all still managable. It was a fine day in the Alps, Dutchman and I enjoyed skiing and snowboarding together. However, towards the end of the day the weather changed in the mountains. The clouds turned grey and mist started to slowly shroud the slopes.
My first time ever skiing in a heavy mist environment condition was almost a decade ago in Austria. It wasn’t a very nice experience at all as I was just learning to ski. We were caught in the middle of a snow storm up in the mountains. It was almost zero visibility and we had to plough our skis through knee-high snow powder! Luckily our instructor was wearing a bright blue ski suit so we could see him at least from a 5-metre distance.
Fast forward 10 years and I am much better now with my skiing and can handle the mist well enough to even go down myself.
That is what actually happened. Dutchman and I got caught up with bad weather in the mountains. It was not a snow storm though, just a heavy mist. It was also past 17:00 which means all the lifts have closed for the day. We have no choice but to ski down through the mist.
It can be a bit difficult to do a ski run through the fog because you really have no idea where you are on the slope. It’s all white and the horizon looks flat, but it’s not flat. And you do not know as well what type of slope you are standing on. I am just lucky I didn’t end up on a black slope. So for safety’s sake, one can only go slow.
As well as during misty conditions, I use other skiers and snowboarders as my reference point, but since it was past 17:00 there was almost nobody left in the mountains. There were a trickle of skiers here and there and I had the Dutchman still, however halfway through the run we somehow managed to lose each other. It can get a bit challenging to wait on someone in this kind of weather condition because you can mistakenly take the wrong turn and follow a different slope, which was what exactly happened to us. So yeah, I ended up being on my own. I just kept going, gliding all the way down the slopes until I reached the tree line. The mist slowly lifted up and I saw the resort village.
At the bottom of the slope I was reunited with the Dutchman. Indeed, he took a different turn and ended up going down on a different slope than mine.
We finished the afternoon with some Après Ski drinks at a local bar café in the centre of town.
Après Ski in France, French style is a bit boring, unless you go to a foreign owned bar then you’ll get some upbeat music going. But nothing to worry, we are used to it and we somehow learned to like the laid back nights in the French side of the Alps =)
Travel Period: January 2014
Destination: Valloire (Savoie – Rhone-Alpes), France
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Happy Travels! Enjoy Life =)