Christmas in the Alps

It’s a funny thing being out here in the Alps at Christmas.  Christmas isn’t generally celebrated by a day of complete shutdown like it is in the UK.  The French and Swiss normally have a big family meal on Christmas Eve and then spend their Christmas Day either working or skiing.  Both myself and Mrs Burrows were working on Christmas day so it passed as a bit of a non-event.

better than last year

I had planned to cook Mrs Burrows a nice breakfast and open presents in front of a roaring electric heater but in fact, the phone rang the night before and I found myself basking in the sunshine at the top of the ski lift in Morgins, waiting for my client to turn up for a 2 hour private lesson on Christmas day.  It was a great lesson, a parallel level skier wanting technical advice on how to improve.  This is quite a rare lesson to get (the usual is debutants) so it more than made up for not being able to rip open wrapping paper!

The mountain actually gave me my Christmas present the day before anyway, as yet another big dump of snow meant that on Christmas eve, I was up skiing deep powder along with a few mates on snowboards.  Not wanting to bust my knees right at the start of the ski season, I settled for making pretty S shapes in the snow while they jumped off things and generally fell over loads.  I took a video on my phone that you should be able to see below which shows you just how much snow there is out here in the Alps so far this winter.    

It seems as if Europe is certainly where the snow is at right now and I don’t think that since the lifts have opened, I’ve skied on the piste yet, except for instructing and even then, the temptation is to jump off the side and into the deep stuff.

I’m trying to make a point this year of going out skiing with people who are better than me and this is leading to discoveries of lots of hidden valleys and gullies that are full of snow and where to go according to what conditions.  It’s been great and I’ve never skied so much snow in my life.

I’m also learning to take the right tools for the right job and I can highly recommend the Scott Pure’s that I bought in the summer.  At 101mm underfoot, they float really well and are fast becoming my favourite for days when it’s dumping up top.

As if loads of snow before the tourists arrived couldn’t get any better, the skies have cleared for the arrival of the masses at Christmas and New Year and we are now teaching under bluebird skies.  Nice and warm for instructors who have until now been absolutely freezing in the fog, cloud and mist.  It’s suntan time!

Despite all of the roads now having been cleared of ice and snow, it seems that once the visitors to the region have managed to get the snow chains on their cars when there was a little bit of snow around, they can’t be bothered to take them off again.  We are all very amused at the moment by the sight of expensive low profile car tyres being ruined by clanking about on snow chains on clear dry tarmac.   Please people, take them off – it’s not due to snow for a week and you’ll be able to get much faster and more comfortably…

online here

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Christmas madness over

The madness that is Christmas and New Year has gone and all that remains are some tired seasonaires, aching livers and a nasty cold that all of the locals seem to have caught, including yours truly.

day 2...

Christmas and New Year here in Chatel was off the scale in terms of how busy everything got. A town that has 1200 people in the off-season suddenly swelled to over 20,000. To compound not being able to get a seat in my favourite bars, Cheeko, Hughsey and The Afghan turned up from around the world, intent on turning their ski break into a stag do. We drank a lot and in a way, I’m glad they are gone as I don’t think I could have done much more. The highlight for them was me naked and throwing up off the balcony of our apartment just an hour after New Year struck.

Last week saw me teaching my first cours collectif group with 6 kids of various ages and nationalities for the week. It was fun and by the end of the week, my group consisted of 5 Dutch kids and one French one. The French I am fine with but by the end of the week, I think the skiing of the Dutch kids had improved beyond my ability to speak Dutch which goes to show that kids learn a lot more by seeing and doing than by techie explanations.

A surprising development today in Chatel in that it has started to rain, destroying what remaining snow there was in the village. We could really do with a couple of days of snow to refresh the slopes around the Portes du Soleil that are patchy and icy.

A full complement of seasonaires in the village means that the various local nights in the bars of Chatel are going off in spectacular style. On Tuesday I was at the School Disco night in The Avalanche Bar which went off with plenty of cheesy music to keep us entertained. There were plenty of grown up schoolgirls in attendance whilst all I could find was my original school scarf which I proudly wore all night. When school kicked out, we continued onto Sloopy’s Disco under the Super Chatel telecabin until about 4.30am when it was time to stagger home. I have a souvenir from Sloopy’s of a panama hat which I have no idea how I got but clearly was wearing all night as it is covered in beer and Jager.

January is supposed to be a quiet month but there are a few things going on like the Grand Odyssey de Savoie which is a Husky race but I think we are all looking forward to it getting back to normal before the February half-term madness.

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online here

It's Christmas

And like turning on a light switch, all of a sudden there is a million people in Chatel, all clogging up the highstreet, parking everywhere and walking down the middle of the road. The shutters on hibernating chalets are being thrown open and there are finally people walking around the streets with skis on shoulders. Christmas has arrived.

The Chatel locals are lamenting the loss of the free vend pool table in the Avalanche Bar, which has now been replaced by seasonaires and the occasional tourist. The tourists tend to go to the other bars in town and it’s always interesting to see the looks that the tourists give to the locals as they high five everyone that they know in the bar (which is invariably most of those with seats at the bar and their own glass appearing to drink for free). You can see the tourists thinking ‘Who is that guy? How does he know everyone? Must live here – sooo lucky..’

The party nights have started at the L’Avalanche Bar and L’Escalier and Tuesdays through to Thursdays and on weekends, you can take you pick of live DJ’s Muff and Jason Shutt as well as resident local bands. The missus doesn’t start work in L’Escalier normally until about 5.30pm which means that by the time these nights start at about 10pm, I am completely wasted and have to go home. This isn’t a bad thing though considering I have to get up and go rid the world of bad skiing the following day.

Last week I was teaching a group of Kenyan students from Nairobi from an international school who were over learning how to ski. Considering some of them had never seen snow before and the lowest temperature that they have there is apparently 25 degrees, the -10 at the top of Morgins was something of a culture shock.

The weather here was really cold all last week, the lowest I saw was -14 going over the Pas de Morgins one morning but it’s warmed up considerably and snow is expected on or about Christmas day.

Of course, for many of the seasonaires, Christmas day is a work day and I know that my missus will be working flat out from now until early January. The most that we will manage is a romantic cheap champagne Christmas breakfast of some sort before we both go off to work…

Merry Christmas all.

published here and here