Snow, snow and more snow...

Okay, finally got my 3G card working, so I have limited internet access. Not long until everyone arrives, so I reckon this is going to tail off rapidly.

Anyhoo, yesterday morning…I set my alarm early, and the morning felt, if I’m honest, a bit like Christmas used to. Instead of hitting ‘snooze’ and rolling over, I rolled the other way. Eventually, I came to a stop by the window, whereupon a flailing hand eventually found the curtain and drew it back. Sure enough, snow on the bows of the tree, and more falling. So, a quick breakfast (another fix for my worsening Nuttela habit), and up Rendl, quick as you can say, ‘Tourists won’t think to come up here straight away’.

Tony’s prediction turned out to be correct. For the first few runs, we had the place pretty much to ourselves, with a good few inches of snow on the pistes, and more off it. It’s amazing what a few inches will do (ahem). Unfortunately, the hordes started arriving. From the top of Riffle 1, we could see them pouring out of the gondola station, like ants. If we could have poured hot water on them, we would have done. Of course, we didn’t, since that wouldn’t have done the snow much good. Oh, and the small matter of scale… I’ve only been here a couple of weeks and I already consider everyone else to be ‘tourists’. The great thing about being here for a while is that we don’t have to ‘make the most of’ all the time on the slopes, so we quit at 2pm, when the visibility began to fade…

So, the snow really came down last night. Put it this way: For those of you who stayed at HK last year…y’know the pavement on the walk down to the centre? Well, instead of a pavement, there was a two foot vertical rise of snow, which then went to the wall at forty-five degrees. Yeah, lots of snow. We eventually made it to the lifts at about 11am, then headed up the Gampen quad. It was snowing heavily enough to warrant having the cover down, and it was blowing a gale at the top. The snow was deep, but a little on the heavy side – we dropped off the side, and I immediately planted into the snow, where I remained for about ten minutes, trying to dig myself out. Anyway, once we reached the trees, the visibility was much better. Not a lot of surfing through clean fields of powder, but a lot of bouncing around. It was on this run that I finally decided to invest in a helmet. I don’t really like the idea of them. Hell, I wear one playing rugby, which I’m not particularly keen on, but it makes logical sense to. It’s the same with snow. If I’m ploughing through trees at speed, I have no real reason not to wear one, so there we go. Sylv got me a discount at sNo Control too (see what they did with the title, there?). So new helmet, new hat (I know!), and lunch. Well earned, I think, after one run. Dex even managed to talk me into getting a helmet with built-in headphones because, well, why not? Luckily, they had one XL helmet (naturally) left.

We managed to squeeze a few more runs in, anyway. I have to say, I’m impressed with the helmet. It’s actually pretty comfortable, and the strap means my goggles don’t fly off my head every time I face plant (which happens quite often). Sylv managed to bury herself for ten minutes, at one point yelling, ‘Help me!’. I took photos, which I think helped.

And another day passes.

Folk are arriving in three days, and I think the weather’s going to be perfect. This from Ben, last week…

Am predicting a metre dump on the Thurday and Friday before we arrived then Blue skies with dumps each night for the week we are there... optimism is everything

Well, he’s half way there…