Nothing tricky

Mon 30th: Went up Brevent alone for a few hours. Tested out some Black Crow Corvus 191cm. Not too fond of them. Seemed like an attempt at a heavy charger but too floppy to pull it off. Still skied for the morning on them. Snow was OK on the pistes so went up top bubble for the first Charles Bozon of the season. It was already cut up to hell and the moguls hard work with the heffer skis.

Met up with Glen from work for a few easy runs. Found out part of the reason the skis were sucking so badly was the brake catching the snow heavily when on edge. Bent that a bit and they were better but still nothing special.

Nice relaxed morning. Nothing tricky.

Meh

First Flegere powder day

29th Dec: Forced Jason and Charlie to get up early with me. Good choice. Made it to Flegere by 10am, and lapped the bottom chair waiting for Index. Got almost the first lift up Index.

First run down the black was epic with some really deep powder although occasionally tails clipped the moguls underneath. Then another 3-4 runs trekking further and further to skiers' left. Some light fluffy powder.

Final run of the day traversed far left into the Floria runout. Lots of slides everywhere. Despite the avalanche control and debris hopefully having sured up the terrain a little, we stayed safe picking the terrain appropriate. Last stretch under the 3 man chair was 1 long, fast, untracked run through a large gully. Awesome. Called it a day as Charlie had work. Flegere, where we had one of the best powder days of last season, was awesome as usual.

A beautiful day

Jason and I's tracks with Charlie above

Slides everywhere...

Chaos

28th Dec: Standard Xmas / NY changeover. The airport was manic, as were the roads and resort. Out of the house by 5:15 AM. Back by 11.45PM. Snow hit the roads at 6:45pm and all hell broke loose. Jacknifed lorries all up the Autoroute Blanche. Reports of crashes and closed roads from Megeve to Les Gets, but managed to get away with it. Score. Not bad compared to some days. Beer + up early for a powder day…

All that havoc and the views are still stunning...

Leftovers

27th Dec: Bummed out about the skiing yesterday. Heard reports of amazing day at Le Tour (big surprise) and fancied trying to find some fresh. Delayed but made it for 9.30am with Liam. Under the Tête was roped off. Avalanche conditions pretty dicey at 3 rising to 4 on N/E slopes. Lots of sluffs and slides about. Saw some dribbler trigger part of the cornice above the slope by side slipping down it.

We stayed careful. Did a few reserved laps near the chair avoiding the big open faces. Really good snow. Fresh and soft cut up fresh. Quite a few rollers and mini drops. After three good runs we ran into huge queues.

Met up with Frank and did the run below the helicopter landing to get back to Le Tour side and to smaller queues. Unbelievably good snow. Hardly any tracks. Best run to this point. Decided to do another lap. Fought the crowds and rocks to the chair for another amazing lap then a few gullies back to the cat track. Finished off with 2 great runs by the Poma as it was untracked.

Called it when the queues got even bigger. Liam and I were both chuffed at an awesome day and happy we got up early.

Fondue at Liam’s for lunch then browsing town then a chilled out evening in preparation for the nightmare Christmas/NY changeover Saturday.

Aiguille du Dru poking through

Bluebird morning 

Liam at the end of the day (our tracks far left in background)

Walking in Les Houches

26th Dec: Work early – miss the second powder day of season…. Not happy. Charlie and I made it up to Les Houches for the first time (skipped it last season as no pass) by 1pm with the intention of skiing. Spent most of my time walking.

Within the first 100m I double ejected landing to flat. Rocks poking through everywhere. Off piste below the chairs was tracked but really good. Well, until the last bit.

Got stuck. Walked out. Got stuck again - no snow, just rock and trees. Walked / slid 200m to the run. Not best pleased.

Found a French guy who we’d seen skiing under the prarion bubble. Chatted and skied with him. Few runs off the other side. Did a couple of nice pillow lines down a steepish face but lots of walking between. Best skiing of the day. After 2 laps agreed to ski under prarion. Snow was amazing at the top. Then got very, very, very bad. Every turn and you hit something (mostly hard branches luckily). Finally found the path out. Walked up. Skid down. Shit day in all honesty. Our own fault knowing how bad the base was in fairness.

Evening – got a bit merry. Went out for cocktails at Munster with Liam, Keane, Danni and Holly. No one wanted to go out so home at 2. Promises made with Liam for first lifts at Le Tour.

7am outside the apartment

Skied down the middle pillows, good fun but a little rocky

Christmas

Christmas Eve: No calls for skiing at 9am (big surprise) so in bed until 12. Turned out Le Tour was completely closed due to wind anyway. Glad we didn’t fight the crowds at GM / Brevent.

Lazzzzy day. Pub for happy hour. Had people round for drinks. Canadians, Shay, Nick and Liam later. Lively drinks. Headed to Munster until it closed. Then Monkey until it closed. Met loads of people. Then Amnesia with the Canadians and Cormack from Munster. LOTS of free Champagne. Great night. GREAT night.

Christmas: Lazy day playing PS3 and watching TV. Rain. More rain. Made a huge tartiflette for Christmas dinner. Put in a whole reblechon. Gorgeous.

Pub for a few drinks and to say happy Christmas. Work early tomorrow so film and bed. Get called up at 11pm by Keane and Liam. Out until 2 turning down drinks from mates and strangers. Hard but glad to get out. Great ending to an awesome Christmas.

Hating life

A beautiful Christmas...

Before

After

Quiet night in

Mon 23rd: Working so couldn’t ski. Charlie and Liam reported back that GM was s**t anyway. Good reports about Le Tour again but oh well.

Went round to Liam’s with Charlie for a few chilled out drinks as we were saving ourselves for Christmas eve. Chilled out drinks quickly turned into heavy night out. Joined by Nick, Frank, Ali the self proclaimed ‘only Asian in Chamonix’, Keane, Danni and Holly. Everyone ended up smashed on a combination of wine and Liam’s awesome Lemon Vodka (Lemon juice, sugar, Vodka and a tiny bit of water). Dangerously tasty. Went to Terrasse at 12.45am for a few. Wanted to go out after but everywhere was closed, even Amnesia… Looking bad but someone mentioned Bar Toff. Why not? Had a great night of pole dancing, grinding and general hilarity. Back at 5:30am with promises of skiing Le Tour at 9. Unlikely to say the least.

Sober poses

Midi / Rock skis

Sun 22nd: Was going to head up Brevent but backed out after reports of crappy icy conditions. Instead had the first ski inspection session of the year. Charlie repairing his DPS from the rock bands at Le Tour and me assessing the damage from Saturday. Edges burred to hell from the day before and the last 3 weeks. A couple of deep gouges but no core shots… no idea how.

We decided to be proper tourists and head up the Midi for the first time this season. Went right to the very top and got to try out the Glass Box. Pretty cool view from it and you got to wear a sexy pair of slippers.

Got back and Liam cooked us a tasty chinese dinner and we watched Harry Potter... the stimulating life of a seasonairre.

Charlie Ptexing on the balcony

Pointing out the Matterhorn

Glass box + sexy slippers

Midi arête

Warning - Thin Snow Cover

Sat 21st: First busy Saturday of the year but somehow had the morning off. Popped up Brevent alone. Pisteurs said that the top bubble was open to skiers. Rather unsurprisingly they were wrong, have to love the CDMB sometimes.

Lapped Cornu instead, pretty good snow. Went off the back of cornu onto the closed run (told by pisteur it had no snow – it was opened within an hour… CDMB strikes again). Run was really good snow. Off piste to the side was beautiful as well. Well until I hit a huge shark-fin rock with my inside ski whilst turning which pinged off. Managed to balance and stop with 1 ski whilst skating over another 10-15 rocks.

Shaken and lesson learnt it was the last off piste of the day. Lapped the piste a few more times and left.

Hit every single one...

Only 20cm of snow

20th Dec: Made it to le Tour early with Charlie, Luke, Lorne and Ally with the aim of lapping Tête de Balme, my favourite lift in the valley. 5 quickly became 3; Ally forgot his pass so headed back and Luke double ejected and popped his shoulder out second run so headed home to be safe. The pisteur at the bottom jokingly said to watch my skis as there was only 20cm of snow on rock. Ominous signs…

En route to Vallorcine Charlie front flip double ejected in a huge powder drift… Many chuckles were had. Good signs… 

Started our runs carefully as the conditions were 3/5 and the snow was a bit slabby. First few runs were spent rock dodging and the snow wasn’t great. Snow felt stable so ventured further into the bowl over a few rock bands and found huge snow drifts of brilliant fluffy snow directly under the chair. Totally unexpected. 

Had 3-4 epic runs of fresh tracks and even managed a few jumps and rock drops. Could've continued but Charlie had work. Left Tête de Balme with only our groups tracks bar 2 from a pair of Snowboarders. 

Best skiing of the season so far without a doubt.

Empty

Bowl skiers right of the chair

"Tapping" the tree a little harder than expected

NB. All apart from the top photo shamelessly stolen from Lorne Cameron

Jon + James

11th-18th Dec: My backdoor neighbour in Guildford of the last 13+ years, Jonny, (make what you will of that) and his mate James came out to stay with us for an early season visit. Picked them up from the airport for the first transfer of the year. Work was quiet at the time so we had a lot of time to hang out, ski and drink with them.

Charlie and I took them up GM on their first day back on skis in years. They were both hesitant but after 1 lap of the painfully slow 2 man chair and 1 park chair we took them up Bochard. Both skied it happily so we carried on lapping it. Dinner, introduced them to happy hour, cards, screaming orgasms (a rather tasty cocktail). Good day.

On Saturday we tried the 20 euros happy hour challenge, pretty self explanitory. 2 pitchers of Mutzig each for 11E in an hour and we were a little merry... Jon rolled in the snow naked - his punishment for losing at cards. Double Midnight burger for dinner. Heavenly. Jon, James and I went back for cocktails but Charlie went home ill (already was). 3 Cocktails later I'd completed the challenge. The other two went back home and I met up with Liam (and basically every other seasonairre in Cham) in Terasse. Great night, farrrr too drunk. Next day I felt so horrendous that a quiet coke down the pub at 10pm became a danger coke.

Had a nice chilled out day up at Brevent on Monday. Snow was way better than GM and less rocks poking through. Went up the top station for the view it was closed for skiing.

Charlie, Me, James, Jon up Brevent top bubble

First Midnight of the season 

Jon's first Midnight burger

First MBC

Poor delicious chickens

Charging GM

17th Dec: Charlie, Luke and I went up GM to find some decent skiing (hadn't really ventured off piste until then due to snow cover). Lapped various lines off the Bochard and the snow was pretty good in places, really sugary. Also pretty bad in other places.

Met up with Graham, Colin Angus + co. for a few runs. Really good fun skiing with this lot, charging down the various routes finding what little snow was to be had.

GM again

Another chilled out day at GM. Met up with Liam and Roberta. Broke a pole whilst pushing... couldn't stop laughing. Must've weakened it by falling on it whilst trying to improve my switch technique. Skills...

Oops...

My ingenious pole fix consisting of two
knives and liberal amounts of Gorilla tape

First shift

9th Dec: First day of work. Up early to pick up the newbies - the joys of being the Team Leader. Wasn't worried though as woke up to stunning views.

The view from our apartment

GM Opening / Dave's 50th

7th Dec: First day of the season! Grand Montets opening day. Really nice soft corduroy pistes. Quiet. Lots of very fast cruising runs practicing the rusty technique. Charlie wiped out within 100m of the first run of the year. I laughed a bit (lot). He followed it up by skidding out by the snow canons where the snow was almost... dare I say it... like powder. Pretty sure I went over a few times too when messing around.

Evening: CELEBRATE. Drinks at ours with Liam and Dan, then Munster for Dave's 50th. Verrrrrrrry drunk. Met up with loads of people from last season and loads of new ones. Chatted far too much shit. Excellent first day/night of the season.

Empty parking... surreal

Me, Charlie and Liam in the first Bochard of the season

Charlie

My rather poor attempt at spitting off the chairlift

Only photo of the night... almost as blurry as my memory

Found these two days later...

Our Place

So chuffed with our luck. About twice the size of last year and only the two of us. Sofa is a double bed which works well if either of us has work late / early. Added bonus is the STUNNING view...

The search

Our jobs were sorted driving with the same company as last year, but we had nowhere to live. By absolute chance our boss dropped off my work van ready for the next week so we had a place to dump our copious amounts of stuff.

Spent 3 nights on Liam’s floor - what a lovely man! 3 days of scouring the estate agents / Marie / Chamsocial ads and we were getting worried. Must have done 10+ laps of the town and outskirts to fill our days (not a bad thing). Through sheer luck we picked up a place off Chamsocial at the last minute. More than we were looking to pay but on the plus side weren't stuck out in Argentiere... GOOD DAY

Quiche with a view

Photo of the Dru on one of our walks

Getting there...

On the ferry, happy to be leaving England!

25th Nov: My birthday and our leaving day. Wake up to an awesome present. Charlie's car, our way out, has failed its MOT miserably and is WAY too expensive to repair. Shit, what a massive anticlimax. Que 6 days of limbo, desperately searching for a way out.

2nd Dec: Finally leave Guildford to meet John, a man off the internet offering me a lift, at the dogging hotspot just off the M25... bodes well? Managed to get all my gear in his van. Picked Charlie up at the next junction. Find out that John (whilst not a sleazy internet rapist) is a transfer driver like us. This plus an easy drive left us with an ETA of 4am rather than the 8am we planned. Couldn't get hold of Liam, our place to stay. Texted Luke, knowing he was in resort already. The hero answered and let us in at 3:30am. Heavenly kip on the spare bed, especially as the alternative was a night in the cold.

What we woke up to... how I'd missed it