The Face

While the cat’s away the mice will play. With Amelia up in the north I took the chance to get some of my more adventurous skiing in. I had been looking at these two chutes (or couloirs as the French call them) from early in the season. I had planned on doing the easier one on the right from the top but saw some tracks leading down so decided to give the harder one a nudge. After a couple of turns I had covered the other tracks with my sluff and was on my own.

There were a couple of hairy moments when I was wondering what I had gotten myself into, mostly at the top of the first rock band when I had taken a turn too many and was facing the wrong way. I then had to step over a rock backwards and keep my balance before navigating a second rock band and a 2m hop out to safety.

As I stopped and looked up I could only but think how lucky I was (even though later that night I was thinking, “I know the route now; I can do it a lot better next time”). I skied off and stopped down on the piste to dust off the snow and check my bases (I skied over a lot of rocks). A guy skied up and asked if I had just skied “The Face”. We talked and it turned out he had taken photos of it all. He laughed as I said it was a bit difficult for me. I asked if he had skied it to which he replied, “No, too many rocks, I prefer to ski on snow. Next time take a rope”. Anyway check out his photos here. I’m the black dot that moves position. The places where I am smaller are where I am sitting, stepping down rocks. Tomorrow Chamonix!!

Curling

Our latest staff extravaganza was a trip to the curling rink in Megève for a lesson in this most ancient and silly looking of winter sports. One shoe gets a slippery over-shoe put on it and the other shoe acts as your ‘grip’. The objective of the game is to launch your stone (which are incredibly heavy, there’s no way you’re lifting one of those babies up off the ice) straight down the centre of the rink (about 4.5m across and 45m long) and into the centre of the bulls eye. It is no easy task, as most of us found out despite the extremely friendly Sophie (our teacher, in the middle of the photo) doing her best to make us understand what to do!


If the stone touches the side of the rink or goes beyond the line at the end it’s out of play. The sweepers are there to a) give tactical advice to the person launching the stone and b) make the stone go faster by sweeping in front of it if needs be.

After get a few tutorials in the basics it was onto a game – girls versus boys (oh how obvious we are). Most of us were absolutely useless (see video here - hopefully the link works) but Lauren had the ultimate turn – check out the perfection in the photos!

Unfortunately, Lauren’s stone got knocked out by the eventually victorious boys’ team on the very next go…
Awesome fun though, so if ever anyone’s near NZ’s only curling rink somewhere deep in the heart of the South Island, I’d give it a go! Check out more photos here.

Megève fashion

Megève is one of the wealthiest French ski resorts going. It’s full of Michelin star restaurants and extremely expensive boutiques. My favourite is the coat in the window of the Aallard store which costs nearly 10,000 euro – that’s nearly a house deposit in New Zealand on a coat!!

There are always ladies walking around in massive fur coats, dripping in jewels and toting little dogs – it’s definitely a great place to people watch. We’ve been trying to get some snaps of some of the best ones, although usually we don’t have the camera on us when the best ones walk by. But here are two we did manage to capture (quite blatantly I might add!)

Here's just one of the fantastic ski outfits we see everyday on the slopes as well...

Big snow!

On the 22nd of March we woke up to one of the biggest overnight dumps of snow we’ve had yet. February and March seem to have been all mixed up, with hardly a flake of snow during February and temperatures reaching nearly 17 degrees, and March seeing temperatures plummet again with metres upon metres of snow.

This was outside our front door – that hill in the background which is known as the ‘Jaillet’ side of the mountain had been green grass only a couple of days before.

Check out the snow on the window wipers!


These pictures are from in front of the ice rink in town and then another one showing just how much snow the bulldozer had already taken off! (Nice bleary/puffy morning eyes are also on show in the latter pic).

This one’s the best though – how on earth is that car going to get out of there?!


Click here for the rest of the pictures.

Ice skating

Megève has an outdoor ice skating rink in the centre of town that has been on our ‘fun things to do’ list for quite a while now. The other day, conditions were perfect (as in, it was sunny and we had a bit of free time on our hands) so we paid our 15 or so euro each (see blog title to guess which person had some trouble handing over the money and which one did so with glee) and headed out onto the ice. The appropriate clothing (aka Elvis glasses we found at the chalet) was also required…

Being the beginning of springtime there was a decent series of puddles on the ice and some quite gnarly cracks that made disconcerting creaking noises as you skated over them, but luckily our lardy croissant packed bodies weren’t so bad as to actually fall through the ice. Adrian (as to be expected with all winter sports) picked it up incredibly quickly and started showing off doing fancy stops and going backwards etc. – I reckon he’d make a great figure skater – imagine the costumes!

I (Amelia) on the other hand made somewhat tentative progress, aided by my new best friend, Jan (a 5 year old French girl in Megève on holiday who told me several times this was her 3rd time ice skating and she could already go forward, turn, and stop). It was probably about my 3rd time too so I was pleased I got up to about her level by the end of the session…

Once we got a bit of practice in I got a bit cocky and challenged Adrian to a race down the length of the rink and back. Unfortunately, my lead which was unchallenged until ¾ of the way through the race, came to an abrupt end when I tripped up, fell backwards, and cracked my head on the ice…yet again proof that I am not naturally blessed with either balance or sporting ability… The people watching gave a collective ‘oooh’ that even I heard in my semi-concussed state, so I’m pleased that I at least managed to give them some entertainment! I took it grandma-slow for the rest of the evening I can tell you… Click here for some more photos.