A story of Chalet hosting, Gremlins and climate change.

In my first winter of “not working” I’d hoped to have lots of trips to the Alps, but it didn’t work out that way. Unpredictable weather forecasts and unusually poor snow led to leaving decisions late and often not going and missed opportunities for fun.

However, talking to the other Brits in our resort, they had been down there for the winter and it seemed to have had plenty of good snow and generally a good time all round. So, this year I took a different approach, I decided to base myself down there and take it as it comes, I mean, why hang around in Portishead in January.

For those snow lovers, young and old, the idea of spending a winter in the mountains, on the piste everyday on fresh snow, is the stuff of dreams. As we were lucky enough to own a place, then why not live the dream, what’s the worst thing that could happen?

The decision to go for the winter

In October, when I explained to my wife (Wooksie) that we would be spending the winter in the Alps, she corrected me and said, “That’s nice, you can, I’m not, a long weekend is enough for me and I’m not being dragged around the slopes all winter by you”. 

A bit disappointing, but undeterred I made plans to head down in January. A pre visit to sort out the apartment in December, for the opening of the slopes, with my mate The Mechanic didn’t go off without incident, so it wasn’t a good omen (insert link). On the bright side I did invest in a new mattress (what works for 3 nights won’t work for 3 months) along with some cunning ideas to create more storage space, like beds on stilts!

We were there for the opening weekend of the season and it was awesome, huge snowfall in the days and The Mechanic and I were in the first lift up and after putting lines down the fresh snow on the open pistes, we then ripped up the steep unpisted runs that were covered in deep, soft and untouched snow.

Any doubts I had about committing to the winter in the Alps were gone, but then we headed home for Xmas and New Year with friends and Mother Outlaw.

We drove down on snowy night at the start of January; with an agreement Wookie could go home after a week.  We expected our little resort to be quiet after New Year, but none of it, it was packed.   It appeared that an entire generation of people “of a certain age”, that had had a similar idea to me. Many were still employed or running their own businesses and were just stretching the “working from home” definition.

The British winter invasion

The snow was good enough to be having a good run around of the area each day followed by an alarming amount of “bonne Ami” apres-ski with our British brethren. After 5 nights of beers, vodka redbulls and the local free local aperitifs in the bars we started to wane, I have to confess that we started to sneak past the bars or take the long way around to avoid rapturous welcomes from the crew. Wooksie insisted it was time for her to go home, enough was enough.

Snowboarding alone on the pistes

So, I ended up on my own for the second week of January. Various friends and family were scheduled to visit and keep me company, but for the first time in my life I was alone on the piste. It’s a strange experience when you are normally with pals. No one to chat to at coffee time; no point in stopping for a lunch time beer on my own; no one to show around; similar route most days; no one to wait for at the bottom or top of the lift and no rush to get up there in the morning or get back at night. What would normally take 4 hours was only take 90 minutes.

I set myself some targets to keep me focused, I wanted to do a 50km ride. I avoided speed records because there was this continual worry about what would happen if I had a bad fall and I was on my own and breaking speed records was fraught with danger.

The first day on my own the weather was perfect sun and blue sky, the snow was great and after 5 hours of riding without a break, the 50km target was achieved. I decided I would leave the black runs until I had some company so ended up cruising around the mountains on my own, enjoying the scenery, trying not to hurt myself and it wasn’t long before I started to get bored.

The thing that you miss if you only go for a week is the chance to just enjoy the scenery, so apart from belting around the mountain on a snowboard, I also did a lot of walking and just enjoying being there, living in the snow (when it was around).

The Chalet Hosting treadmill begins

Anyway, this solitude only lasted a week because the visitors started to arrive and in fact I started a new career as a chalet host. I’d clean the apartment, make the beds, drive to Geneva Airport to pick them up, cook them meals, go snowboarding, show them around mountain, drive them back to the airport, clean the apartment, make the beds before the next lot arrived. If I was lucky, they would organise their own transport.

Don’t get me wrong, it was great having company, it was just rather exhausting, as a person to which cleanliness, order and routine doesn’t come naturally. My friends didn’t expect a chalet service, but in the absence of much else to do, why not do it. There is no fun going up on the mountain on a miserable day, let alone doing it on your lonesome.

In late January, we had a “full house” of family, we also had the kind of day snowboarders dream of.  It snowed all Saturday afternoon and night, and we woke up to fresh snow all over the mountain and bright blue sky. The snow had fallen on the bashed pistes, so it was a bit treacherous but off piste it was perfect, these are days that other people talk about, but I never got.

The second half of the season lasted until the snow started to really deteriorate in mid-March, so I had the long, lonely drive home to Bristol. but it wasn’t without surprises, Calais beach sea front is really nice (not the town you understand).

We have a  monster black run down under one of the chair lifts that I see most days, I hadn’t t done before because we had never had good enough snow, but in the company of my eldest lad, who I taught to snowboard 22 years ago,  we had the most amazing run through miles of fresh snow, it will never be that good again and those of the memories I was looking for.

Back in time for historical Argyle games

I lasted the whole of January but headed back for February when the French school holidays begin and to see Argyle beat Liverpool in the FA Cup.

Our resort in Morillon is massively popular in February with families, no place for a man of my age for sure and most of the expats bailed out as well.  3 weeks back in the UK rekindled my enthusiasm for the mountain life and I headed back just as soon as Argyle lost to Man City in the FA Cup.

I arrived back in early March with a new schedule of pals to look forward to hosting. I still had one more thing on my to do list, a rather intimidating black run. Even though we have been coming here for 8 years, the family mostly ski on piste, so I don’t get to do this kind of run, and it was inviting me to have a go every time I saw it across the valley, not to mention intimidating me.

Gremlin brain attack

I had planned to do it when some of my snowboarding pals were with me but for some reason the “gremlin” got inside my head when I was on my own. A day when the visibility on the mountain was varying from poor to complete white out (invisible), depending where you were on the mountain, conditions when you should really just go home and get a book out.

I was in the lift that runs over this part of the mountain, the visibility seemed OK and there was fresh snow to help with the inevitable moguls and “Gremlin” was in my head saying “you’ll be fine”, “what’s the worst thing that can happen”, “if your mates were here you would do it, so what is stopping you”.  I gave in and decided to do it and get it the “monkey off my back”, or maybe the “Gremlin out of my head”.

Initially (the bit I could see from the lift) the ride it was fine, but then it went super narrow with massive moguls and the visibility reduced to just a few yards as it dropped into a gorge. It wasn’t long before I was on my backside with a jarred elbow, bruised buttock and with no clear way down through the moguls with what seemed an almost vertical drop.

It was then that reality hit me, there is no one around because only a mad person would be doing this black run in these conditions, I don’t know the route down, I can’t even see the end of the piste, and the run is probably the toughest I’ve come across with moguls and ice. “What the hell am I doing here?”.

Survival mode kicked in, if in doubt sit on your ass, leaf the board, forget style, fall when you need to (no one is watching) and obviously I got down in the end, and even more oddly I did another 50km that day in awful visibility, almost to get over the trauma.

This was a bit of an epiphany in some ways, there are lots of dangerous things that I would never consider doing that are way beyond my level of competence. However, I have got myself into all dangers, scrapes, and injuries over the years which I’ve struggled to explain how or why it happened. Now I know, when “Gremlin” gets inside my head I just don’t see danger, so in future the alarms bells will be ringing, a sign of my increasing maturity, I hope.

Something you don’t realise until you live in the mountains, is how totally unreliable the weather forecasts are. When you go for a week, you normally get a bit of a mix anyway, but it is really volatile.  The previous year I was basing my visits on the forecasts, but they are hopeless. This winter I was probably lucky because it was cold, and the pistes were maintained with manmade snow.

Global warming

It is difficult to know whether it is global warming and what is just cyclical. Last (23/24) winter was described as the worst since so and so. Therefore, it has been this bad in previous winters, but there does seem to be a trend now. We used to look forward to spring and light evenings at Easter in April, now it is running out in mid-March.  On the other hand, the opening weekend in December had the best snowfalls of the year.

So, I have now “done a winter season”, that is off the to do list. I guess I’ve learned that being there alone isn’t much fun after a couple of days and there are only so many times you can do the runs in a ski area.

Living in France and only having very limited language is OK until you try to communicate beyond a bar or a restaurant. I read a lot when I was on my own but never got around the French language lessons (sorry Dave Padfield), and it was good to have the company of my friends and all the expats, but not every night!

Looking forward to January already. Next winter I will spend more time commuting to the numerous other resorts within an hour of our place for a bit more variety and challenge.