Ow !

  Because it was so warm yesterday the snow that had turned to slush was frozen and unpleasantly hard first thing this morning; as I discovered very soon, falling in exactly the same way as I’d bruised my shoulder yesterday.  Ow !

  After a quick run down the Altiport to remind ourselves how to link turns we went back up the Altiport chairlift and then boarded down to catch the Dent de Burgin chair.  Although we didn’t take Renard (a relatively steep red) we took the steeper of the two blues, Geai, the top section of which is reddish.

  Still trying to link turns I found myself travelling down the fall line further and faster than I’ve been used to.  The result was that I fell more often and, consequentially, harder.

  I wasn’t alone so our instructor, Guilliam, had us practice Festons.  We call the exercise Garlands; it’s where you turn the skis or board down the fall line as if you’re going to turn but then you turn back to traverse across the slope in the original direction.

  Certainly helped my control although I can’t say I was really carving except for a couple of occasions where I still went faster than I intended.

  I’ve been finding my boots quite uncomfortable and unfortunately the hire shop doesn’t have any other brands in my size.  Also, after the morning session I was feeling pretty battered and bruised so I decided to ski this afternoon.

  I remember that when I was learning to ski the greatest pleasure of the day was taking off my boots; today I found that when I put my ski boots on they were way more comfortable than the snowboard boots !

  The snow however had deteriorated over lunchtime and was very slushy below 2000m, even at 2500m it was still soft so I decided to pack it in and headed back down - just in time as it started to rain as I passed ‘The Ronnie’.

  Hopefully the rain will turn to snow tonight but I’m not holding my breath.