For everyone's sake, I'm putting the picture captions first, and then if you want, you can read the actual report (which is long). And if not, then you don't have to. =)
We
went to a place called Les Deux Alpes ski resort, about 70 miles
east of the city of Grenoble (which hosted the first Winter
Olympics, I believe? Or at least one of them).
Here's a night shot from our apartment. It's long exposure, which explains why the lights are absurdly bright.
The next day, sunlight reveals a charming skiing town.
In retrospect, I was sort of spoiled, taking my first skiing trip in the Alps. I'm pretty sure there isn't anything this pristine and close to unguarded nature of this majesty anywhere near California (Aspen would be my guess as to the nearest place similar).
I feel like there should be a Coors Light ad in this photo somewhere...
That night, it snowed!!! First time I've ever seen it actually snowing.
After a day of learning, I felt confident/crazy enough to bring my camera with me onto the slopes. Here's a gondola lift that takes skiers to the actual slopes, which are a good 2000 feet higher in elevation, I believe (whatever 600 meters equates to).
Before going up, I snap a quick photo of some of the other ski lodges around the town (okay, I snapped more than one, but this one was the prettiest).
On the slopes, things are absolutely pristine.
As you can see, it's a sharp drop off back down to the town. I'd never really been at such a high elevation with such crisp air and clean surroundings. It was quite exhilarating!
This is a few of the Alps from one of the runs. Absolutely breathtaking.
Clouds can sneak up very quickly. Also, this shot kinda looks like one of those romantic breathy slopes photos you find in magazines. =)
More blue and white beauty.
Here's a ski lift!
Last but not least, a view looking toward a restaurant near the gondola lift that takes people back down the mountain, along with the Alps in the background.
And now, story time!
TRAVEL
We left Saintes at about 7:00 in the morning to catch a 7:42 train to Angouleme, where we'd then take a TGV train to Paris. Arrive in Paris at 11, go to our hotel to store our bags. We basically booked one room for three nights just for our bags. Apparently, the hotel concierge thought this was bad or something, because he made a big deal out of our only putting bags in the room. "They vill not fit!!" he even said. LOL. I don't know what his problem is... he should have been happy. They're getting paid for a room for three nights and they don't even have to service it!
Anyway, 2:00 PM TGV train to Lyon meant we had to take the Metro over to the Gare de Lyon station, and then we took what's apparently France's fastest TGV train to Lyon. Transfer onto a regional train at Lyon to Grenoble. Taxi for about an hour 20 minutes through mountain roads from Grenoble to our resort, Les Deux Alpes.
LODGING
Our apartment, Le Cortina, was absurdly nice. Spacious, elegant, very cozy, and stocked with a nice kitchen. It was 1600 euros total, but that was for a week (which we didn't even use because we had to come back to the U.S.). That worked out to 160 euros a person, and if you divide that by 7 days, it's like 22.8 euros a day. That's hostel cheap! So very cool.
SKIING DAY 1
'k, so basically, this is the part you could have skipped to. Skiing was Sunday and Monday. On Sunday, everyone got up late because no one heard his or her alarm. lol. It ended up being a half day, with the later morning spent renting ski gear, eating, and getting ski passes.
First thing first: NO ONE TOLD ME SKI BOOTS HURT LIKE HELL. Actually, throughout the whole weekend, the thing that gave me the most pain was not falling or skiing--it was walking in those damned boots! Having never ever skied before, I was definitely not used to them. It didn't help that my boots the first day turned out to be too small (my toes did get numb after walking a bit). I got them changed the second day, but that didn't help my shins or calves, which constantly had pressure from the stiff lower leg part of the boot. Oh well, I suppose that's the price people pay. I'm told this is normal, btw. But man, for the first time since I was 5, I did not like walking. And those of you who know the pace at which I normally walk (read: fast) know that this is a major thing. Albert unable to walk?! But that's unpossible! (Ralph Wiggum allusion)
Anyway, my friends suggested taking ski lessons, since I'd never skied before, so I got a two hour private session that started at 2. That meant I had a couple of hours to kill, but it wasn't too bad. My instructor was a young German woman named Julia, who turned out to be a fantastic teacher. Quick side note: everyone at the resort was multilingual. Every instructor and employee I met spoke perfect English, French, German, and Italian. Crazy.
Anyway, the lesson covered the basics of skiing, from ski terms (they call it a "snowplow," not a "pizza") to the parts of a ski to general tactics. The training grounds was definitely up in the snow, at an elevation of around 2100 m. We stayed on a pretty level patch of snow, however, and practiced on that very small mini-run. It had to be no more than a football field long, and it did not feature any sharp drops or anything to mess me up.
So of course, people must want to know how many times I fell... I didn't really keep count, but I think it was about 10-12 times. And most of it was just not balancing. I had trouble turning that first day, since you're supposed to apply gentle pressure to the opposite side of your body relative to what direction you're turning ( i.e. put pressure on the right leg to turn left and vice versa). I also had a little trouble controlling my speed at times, but that's to be expected.
After the class, I took a little break before doing a few more practice runs. Shortly before 5, I headed down the mountain, since that's the time the slopes closed. Plus, it got really foggy really fast, so skiing would have been stupid anyway, given the fact visibility dropped like a roller coaster.
Overall, by the end of the day, I had gotten a pretty decent feel for skiing. Julia mentioned that I was a good learner, and I'm not sure if it was just encouragement, but I felt pretty good. I even took some time to fill out an instructor complement form at the school, just to show my appreciation.
SKIING DAY 2
Just to get it out of the way, I had 11 instances of hitting the snow. This included 8 falls (one totally not my fault; one totally stupid because I wasn't even moving when I fell) and three major crashes. Fortunately, no broken bones or real injuries, even though two of those three crashes were really spectacular, and one of the two spectacular crashes could have turned out extremely bad).
I was too tired to make it a full day. Plus, some of my friends had come home drunk that night and wiped out two hours of sleep time. I was angry enough to just leave without them the following morning and ski by myself.
I got to the slopes about half after twelve and did a few practice runs at the same area as the day before. These were mostly exercises mimicking the ones before, working mostly on turning and controlling my speed (or as much as I could on a kiddie slope like that). I did that for about 45 minutes just to make sure I was confident in my very beginner skiing. No falls at all, so I guess I was certainly improving.
The last one third of two ski paths cut by next to the practice slope, so after I was feeling pretty good, I decided to head down one of those to see how it was like. In France (or at least at this resort), slopes were classified by color in increasing difficulty as follows: green (very easy), blue (easy), red (hard), and black (very hard). I think there was also a white classification, which is akin to the U.S. double black. Most of the runs I did were green runs (which turned out to be right at my level). The two runs next to the practice slope, however, were not the same. They crossed each other right next to where I entered, and one was a blue while the other was green. I chose the blue one (not knowing it at the time) and thus suffered my first fall of the day when I went too fast across a bumpy run and basically let myself fall so that I'd slow down. Well, that and I lost my balance because the combination of speed and slightly uneven snow meant gravity won. The second time I took that route down, however, I was more meticulous and did a much more extreme turning route, going uphill at times to control my speed. Result: no crash. Yay!
I ended up doing three different courses that day. The first was a pretty easy course that hugged the mountain side and featured very shallow downhill runs (except for one part; more on that in a moment). The only thing was that it was wide open on one side, with a very sharp drop-off. Ski off that and you die. :) Actually, the best way to picture it is to imagine the Choco Mountain course from Mario Kart 64. Think of the part near the end where the giant boulders fall down. Well, replace the boulders with just snow everywhere and that's what this course was like. Out of the three times I took this course, I fell only twice, and both were on the first try. Halfway through the course, the run builds up speed and goes through a series of "mounds" that open up to wider level area before the course resumes its second half. Well, I didn't anticipate the course would get fast so quickly, so I basically built up too much speed and wiped out on the uneven snow part. That was crash #1. After collecting myself, I went down the rest of the drop more carefully and managed to maintain my balance despite going very quickly. However, I fell the second time when I tried to weave my way through a bunch of people who had gathered at the leveling off point. The rest of the run was incident free, however, as were the other two times I did it. My only major downer was the realization that I simply cannot ski flatland or go uphill without great difficulty. The combination of lack of technique, being tired, and those painful ski boots made it pretty hard.
Later in the afternoon, I did another green run that was more of a straight-up downhill run. I fell a couple of times, mostly near the end of the run, mostly because I decided going down was the best way to stop. My second actual crash of the day came on my first try down this run, where I went straight downhill too much (instead of winding my way down the hill) and totally wiped out, rolling a good 20 or 30 feet or so. Fortunately, I nailed the run the second time through again.
Remember that fall I said was not my fault? Well, it happened getting off the ski lift at the top of this run. A kid that was on the same lift got his skis caught in the foot rest when we raised the safety bar, and the operator had to actually stop the lift. The problem was that we were almost past the disembark point, so we had to basically hop off an off-balance chair. I ended up landing wrong and tripping over my skis.
Here's where we go off the record (as in parents don't know about this story, 'k? thanks =D )
My last run lacked foresight. I wanted to do that first run again so that it would take me straight to the gondolas that took people back to the town. This was at around 4:30, and things were getting late. However, when I got on the chairlift, visibility was still relatively clear. That changed drastically by the time I'd reached the top, where the clouds had rolled in en masse for good, and it basically was extremely cloudy.
I got off to find that the green rated run I had wanted to to take was closed. I should have anticipated this before. The run was easy, but the key was being able to SEE where the edge was and not skiing off it. Visibility was literally so low that you probably wouldn't be able to see the side. Hence, the run had been closed. That left me with two directions back down: take Le Diable (don't need to know French to realize what this means). I checked the map and found that they were red courses. No way. The only remaining one was a blue that I knew was still out of my level. Except now I had to do it when I couldn't even see more than... oh... 90 feet in front of me? And that's a generous estimation?
So yeah... this is one of the few times in my life where I seriously was worried about my safety. I very meticulously inched my way down the mountain, taking a winding route where I'd ski perpendicular to the course and control my speed by going back uphill until I stopped, then turn around and wind back. And even that was tough, because the slope was much steeper than my experience (all of two days, spanning six hours of skiing max?) could handle.
So this is where spectacular crash #3 happened. I got about 2/3 down the run, to the point where I could see the gondola station that would take me back to the village. At this point, I got impatient and decided to just ski downhill, using the "snow plow" (or pizza) position to go slowly.
Unfortunately, that didn't work. Despite having my skis crossed, I still built up speed very quickly (tells you how the slope of the mountain was at that point), and I basically wiped out big time. BIG time. As in tumbling down the mountainside and pawing at the snow to try to stop myself. When I got up and brushed myself up, I looked back up the mountain to see where my stuff was. One ski pole was about 60 feet up the mountain. Another was 20 feet down from it. One ski was about 20 feet away diagonally further down, and the other ski was about 10 feet from that. Overall, I had to have tumbled down at least 60 feet down the mountain. However, since the fall was more of a diagonal across the course, my actual "fall distance" had to be more than that. Also,. my Powerade bottle was a good 20 feet downhill from where I stopped. LOL
The good thing was that I wasn't hurt. I was also helped by a ski ranger (or whatever you want to call it) patrolling the slopes for late skiers who needed help (like me), who helped my retrieve my skis and helped me get back on.
I continued the rest of my way down, falling two more times from fatigue more than anything before taking the last.... oh 1/10th of the run straight because I could control my speed at that point.
And then I got in line for the gondolas and went back down. But man, I felt pretty dumb for having wanted to try one last run and being forced into doing a run I definitely couldn't do... at least in minimal visibility. And really, I think I could have done it if I could see. But not being able to see was the scary part.
So yeah, I said a prayer of thanks as I was coming down the gondola to the village.
And spare me to "you're an idiot" emails on this last story. I know it was dumb, but it makes a great story! I honestly wish someone had gotten that last crash on film (just imagine such a thing was possible), because it was really a great spill.
THE REST
So yeah, we had dinner at "Le Spag" (ghetti) that night and packed up our stuff, then woke up at 5:00 AM the following day to catch our 6:00 taxi down the mountain so we could take a 7:50 TGV from Grenoble straight to Paris. I spent Tuesday afternoon in my favorite city in the world, maximizing my day touring some sights and doing some last minute shopping at the Champs Elysses, Galleries Lafayette, and the shops at the Forum des Halles.
But man, walking was extremely sore after having worn ski boots for two days.
All in all, skiing was extremely fun, and I think I could do this as a regular sort of recreation. It's a great workout, and definitely pretty fun. I need to work on my speed control, and my turning could be tighter, but overall, I think I'm not a bad skier relative to my experience. Not good... but not bad. =)
