White Out

Our village of Val d'Isere can be seen at the bottom of the valley.

Rather than waste precious electrons on the 'printed' word, I will let the photos do the talking here. One week snowboarding in the French Alps, right near the Italian border, with a good friend of mine from Australia, equals an awesome time, great boarding (for me, as an Australian, but I'm sure more fresh snow wouldn't have gone amiss), awesome food, lots of pains, and best of all, no fractured scaphoid!

 

 Although appearing totally bare, there were enough tree-lined areas for those who like dodging them. Me personally, I loved the wide runs and the even wider off-piste areas which seemed to just go on forever. With quite a few runs that covered over 1,000m in altitude, I would typically get pretty darn tired before reaching the bottom. Additionally, I had someone with me who encouraged to me go a little outside my comfort zone (which pretty much meant swimming in powder at times). The views were breath-taking, and apart from almost a full day off due to food poisoning, the injury rate couldn't have been better!

With a fantastic view of one of the non-groomed mountains from our balcony [left], even just relaxing in our apartment was a pleasure.

And then, there was the cold. The cold snap that wreaked havoc in Eastern Europe, although not dumping very much snow in the Alps, it did help keep the temperatures down! This site [right] at the top of one the funiculars was not too uncommon!

We called this, the 'Virgin Mary Effect' - something we saw a lot of on our final day. Caused by the billions of tiny ice crystals in the air - not quite a cloud, and not quite frozen rain...

Half way up the mountain with Tignes in the valley behind covered in cloud.

The trip ended with an icy cold weekend in Lyon. We walked around the city straight after arriving, and stupidly believed that being out of the heavy snow and at lower altitudes, we didn't have to dress as warmly (ie., only 4 layers instead of 5), we practically froze to death! Apart from that, it was a nice way to end the holiday, especially with the city views from Lyon's Notre-Dame Cathedral, and my favourite of all, Cathedral St Jean with its astronomical clock inside. We spent more than half an hour there and were able to decypher most of the variables! Very nerdy, but perfect for me!