Mr Blue Sky

After the continuous snow yesterday we woke up to good weather, clear with blue skies. We left the house at 8.30am ready to spend the day skiing. At this time of year, between Christmas and New Year, the village is very busy - nothing like the ski resorts in France, but still very busy with a long queue at the bottom of the main ski lift up the mountain. When we got up the mountain, I was horrified to see - and feel - that it was -16C. We have not experienced cold like that in a while.

Within minutes I had a burning pain in my fingertips - despite having heated gloves. I quickly used some of those disposable heat pads which I stuffed into my gloves and they are so efficient, they kept my hands warm for the rest of the day. The slopes were busy and not very well groomed after the heavy snowfall from yesterday - there was just too much snow! As I said yesterday, we either have too much or too little snow, we never seem satisfied! It made the skiing quite hard with all the loose snow and ridges on the pistes. The mountain restaurants were heaving with people and we could not find a table inside. We bought our lunch and sat outside to eat - my tuna salad soon turned quite icy! The boys however thought it was a perfect day due to the fresh powder. Luke and Thomas skied off-piste (they have proper avalanche packs with transceivers) but I still worry when they do that, especially with so much snow about. Adam raced and did not do as well as he liked, although he does not know the results yet. Many people crashed and he was put off by that.

I did not take many photos today as it was just too cold to take my gloves off, but when we skied back down to the village I could not resist taking a photo of this beautiful scene - it was worth the freezing cold hands for a few minutes! Tomorrow there are heavy snowfalls again.