To ski or not to ski..

With my recovery from the ruptured achilles tendon moving along at a steady speed, I embarked upon a prior booked ski trip to Les Arcs to see if my recovery was such that I could actually get a day on slopes in. The trip this year was again organised by Silvia and comprised her friends Nigel, Brett, John, Josie and Aaron with Abby, Aarons girlfriend, Lisa her friend from the States and Darren and Heidi who were meeting us at the airport. after arriving from Cork.

Sunday 23rd February

This morning was an early start/late finish that saw me arriving at Gatwick around 4:00am after Mark's 40th birthday in Balham and having finally finished packing and clearing up, I had fallen asleep 10 mins before my taxi arrived. The ensuing panic when he tried to ring me from outside meant that I scurried out the door without turning the heating off.

A terrible day three months earlier, my birthday in fact had necessitated this holiday to the mountain resort of Les Arcs was to be devoid of any normal winter sport activities for me. The recovery from rupturing my Achilles tendon was progressing well and to plan and I hoped to be able to do one day of the slopes at the end of the week. It did mean that I had to find lots of different things to do over the week.

The charter flight to Grenoble touched down and Id managed to get some sleep during the flight, in fact Id closed my eyes as soon as I sat down and awoke when the plane touched the runway in France! The terminal building that we disembarked into was newly built but couldn't cope with the huge numbers of people descending on it and it took over an hour to get our bags. During the melee, I managed to get knocked over by a bloke with a wheelie snowboard bag who apparently didnt realise that luggage on wheels does not follow the path that you walk exactly when you turn a corner. Still, there was no damage done and we departed for Les Arcs safe and sound and I was happy and comfortable that my stereotypes of people who use wheelie luggage had been reinforced as I threw my backpack off my shoulders into the bus.

The group that I was travelling with was 12 strong, and we had the entire chalet 'Celeste' to ourselves. The part of the resort we were staying in was called Les Arc 2000 after the height above sea level that it was situated. After dropping my gear off, I began to explore the local area with Darren and Heidi and discovered the free bus system that links Arc 1600, 1800, 1850 and 2000. The six nations rugby tournament was under way and we settled into a bar to watch some of the games before dinner which was followed by the France v England match.

After such an early start, all of the group were tired, and with the anticipation of skiing the next day decided to stay in, so I took our chalet host, Ed out to watch the game at the pub but the lack of sleep started to catch up with me too, so I returned to the chalet immediately after the game to get some shut eye.

Sunday 24th February

Everyone was up early and excited in anticipation of hitting the slopes, and the new day dawned clear calm and sunny. After everyone had rushed off to the slopes I helped Ed clean up and then tootled off to Arc 1800 on the bus service. It was a surprisingly long way to get to the lower village and after I arrived, I wandered around looking at the different shops before purchasing a passenger ticket on the gondola up the mountain to the top of the Col de la Chal, where Id arranged to meet some of the others in the group for lunch.

At the top of the lift there is a grotto which in combination of my lunch and taking in the panoramic vistas from the top of the mountain took a good three hours of my day. There was a display of sculptures in the grotto, and they were compiled with a mixture of snow and ice and with well placed colour-filtered spotlights and the fact that although it was close to the top of three lifts it was under a layer of snow and therefore very quiet it felt quite eerie wandering around the caverns away from the hustle and bustle outside. After retiring to 1800 I looked around the village some more and caught the bus back to the chalet where I met up with all the others, now relaxing after a tough first day on the slopes. We watched the Carling Cup football final from England on tv before attending the welcome meeting where the resort manager for the tour company explained all the goings on over the week and where we also managed to have a few more drinks. The welcome drinks had been moved from the previous night because of the rugby, so some of the things that would have been handy to know, like the fact that you can purchase a 40 all week passenger ticket for the lift system (as opposed to the 11 I'd already spent that day on the ride to the Col de la Chal).

After the meeting, we returned to the chalet for dinner and played some cards ( a game called skip-bo) before a few drinks out at Whistlers Dream and the Crazy Fox. Lisa lost her Blackberry and made a fuss.

Monday 25th February

This morning I got up and after helping clear up breakfast got out to 1800 to begin a walk that Eric, the host of the welcome meeting had recommended. The 2km walk started easily enough and I started to get quite warm in the heat of the day. About two-thirds of the way the gradient downhill became steeper, and I lost confidence in my ability to keep myself together and began to wander back towards 1800. Over the afternoon there was a freestyle competition at the slopes there, and I slowly climbed up to the mid-point between the 30ft kicker and the bottom where the riders caught their ski-doos back up to the top. I stayed for a couple of hours, and enjoyed the fantastic weather, nit as the riders took a break and the others I'd planned to meet there failed to appear, I limed back to the chalet and caught up with the others who had decided not to go over to watch the show. We eventually managed to meet up and snuck out for another drink at the Crazy Fox bar after dinner.

The next day I utilised the swimming pool that was part of our chalet complex after breakfast and Abby and I returned to catch up with everyone at lunch in the Red Rock bar in Arc 2000. Daz joined us for the afternoon and the day passed quickly as we went to a couple of bars, checked the internet and stopped at Whistler's for a boogie with some crazy Dutch people.

Wednesday 26th February

Wednesday is the Chalet host's day off, so we got up and made breakfast and went for a swim and met Daz and Heids with whom I went down to 1950 for lunch. Arc 1950 was developed much more recently than the rest of the resort by Intrawest, the same company that is responsible for my favourite ski hill of Whister in British Columbia and a few others including the purpose built Tremblant resort in Quebec. We met Nick and Silvia there for lunch at a bar called Luigi's. After that we caught the Funicular from the resort down to the 'service town' of Boug-St-Maurice where we had a look around. Bourg certainly is not the most charismatic of towns and the pedestrianised shopping area in it's centre is only a mildly interesting highlight. We returned to 2000 and joined the others in getting a pizza at a local restaurant. It was very nice and for 10 a pizza, very cheap. We left there and followed a familiar trail of a bars back to the chalet and bed.

Thursday 27th February

After failing to have a rest day the previous day, I decided that today would be a chance to let my injury recover and get a bit of Ryan time. By this stage in the week though, everyones entheusiasm for skiing had waned a little and with the weather not being particularly good people were very slow moving on their departure from the chalet in the morning.

The end of the trip and photos coming soon..