My first trip away, since 3 days in beautiful North Wales in October, is the 6-mth awaited week’s skiing in La Thuile in Italy’s Aosta valley, just through the Mont Blanc tunnel past Courmayeur.
Day one skiing was my first time on skis for about 7 years. With some trepidation, but encouraged by the homies whose annual trip I’ve tagged along with, I felt that at the end of the day, having survived the final run down to have a Bombardino at the end of a …. RED, my mental and physical exhaustion had been truly vanquished.
Day two, and the plan took us over to the adjoining La Rosiere area in France, beautiful blue skies and sunshine, nice pistes, altho’ more learner snowboarders for my fear levels and liking on my blues than in Italy.
I made it in one piece to the coffee stop, but about to set off again, the day took a turning for the worse with the realisation that my skies and poles were nowhere to be found – some numpty (or worse) had obviously taken them. With 4 of us, it didn’t take long to check every other set of skis/poles, looking for a green pair with my name on a sticker which my friends were adamant were mine, but which my previously fantastic autopilot now failing in middle age had failed to clock!!, were just not there. So there we were high up the mountain over the border (and in the valleys at the other side of the M Blanc tunnel) in France and wtf – adequately conveys the sentiments – now?
Discussed various options, with the best one being that I would have to walk up hill and down dale for several miles along ski pistes in my ski boots down to la Rosiere, admittedly using chair lifts wherever possible, to hire another pair of skis to get me back, which my extremely competent ski buddies would the next day have to ski over with again for their return.
I called my ski hire place to ask them whether there was a ‘protocol’ for such a happening, which there wasn’t, or they didn’t know what goes on in France, but they would call me back. 10 minutes later in the return call, an extremely sheepish smile appeared on my face to the outbreak of hilarious laughter from my ski team, upon being told that it was I the numpty or worse, because in the morning, the bar where we had the Bombardino on my triumphant first day, opened to find a pair of skies and poles still outside having been left there since the day before, with my name on them. In my exhausted, but pride comes before a fall stupor, I had managed to fit my boots into the skis from another unfortunate who had hired these from a rental shop in Courmayeur, and absconded in smug satisfaction at having conquered the day intact.
Fortunately for that unfortunate, the bar was more or less back at La Thuile, so they would only have had to walk downhill for 5 mins in their ski boots before presumably reaching their mode of transport to get them back to Courmayeur.
I’m not entirely sure how my ski rental was able to inform me that I should now look for a pair of skis with a label from Courmayeur, Mont Blanc 4810, because they would be the ones I had been using all morning.Sure enough, in a couple of minutes flat, it was ascertained that the skis and poles placed solitarily which I had indeed thought were surely where I had left mine, did have the Courmayeur Mont Blanc sticker, so the confusion that I had felt when thinking my skis were red, but my companions telling me they were green was also explained.
As if this was not enough, I repeated the same again leaving the next bar stop, even more exhausted, when I picked up my friend’s skis instead of my ‘borrowed’ red ones. At least with these, I would have failed to get my boots into the bindings, and have spent a fair bit of faff, trying to understand why!
On my return to my ski rental, they wanted me to walk the 5 minutes (took at least 20) back up the red run in my boots to go and pick up my very ownest skis from Le Petit Skieur. For those who know the exhausted weariness of the learner or fearful skier at the end of a day’s sking, the rich with meaning answer NO to the question from my friends “Did you not feel the difference when you put on those other skis???” would be easily understood.
As it happens, Day 3 was a whiteout, so a 24-hr stop-gap ski rental from La Rosiere would not have been carryable over the tops back to la belle france anyway.
This is a beautiful place, even in the 5 miles walk through thick snowfall of day 3. Really enjoying the company, experience, exercise and trauma.😀
