Les Arcs Diary - Week 1

Saturday 3rd January

After packing up and cleaning the apartment, finishing just before the next guests arrive, we board over to 1800 and meet Dave for lunch. The others head off while I spend the afternoon boarding with Dave, who is nursing a sore calf. This comprises hacking back over to Vallandry to pay our food bill at the Mont Blanc, before rushing back to 1600 and catching the funicular down to Bourg St Maurice. I spend the evening with Debbie and Dave, who pulls his calf jogging down the road. In the morning they will drive me up to Tignes and my seasonaires adventure will begin proper.

Friday 2nd January

One of Martin’s friends, Jackie, and her daughter Claire are in the resort so we board with them while Paul, Kelly and Matt do their own thing before heading back to the U.K. The boys spend a last night in the Mont Blanc, which is enlivened when Steph and her friend Susannah turn up near closing.

Thursday 1st January

Not surprisingly a quiet day for all, though - amazingly - I avoid a hangover. In the morning I finally collect my seasonaires lift pass. Hooray!. I spend the afternoon riding with Rich, Martin, Tim and Matt - who has come on amazingly and is probably the best boarder of the day! The highlight of the evening is watching “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” on my laptop! Snow falls steadily and we look forward to an early start and fresh powder.

Wednesday 31st December

We all meet up with Dave and Debbie over in 1800, despite the fact Dave loses his phone on the slopes. My pass is still not ready but Steph had secured a weekly pass for me. The pistes are very packed and this, combined with the poor visibility, makes for poor riding. We head back to the apartment early, as we have to prepare our costumes for the New Year’s Eve fancy dress party at the Mont Blanc.

Only Rich has brought any fancy dress with him. He dresses as an Aussie, and his costume comprises a sixties style wig and cork-string hat. The rest of us have to improvise. Martin fashions a mangled arm using a towel, an inside out rubber glove and adds a bloody plaster on his face for good measure. I dress up as an American footballer. Tim comes up with the best effort, using his green sleeping bag, an antenna made from a coat hanger and my lizard eye ski goggles to transform him into a caterpillar.

We join Paul, Kelly and Matt back in the Mont Blanc. Paul looks hilarious in his Andy Pandy outfit, and Kelly is striking in a harlequin style leotard and tutu. Dave and Debbie drive up from Bourg and join us for the evening. The bar fills up quickly and many are in fancy dress, including two pairs of the almost obligatory 118 boys. Martin attracts a lot of attention from a group of girls sat at the next table, Kelly attracts the attention of most men under 25 and Tim freaks everyone out - people stare but don’t talk to him.

It is a long but entertaining evening. I get to bed at 4am. The next day we learn that has been the bar’s busiest night ever, with 1,200 litres of draft beer having been drunk!

Tuesday 30th December

Most of the morning is taken up trying to arrange my season lift pass. Steph, who runs Planet Subzero, can get me a discount so we meet up and I give her as much cash as I can scrape together and a photo.

The afternoon is spent with Paul, Kelly and Matt so I can video them on the slopes. It’s a beautiful afternoon, and I film them twice on the way down to the Mont Blanc from the top of Vallandry. I have never used the camera before and it’s not easy filming people while you ride. I had thought I could make some many producing DVDs of people skiing or boarding, but the shots are terrible and I can’t get the laptop to capture the footage!

In the evening we head up to Plan Peisey for a change of scene. I want to meet Steph in the Ecureil bar and collect my season pass, and the others are keen to try out the new bar, Oxygene, that I have heard about. Unfortunately, the pass isn’t ready as the machine is broken and we head home after a couple of drinks.

Monday 29th December

We’re up late, and while Tim sets off to try and solve our hot water problem Rich, Martin and I head off for the slopes. By the time I have got another day pass and am on the Vallandry lift, the skies have cleared and it is developing into a beautiful day., with bright blue skies providing the perfect contrast to the pristine white covering of the mountains.

In the afternoon Rich and I join up with Paul for some boarding. We decide to head off to the Mont Blanc for lunch first. It is a ten minute ride from the top of Vallandy to the Mont Blanc, down a red run. On the way down I cut under the 74 lift bringing people up from Vallandry, followed by Paul. The snow is great, soft and easy to turn in, but there’s not much in the way of snow coverage. Trees are poking through the snow surface everywhere and there are no tracks to indicate anyone has been down here recently. Within 20 yards we have both fallen over. I suggest we should walk out. Paul does, but foolishly I decide to try and cut to the piste. Seconds later I crash teeth first into a tree. Fortunately no serious damage is done, I am left with a cut nose and badly cut and swollen lip.

Sunday 28th December

Rich, Martin, Tim and I have decided to go over to La Plagne for the day. The Vanoise Express only began operating the week before we arrived, although it had been planned for years. It links the resort of Les Arcs, which is already one of the biggest and best in France, with La Plagne which is across the valley from Vallandry. I am curious to see what it is like, as it is the resort I went to on my first ever boarding holiday back in 1997. I was hopeless on that first trip, so it will be interesting to see what it is like now I can actually snowboard.

When we get there it is a little disappointing. The snow coverage is poor, and it is overcast and visibility is poor making it hard to see where you are going and travel at any speed. Not surprisingly I am rusty, not having been on the slopes since March, and the lack of sleep the previous night doesn’t help. The day almost ends in disaster when I take a wrong turning as we head back. It takes twenty minutes to make my way back and I almost miss the last lift back. Three minutes later I would have been stranded in the wrong valley facing a lengthy and expensive taxi ride back.

Sunday night is Karaoke night in the Mont Blanc but this year nobody was in the mood. Unfortunately, the evening was taken over by a bunch of tone deaf Cardiff University medics dressed in Hawaian shirts (for reasons that never became apparent). Paul took Matt back early, and the boys and I hung around to keep an eye on Kelly and her date, Ben. We were relieved when they left promptly at 11.30pm as instructed by Paul, and we could get back.

Saturday 27th December

We are up and in the car by 7.30am as Paul hopes to get some afternoon boarding in. However, It didn’t take much suggestion to get them all back into the hotel for breakfast. Breakfast was good, but expensive. Not only were we charged 10 euros each, but also a mysterious supplement. Arguing over a bill is not easy when you are armed only with the skills of a GCSE French student. It was only after we left that when the receptionist said “pour moi” she meant we had been charged extra for her staying late for our arrival. D’Oh!

It was a grim morning, grey and overcast with rain lashing down, and we set off for the Alps armed only with directions I had determined from a map in the lobby. Within five minutes we had headed off in entirely the wrong direction, back towards Paris. Afterwards it was plain sailing, although Paul may have a different opinion of my driving stint! The only problem was that we ran out of CDs and Paul seemed to play the greatest hits of the Red Hot Chili Peppers on rotate for five hours. I find them a bit annoying at the best of times. Paul’s optimism on our arrival time was wholly misplaced, as we arrived at 5.30pm. Too late to arrange lift passes or equipment hire, but just in time to head up to the Mont Blanc for dinner. We stayed there for the evening and I met a few familiar faces.

Friday 26th December

I am driving down to Les Arcs with Paul and his two kids, 15 year old Kelly and 10 year old Matt. We have allowed ourselves just over four hours to catch the ferry and just make it. As we sit down to eat, who should wander by but Rich, Marin and Tim Barnes who I will be sharing the apartment in Les Arcs with for the next week.

We arrive in Rheims, where we are booked into a hotel for the night, around 11pm. It is in the middle of an industrial estate and we spend half an hour looking for it. We get there just in time as the receptionist is leaving - a narrow escape.