New Year and on

Jackie, Drew, Si, Leanne and Cassie. The white summit of Pic de la Corne behind

We woke to a complete white out, not so good for walking we thought, at least we didn’t have to decide whether or not to come back from Geneva as Leanne and Drew had to. Geneva spends a lot of it’s time under a blanket of cloud, as we can frequently see from the slopes, down on top of the cloud covering it. 

A quick photo of us as well, taken by Si

They did come back and we set off, with Cassie and Si, despite the slope actually appearing white after the small amount of snow that had fallen overnight. I’m pleased to report I found it much easier going than the previous walk, despite the stiff pace set by the others. We did hit some snow, but not enough to trouble anyone, and by the time we hit the slope all that we’d seen from below had vanished. Sadly at this point the App on Brian’s phone crashed, and we slightly mislaid the route! 

Ooops, we've now gone the wrong way. Pity we didn't realise at this stage

But we pressed on with no path

We went up till the path petered out which made the going hard work on steep ground. We could see our destination, so nobody was particularly worried, until Drew’s knees gave upon the ‘haggis like’ journey they were taking, zig-zaging our way up. Despite the loan of one of my poles, the decision was made to find the path, we knew where it would be, but then rather than do the last 300m ascent, we had lunch, with a fab view and went down. 

On our way down with the peak above. Some other time maybe!

Everyone is here to ski so there was no point in risking knee damage. Back to the village, couple of drinks in a local bar and we all headed off in our separate directions having had a thoroughly enjoyable day. B was slightly miffed at having made the navigational error and at not summitting, but hey, we all had a good time.

Our plotted route. The peak is just right of centre. We came up on the red line to the left, but we should have turned right on a path and headed upon the right hand red path. We contoured round the mountain to another ridge and then contoured all the way back again picking up the path we should have been on, too late in the day to do the top. The terrain on the contours was very steep and on wet grass,not easy!

Gizmo

New Years Eve arrived and I tidied up for Gizmo. It felt a bit odd tidying for a dog, but we didn’t know whether he was a chewer or not! Alex dropped him off and we had a lovely evening, no trouble, we went out for a walk round the block which he seemed to enjoy, well he did used to live up here. He was a sweetie, though never completely settled, there was no whining but he did keep checking at the door! 

Gizmo with Jackie

Rather than keep him overnight as it was only raining, not snowing Alex came for him about 01.10, so a late night for us. Seeing his excited reaction to ‘daddy’ was so cute. “I didn’t manage to get any money out, so is it ok if I pop it in tomorrow?” No worries, he’d said there was to be payment but we’d never actually discussed it! “Is 90 euro ok?” we nearly fell over. When we met in a local bar we talked him down to half that! If he’d actually bought either of our drinks we’d have taken less than that! We hope we’ll see him again.

What about that for a turkey pie baked by Brian

Out on the slopes in St Jean in snow! Yipeeee!

Yesterday it snowed, finally, it was raining at our apartment, but we could see snow on the mountainside, so there was no stopping him, we had to go out, we did get wet, but we did actually ski! We then had our first dinner that didn’t include turkey since Christmas Day! Our ‘little’ turkey served many ways had certainly done us proud! Trouble is now I’ve got to start thinking of what to eat again!

What a difference a day of snow makes. This was at the top of Chatel

It's great to be out in the fluffy stuff again!

So today we went to the ‘big’ resort, we already had a plan to meet up with Leanne and Drew, and Cassie and Si for lunch on the slopes, so we had a good ski, with even some soft fluffy off piste! Amazing what one day’s snow can do, and more is forecast. Yippee. Lunch was just the four of us in the end as Si ended up getting caught in Geneva waiting for a delayed flight from Manchester, but the spit roasted bacon joint, all you can eat, with salad and dauphinoise potatoes that they had recommended was fabulous. No dinner for us tonight! Couple more runs before coming home for a vin chaud, hoping that the cloud that was coming over is as full of snow as it looked!

Jackie managed to persuade 'Meredith' to come inside one night....

 

But she actually preferred being outside, wondering if she could jump up to the fat balls put out for the birds!