Les Arcs

My last trip was to Les Arcs with some friends to go skiing!

First stop.  At the top of the mountain.  The only way down, the black slope on the right.

A bit further down.  The village in the distance is Arc 1950.

Evil mogul field where I met my end.  Hit an ice patch, lost both skis and slid 30 metres face first.  I only stopped when I hit the flat blue intersecting run.  Then the ski patrol came by to check that I hadn’t died.  Once he was I was alive he skied off, probably because he didn’t want to help me get my skis up the ice face.  It took me almost 5 minutes to go 30 metres up as I had to dig my boots in for every step…

The next day I made some new friends.  Skiing foodstuff.

Food after skiing.  Burger with cheese fried onto the bun.  Ahhh yum yum.

And some more skiing.  There had been no new snow for 2 weeks before we got there, and no new snow while were there.  Lower runs were a bit icy (and amusing to watch some of my friends almost die on them).  Upper levels were ok, but many of the black slopes were closed as they did not have enough snow (ok maybe I shouldn’t have taken that last black run on the last day where I almost died).

Of course, if you don’t like to ski down, you could take a parachute down!

Of course, if you aren’t willing to ski, snowboard or walk you can try something else.

Happy faces!

Maybe not that happy.  Unfortunately I don’t have the extremely cold looking people at the bottom.  You can steer by poking your little sticks into the snow.  However, what they didn’t tell you before you set off was that other people had carved groves in the snow as they braked in desperation.  Then once you hit one of these grooves you lost all ability to stop.  So what do you do when you think you are going to die?  Dig in your ski boots!  Bad idea, that creates a massive snow storm as snow sprays everywhere and then you can’t see (or breathe).  Just close your eyes and hope…  You are going to slow down sometime right?

Then almost home!  What a tiring day.

Two more pictures of food to finish.  This is a tartiflette pizza.  The first time someone explained it to me they said it was heavy cream, lots of cheese, potatoes, bacon lardons and onions.  And I misheard “heart attack”.  I think that is a more apt name.  Just look at that and think how many calories it contains…

And lastly, roast chicken!  With some very very special fries.  I don’t know waht they seasoned them with, but I suspect it is some special type of salt and some other seasoning.  Also just right, not too crispy.

Bye bye!



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