Opening day at the Grand Tourmelet

The local ski area opened today. The drive up was quite exciting as it snowed a lot over night and then was lovely blue skies today - perfect and the road was still quite snowy. There were a lot of frantic people stopped in the middle of the road putting chains on. Luckily with the 4x4 we were fine. We are always nervous putting it in to 4 wheel drive as when we bought it the nice man from the garage gave us a lecture about being careful and not driving it in 4wd when the road isn't slidey enough - or the engine will leap out the bonnet or something. Don't tell Doug, but there was one time I forgot to take it out of 4wd for at least 100m and I was worried for ages afterwards about a little kind of click/tremor I could feel sometimes in the clutch - I then realised to my great relief that this is a little click that happens when the air conditioning comes on, so unlikely to be related to the engine leaping out the bonnet. Today we were good, it was plenty slidey enough. Usually I don't overtake that many people driving the 4x4 as it isn't a nippy little thing (Doug calls me Grandma Stationwagon - which I think is mean considering he complains when I drive 'like a rally driver') but today we were zooming past all sorts.

Only a few of the lifts actually opened, but it wasn't THAT busy for the first day and we had plenty of lovely fresh powder runs. The lifts opened at 9am and we were knackered by midday. There were a number of very keen looking people with nice skis and ABS rucksacks - which are an avalanche safety device that are meant to float you to the top of the avalanche and generally indicate a keen off piste skier. We just need to learn French so we can make friends with them!

Happy to go skiing

The drive up

Fresh snow

Shredding the pow

Happy to be out the car

The puppy dog waited very patiently (well perhaps not patiently) in her crate in the car. I was worried she would get cold because she is pretty skinny and only has very short hair. She loves the heat and sits right in front of the fire so close you think she would burn. But with her jacket on she seemed to be warm enough. We took her for a bit of a run around after we finished skiing so she doesn't get hacked off with going for car rides when they just bring her a cold wait at the other end then a drive home. We went to Payolle (where the sloes came from) because it is quieter and safer for her to run around, and with less skiers to monster - although as it turned out there were a number of cross country ones but they seemed to like being jumped on by an over friendly dog (possibly they will be less keen on the huge poo she laid in the middle of the track).

Are you getting bored of videos of Poppy being cute in the snow yet? Har har

What we needed after that was a lovely warm shower. If only!