Skiing at La Pierre, France
Trip Start
Apr 11, 2006
1
26
Trip End
??? ??, 2007
Arette, France
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Since I haven't skied for so long, I'm not sure if this is unique to France/Europe, or if it's across-the-board at the slopes, but the lift tickets were pretty strange. You put them in your pocket and head through a turnstile, which has a sensor that lets you pass when it reads your valid ticket. It took me several runs to realize that you weren't supposed to try to get it to read by contorting your body to bring the pass as near to the sensor as possible; it just happens, and it worked much better after that. Still, it seems strange to have such high-tech equipment for an activity that really hasn't changed much over the years.
The skiing itself was very good. Packed powder nearly everywhere, though several trails were closed due to lack of snow; some had bare patches, and there was a very little bit of ice - nothing to compare to the slopes I grew up skiing in NY and New England, which seemed to have more ice than snow. The only real bad point was that some of the bare patches were very rocky, but that wasn't such a concern since we were using rental skis. Speaking of which, they were those new curved skis, which I hear are supposed to help in one way or another - I saw them more as an impediment to turning compared to the old-school straight style, but that could just be because of how long it had been since my last runs.
I fared better than I would have guessed after such an absence. The first couple runs were tentative but controlled, and the only time I was in over my head was when we had to go through a crazy re-route (to avoid a grassy slope) that looked and felt more like a mountain bike trail with its width and penchant for making us turn more than going straight. Meredith did a great job; I was impressed with her skill and fearlessness!
On the whole, it was great to get out there after so many years, and my knees didn't hurt nearly as much as I was expecting. Not something to do every week, but I'll be back more frequently than every decade and a half, I think.
