A beautiful day at last!

The forecast was correct, it was a beautiful day when we woke up - blue skies and sunshine. This village has one large gondola lift that goes from the bottom to halfway up the mountain, and then we have to change and get into another one to take us to the top of the mountain (it is too high to have one direct lift). On a beautiful day in peak season the queue at the bottom to get into the first gondola can be quite long, and today it was pretty awful with people pushing in and no British sense of orderly queuing at all! However, when we got to the top it was not busy and one wonders where all these people disappear to as the slopes were relatively quiet.

We had a wonderful day skiing in perfect snow and sunshine conditions. We skied back home via that direct route that takes us to just over the road from our apartment - as this village is not a purpose built ski village it is unusual to have this facility, but this is one of the advantages of the position of our new apartment. However, it is a very challenging run down, very steep and narrow and I was unable to turn as often as I like. It was nearly 12km from top to bottom with a descent of 1544m (noted from the ski app!) 

I heard today that one of the popular restaurants in the village is closing at the end of the season as they say there has been so much negative press about lack of snow that people have stayed away and so they have taken a large financial knock this season. This is unfortunate as the snow here is fantastic, even in December when the rest of Europe was suffering there was sufficient snow here to attract visitors. I suppose it is similar to what is happening in the Lake District, where people are staying away due to the flooding and despite being back to normal the negative press adversely affects tourism. These mountain villages are very reliant on a good winter season to survive.

Forecast tomorrow is more snow....