The Sermon Commences

Classic Alpine Experience tracks in the Pays Desert; eight skiers using a strip of snow a few meters wide, leaving plenty of clean snow for subsequent days.

The only problem is that this face will be used up by tomorrow, and as no-one else skis with our kind of discipline it will only take eight skiers doing the Freeride Hustle to trash the rest of that wonderful snow.

I've got nothing against Freeride, in fact I'd like to ski like that sometime; but guess what folks, we're not in the Chugach! This is the French Alps where, in case you hadn't noticed, there hasn't been much snow, so surely it's in everyone interest to make the most of what we've got. Meanwhile, down in the Blue Note the hotrod saisonnieres will be complaining about how the resort is trashed already. Duh.

It's probably a coincidence, but this week the Parisians are on holiday and the pistes have become inhabited by very dangerous young skiers. When are the French going to patrol their pistes to make them safer for the majority of considerate skiers, who have to suffer this minority of very inconsiderate fools? The pisteurs are brilliant at getting to accidents quickly (and I've seen more incidents this week than in all the preceding weeks combined), but surely it makes sense to take preventative measures, rather than purely reactionary ones. A visible pisteur presence on the pistes would surely engender a change in the mentality of lunatic skiers.

And of course it's not a coincidence. These Parisian kids are a complete bunch of idiots and I'm looking forward to them leaving (to be replaced by a bunch of young English idiots next week no doubt. No my mistake, they're here already).

Thus endeth the sermon.