Val Thorens (Alpes Françaises)

Voici donc la finale de mes entrées au sujet de mes vacances en France.

Here is the final bit, from my trip to France over the holiday period. And I will write this one in English, for those who have told me they can't understand a thing of French. Anyhow, it was a funny day, that day. We left Grenoble around 9am to make it to Val Thorens - it's about an hour and 15 minute drive, if you go on one side of the moutain. That's the short way. You can also drive 2 hours to get directly into Val Thorens valley - but we thought we would get a whole extra 45 minutes of skiing in, if we went to the other side of the mountain and took the gondola up. Little did we know, that would lead to a huge adventure. (further details below - but first, the beginning!)

This is a picture of the runs of one of the three mountains we could go on. It was at the bottom of the Mont Orelle, where we took a gondola up the mountain. It was grey and cloudy at the bottom, but once we got up about 300 meters high, we passed through the clouds and made our way into a nice, sunny, blue-sky weahter, that was amazing! It wasn't too cold, although the wind could sometimes cut your breath.
Me at the top of the mountain.

Damien finishing up a 360 degree jump!

View on the top of the mountain - near the end of our day - or what we thought to be the end of our day.

Me playing ostrich in the snow. This was an off-piste course, and it was full of powder - or as Damien, with his broken English and French accent, would say it "pound her". It was hilarious. And rahter than to help, Jeremy just took a picture! :)
Here I am exaggerating the fall a little - I knew the camera was going on!
Nice slope pic!

Me on the slopes. It was a little cold on the face with the wind, therefore you can't see me, but I assure you, that is me behind the mask!
Damien going crazy at the top!
View, from Mont Orelle, of the Val Thorens valley.

For lunch, Damien hat the great idea of bringing a saussage. But the brilliant Jeremy forgot to bring the knife. We had to resort to extreme measures! Here is Damien using his ski to do the job. It surprinsingly worked splendidly!
Jeremy using a more caveman-ish method - stone pieces. It also worked like a charm!
Damien's father, Damien, myself, and Jeremy at our lunch spot.

Mannschaft Extrem taking over the Val Thorens resort!
Jeremy, once more, trying to throw me off the mountain. The violence of this guy is incredible!!! (just kidding - it was all in good fun.)

I don't remember why, but here is a picture of Damien feeding me water. I guess it was funny because the water didn't always necessarily go in my mouth... well not so funny cause I risked getting quite wet in the cold weather. Good thing the sun was shining to warm up a little.
View of the valley.

Jeremy and I.
Jeremy, myself and Damien in the lift.

This picture is actually out of order. It's the first lift we took after the gondola up the first mountain. Tivia fact - the mountain was about 3400 meters high.
Jeremy, Damien's dad, Myself and Damien going up the first lift.Now here is where the adventure continues. When we first went up the gondola we thought we need to know the last trip it makes to the car. 4:30pm. We knew that. At the top of the mountain, they had to close down the run leading to the gondola, due to the level 4 risk of avalanche (on a scale of 1-5, 5 being the worst!). They said they would open it again at 4pm so we can get to the gondola. So we thought we would be safe. Problem is, we didn't bother checking the time for the last lift on the other side of the mountain, leading to this other lift... So we went about our skiing. At about 3:45pm, Damien's dad left us to go buy some very popular cheese in the Val Thorens resort, and we skiied some more, until our meeting point at 4, 4:10pm at the bottom of the mountain. Damien's father came, a little late, but we still made the first lift. Only to realize, that the second lift was closed - it closed at 4pm... What were we going to do??? We needed to get to the other side of the mountain, where the car was. Problem was that there were also about 10 other people who had also thought 4:30pm was the last trip. We tried to fight to have the lift opened - it was afterall just about 10 minutes too late, and we were lots of people... The guy who worked there couldn't help us, he said, because there were no more guides on the other side of the mountain, on account that the run was closed all day. And they didn't want to take the risk of being liable for injuries. Luckily, as we were pleading our case, a man who owns a restaurant at the top of the mountain heard us, and asked how many drivers there were. He offered to lend his truck to the drivers so they could go pick up the cars, and come back to pick up the others, and return his pick up. At first, we all thought he was crazy. Lending his car to total strangers?? But he was serious! And a really nice guy! It was amazing...Here we are, all negociating and exchange cellphone numbers. It was funny - and crazy. When a woman told the man that it's not everyday you will find someone to do such a nice action, he replied : "That's why things are going bad in France."

Anyhow, the drivers left to pick up the cars, and Damien, Jeremy, myself and two women were stranded on the mountain until they came back. We were told it would take a minimum of 3 hours, so we should probably go to a restaurant and wait in the warmth. The man brought us to a nice place (although way too expensive! 9,50Euros for a coffee!) We waited and chatted with the woman. They were actually really nice and we laughed about the whole situation! We were lucky, cause they could have been really boring. After abour 3 hours, the drivers still weren't back. We started to get a little tired. It was already 8pm. At around 9pm, we still didn't have any news from them. Actually, I think they may have called at some point to say they were at the cars. Which meant it had taken about 2 or 2 and a half hours to go one way!!! We ended up getting outside, around nine, thinking they would get there soon. But it wasn't until 10:20pm that the cars arrived. And even then, they weren't all there, because Damien's dad's car couldn't make it up the hill - it was too slippery with the snow. So we squeezed seven people into a five seater car, until half-way down the mountain, where Damien's father waited for us. We were relieved to be in the car at around 11pm. But the adventure wasn't over. Now that we were on the other side of the mountain, we still had 2 hours of road ahead of us...!! We could have saved a whole lot of time just by coming here in the first place! Ha ha! but it was funny anyway, and a great adventure to remember!

This is Val Thorens at night. It was nice too and the moon was shining quite nice!

That's the end of the beautiful Val Thorens adventure. It sure was good. That night, we were so tired, we canceled our plans for the next morning to wake up early and go see the sunrise in the Grenoble mountains. Luckily - because I had trouble to get up, even at 10:30am...