Le Franco Phoney

The ski season ended today when La Balme closed the lifts at 5pm. I drove past at around 5.30 and all the telecabines (bubbles/gondolas) were already off the cable that connects the car park to the ski area. And did I go skiing today? No. I caught last lifts yesterday, but there was something else going on at Les Confins (a small village of La Clusaz) to mark the end of the season, so I went to that instead. The event at Les Confins is called the Defi Foly and it’s an annual event which, I guess, is designed to distract us from the end-of-season sadness. I’ll write more about the Defi Foly next time because I haven’t had time to sort through the photos from today. Instead, I’ll talk about winter for the last time for a while.

This week, the snow was typically icy in the mornings and slushy to the point of waterskiing in the afternoons, but fresh snow fell just last night, and a whole lot more is due in the next few days. From my place, I will see a whole untracked mountain of fresh snow. Yes, this does sound lovely, doesn’t it. And people are always telling me how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful place. However, while the visitors and seasonaires complain that they can’t see any of this because they have to go home, they clearly don’t understand the torture of seeing so much fresh snow and not being able to track it out. Okay, I could get some skins, wake up at 3am and start walking up to a peak with my skis on my feet and my snowboard on my back, but even the reward of fifteen minutes of untracked powder by the time the sun rises is not enough for the hours of effort that goes in to getting to the top for me. It is for some: last year, I could see their tracks on the fresh snow that fell after the resort had closed. But it’s not for me. No. Winter for me is officially over, and it’s time to find the bikini, get back into summer sports and start doing some road trips. Watch this space.