Le Franco Phoney

I recently wrote about the lovely baby goats I got to feed and pat at the refuge near Thônes called Le Ferme des Vônezins. The ones pictured here are different goats in a very accessible place, and I’m surprised that I haven’t written about this before, given the photo on my ‘About me‘ page features goats from the same farm.

The goat farm at the very end of the Les Confins area of La Clusaz is open all year ’round. In winter, the goats are kept in a big shed with barn doors that are only closed at night and during the coldest weather. Most days, you can stand by the barn doors and the goats will come to the barrier for a pat. The adult goat pictured in the photo was attracted to the brush on her side of the barrier, and she enjoyed scratching for about five minutes while we patted her and watched the antics of the others. They’re entertaining to watch and the farm is one of my favourite places in winter in La Clusaz.

In spring, summer and autumn, the goats graze in the fields higher above the farm. You can walk through the fields with them. Most of them are shy without the security of the barn, but if you’re calm enough, one or two might come over to say hello. Best of all, those green collars tell you the goat’s name.

At the start of spring, when there’s still too much snow on the grass, the goats start producing baby goats. The newborns have a special pen where they can play together. The pen is accessible to visitors who can experience the feeling of a baby goat sucking their finger, and the goats being generally adorable, as pictured in the top photo.

When visitors have had their fill of watching the goats, they can buy cheese at the shop next door. There’s a choice of ridiculously stinky cheeses that I would never attempt to eat right down to fresh goat’s cheese, covered with herbs or spices, which tastes as inoffensive as cream cheese.

Of all the touristy things available in La Clusaz, this is the most popular with my visitors  (apart from skiing and snowboarding, of course). It’s a crowd-pleaser with kids and adults alike, and in all the years I’ve lived here and taken visitors to the farm, I’ve never been bored. Now, if only I can talk the staff into setting up a goatcam…

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A few weeks ago, I took some friends to look at the picturesque views from the Col des Aravis. There was snow, green grass and wild mountain goats all visible nearby, and Mont Blanc was bright white in the distance. A rumble murmured in the distance when I took the photo, pictured above. I wondered if it was thunder, but the sky was blue and the only clouds are the light, fluffy ones you can see which caressed the mountain peaks of l’Etale as they climbed up from the other side and dropped down into the Col des Aravis.

The rumble became louder, and I noticed that snow was sliding off a rock (pictured above the red square in the photo above), causing a white and brown flow of ice and rocks which you can see in the other photo.  In the first photo, the snow has fallen more than 50 metres below the massive rock drop. It looks tiny, but the photo doesn’t show the depth as well as the height. My trusty map does! Imagine standing nearby when so much compacted, icy snow and large, sharp rocks are tumbling, and it’s easy to see how suffocation isn’t the only risk for those caught in avalanches.

The second photo shows just how far an avalanche can travel. The brown river started off slowly, then gained speed over the next rocky outcrop before slowing down towards the bottom right of the photo. It took more than a minute to get there, which seems long and very slow until you remember that the red square alone is more than 50 metres. Nobody could outrun an avalanche of this size, force and speed. Luckily, we were at a safe distance to appreciate the beauty of the snow falling to the left of the rock where it started.

My friends, who were visiting from Australia, had never seen snow, let alone an avalanche. Mother Nature put on an impressive show for them, and I hope they enjoyed it. I certainly did.

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I took this photo just a few days ago, with fresh, powdery snow covering all of La Clusaz. With so few tourists in the resort at this time of year, it took longer than usual for La Balme and the rest of La Clusaz to get tracked out. In fact, l’Etale is still pretty much untracked, as it closed a week ago.

This year has produced the best for snowfall that I’ve ever seen in the Alps, and I feel very lucky to have been here in the Aravis to enjoy it. However, my balance between sport and productivity became somewhat unbalanced, leading to late nights to catch up on work, and early mornings to catch first lifts and yet more knee-deep powder. I’m not the first to experience these imbalances. An English friend in Méribel chose a completely different path. She was struggling to find time between working, snowboarding and socialising, so she gave up snowboarding. “Something had to give,” she said, “and this year, it’s sport. Next year I might stay in more.” Having spent years as a ski bum, giving up an income so I could ski, I don’t understand the concept of giving up a snow sport. Living here would make it all the more difficult!

The French seasonal workers in La Clusaz are just as much of a mystery. They seem to leave the resort within days of their jobs ending, even with this powder falling and very few people tracking it out. These are ideal conditions, and even the seasonal workers have left! Why would they come here and endure working months of long hours in a bitterly cold and expensive place if they don’t get their own sports bonus at the end of it?

I’m certainly not complaining: it means more fun in the snow for me without the crowds.

The ski season ends this Sunday, so I’ll be back on track with work and blog entries — I promise.

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Pictured is how La Balme looked yesterday at around midday. You can see untracked powder and just one guy – my visiting friend – on the entire slope. There are a couple of people on the chairlift, but it was a very quiet day. Had this been any other month, the chairlift would be packed and the powder would be completely tracked out. This is one of the pros of skiing in April! However, there are cons. I’ve made a list of both pros and cons, below.

The Pros

Not many people bother skiing after Easter, so the rest of us get more fresh tracks when the powder inevitably falls, with no queues at any of the lifts increasing sliding time! La Clusaz and Le Grand Bornand, like most resorts, ten to produce bottle necks of traffic early in the morning and later in the day during peak times. By April, the only traffic jams are caused by deer who always appear randomly at this time of year near the roads.

April is usually warm and sunny, and at altitude, the sun is strong. Stopping for lunch involves sunglasses and stripping down to a t-shirt, ensuring plenty of vitamin D after being starved of it all winter.

The sunlight streaming in by 7am makes it much easier to get up for first lifts, and getting home after last lifts is much more enjoyable when it’s not dark and cold. Things get more sociable at the end of the season as a result of all these pros, and by mid-April, seasonal workers’ farewell parties happen almost every night.

The Cons

It’s not all sunshine, parties and powder though. The sun melts that fluffy white stuff much quicker in April, so unless you’re there soon after the snow has fallen, it will turn to mush. Hiking to areas that stay powdery for days in February tend to last just a few hours in the warm April air.

Another problem in La Clusaz is that the pistes close more regularly in April. Last year, the Fernuy télécabine, which connects one of the five peaks of La Clusaz to the rest of the resort, was closed for weeks due to the risk of avalanche taking out a pylon. Getting to any other part of the resort involved a flat green piste and then lots of lifts, or a bus back to town.

With fewer people around, I suspect the lift company is less motivated to open some of the lifts on bad weather days, which might be why I was stuck at l’Etale a few days ago. The fresh snow on the lower areas had turned to mush by midday, and the peaks were all closed due to strong wind. The usual access back to town — via the Transval télépherquie and the Combe du Juments chairlift — was impossible because of this ‘strong wind’. The alternative is a flat, green piste that crosses three roads. On a snowboard, this isn’t much fun, having to unbuckle and rebuckle, then push along with one foot most of the way on the slow, spring snow. Buses are an alternative, but at this time of year in La Clusaz, the bus service is reduced, and rather than wait for an hour and a half, I hitched back to town.

I haven’t talked about the biggest pro of all, which makes all the cons worth it: the Defi Foly. The final weekend here in La Clusaz is all about people throwing themselves into freezing cold water at Les Confins to see who can get the furthest. The event ensures a festival atmosphere and a distraction from the sadness (and denial) that the ski season is finally over. What better way than to end the season on a high?

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This kid is definitely the youngest lift operator in La Clusaz.

I’m not sure he’s a paid worker, given he’s still sucking on his dummy, but he was certainly happy to direct people with his pole as they arrived at the drag lift at Grands Laqauis on the l’Etale area of La Clusaz yesterday.

You can see how high he’s raised off the ground by the man behind him in the photo. I faffed around with my new camera phone while he patiently posed for me.

There used to be two drag lifts here, and the kid is standing on the remnants of the old one, which was taken out in 2008 after the costs of running it outstripped profits for the small private company which owns the two lifts.

I could talk about how the retired lift is still there because it’s been up for sale ever since, and how the remaining one is now a thriving hub for people learning how to speedride, and how half way up the drag lift is a sign indicating CCTV is watching you to make sure you don’t stray outside the straight tracks, but the following photo is far more interesting to talk about.

If you look closely, you’ll see it’s the same kid, later the same day, now using a battery-powdered drill with a massive drill bit attached.

This is not a pretend drill!

The drill is black and just by his foot, and again, faffing with my new camera phone meant I didn’t get the shot I wanted of him in action with the drill. His parents were nearby, by the way.

I’m not convinced that a boy who is still sucking a dummy should really be left in charge of a power tool, even if his parents weren’t far away. However, he certainly seemed far more capable with the drill than I am, and maybe he’s been doing this for a long time, relatively speaking, already.

By the time I was on the drag lift, he’d drilled a second hole (that first one was too wide for the pole to slide into, as you can see in the photo). The drill bit was stuck in the hole in the snow with the drill attached, so he was trying to figure out how to remove it.

That’s the last I saw of the entertaining little guy as I headed up on the drag lift he’d probably kick started that morning after piste bashing it overnight. That’s one talented little kid, destined for a career in lift management!

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March isn’t usually a month that you associate with outdoor festivals in either hemisphere of the world, but around these parts, one has just come and gone and another one is on its way. The Radiomeuh Circus festival is on this weekend, with live acts and DJs galore, both on and off the piste. This online radio station has loyal and happy followers all around the globe. Just a handful will get the opportunity to come to the Radiomeuh Circus festival — including me! If there’s one way to warm up on and off the piste, it’s dancing, and I’m all for it, even in ski boots.

Last weekend was the Glisse en Coeur event in Le Grand Bornand. This involves a crazy 24-hour race on skis or snowboard by teams who take the chairlift up throughout the night to do more laps of the lit-up piste than any of the other teams. They raise money for a charity called ‘Les Puits du Désert‘ (‘Desert Wells’ – to help kids in Nigeria have access to clean water.) To encourage the teams, various French musicians, DJs and comedians performed on a stage right next to the course. The skiers ski between the stage and the crowd watching from behind the course’s barriers.

I’d love to have shown you some great photos of the night, but my SLR was out of action, and the Grand Bornand tourist office haven’t replied to my requests for some of the fantastic photos that they took. Highlights from the evening were seeing a yeti on skis doing laps, hearing French singer Christophe Mae warble to a somewhat massive crowd for these parts, and a break in the downpour of snow during the concert. Punters had to be careful not to fall over on the slippery entrances and exists to the watching area, and despite the very cold temperatures, beer was being downed in quantities typically seen at summer festivals (complete with gloved hands holding the cups).

The food was not quite typical festival food. The only option was buckwheat crepes (galettes) wrapped around a sausage. A Savoyarde/Brittany hot dog? Being a vegetarian, I had a delicious galette with BBQ sauce. At least it only cost 1€. The staff couldn’t keep up with demand, and the smoke from the BBQ was actually greater than the smoke coming from the stage. One thing is for sure, a festival in the French Alps is a very different festival experience.

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If you look hard enough at this photo, you’ll see someone in yellow ski pants climbing what appears to be a concave piece of cliff to the top of Le Croix (“The Cross”) up at La Balme in La Clusaz. That’s local hero Candide Thovex. He climbed to the top with his skis and poles, then cruised down, making the descent look easy. It’s not.

Candide has been to lots of places around the globe to introduce his film, which talks about how he grew up loving moguls, then adapted traditional ski jumping into his own style, becoming the World Champion Freestyle Skier, breaking his back on Big Bertha (a jump at La Balme built each year for the Candide Invitiational), recovering, and becoming the World Champion Freeride Champion just two years later. It’s an interesting and inspirational story, with lots of La Clusaz moments.

After months of introducing his film in different countries and cities, Candide returned to his hometown, where La Clusaz aired the film for free on two separate nights. This is a guy who is pretty famous around the world, and hoards of locals and tourists lined up to watch his film. I was in the crowd, although I’d already seen the film on DVD. The mountain shots are massive, and a big screen is best for viewing!

The film was great, but the kids were pretty entertaining too. Candide was there to introduce the film in his usual down-to-earth way. He then mentioned the giveaways, producing hats, t-shirts, a helmet and a few other goodies. The front of the cinema became a gaggle of kids running around saying “cadeau!” (“gift”) and demanding the goodies. Candide seemed to think it was pretty entertaining too, throwing items into the crowd with a big smile on his face.

But back to the film. If you get a chance to see Few Words on the big screen, take it. The filming is truly beautiful, and the talent and ability of that French man simply enhances it further.

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Last week in La Clusaz, this was the scene down at the Champ Guiget area down by the ice rink in La Clusaz. Can you tell what’s happening? Is it a battle of machines against humans? Is there going to be a really odd game of hockey?

On the left are the piste bashers (aka, groomers, mogul munchers or in French, dameuses). On the right, are the crowd of people who have just downed the freebie vin chaud, hot chocolate and Reblochon cheese. The queue half an hour earlier at the stand offering the freebies was massive, and I wondered if the crowd would stay once they’re received their free drink and cheese. Stay they did. So, are they ready to do battle?

There was no battle.

There was no puck.

There was no ballet.

Dameuse ballet was promised, and I’m pretty sure that promise killed a ballerina somewhere in the world. The damesuses made their way, one-by-one, down the hill, then lined up side-by-side. The ballet — I think — involved a couple of the snow ploughs at the front of the machines getting lifted a few centimetres into the air and being wobbled around. I’d been expecting a few swift turns close to other dameuses, or at least some appropriate music while they reversed backwards and forwards. I wondered if maybe there would be a few girls in tutus on skis twirling behind the big machines, or jumping over them from big kickers doing ballet moves at the same time.

The drivers turned off the engines and got out. That was it. On the upside, the crowd was allowed to climb into the drivers’ seats and get a feel for what it must be like to drive one of these things. This was the highlight!

Next year, La Clusaz, can you ditch the whole ballet idea and just go for joy rides instead?

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This is the third and final post about how to annoy the locals merely by celebrating a birthday.

After causing frowns for asking for a drink in a bar in Croix Fry, then paying far too much for terrible service and not much food for dinner, the birthday of my French friend Elodie was almost over. The fun part had arrived – sliding down the blue piste from Beauregard back to Croix Fry after climbing it earlier on the way to the refuge.

Our group had brought a variety of objects to slide back down on, from the local parait sledge to snowboards and skis. The piste had been groomed and light rain was falling, making the piste soft and deep to step on. We hurtled down the first hill, then reached a flat area and paused while a dameuse (a machine that flattens the pistes) approached. A dameuse‘s function is a serious one: over the course of a day, a ski run will get bumpy and icy in places, and there may be mountains of solid, man-made snow ready to be spread across the piste. The driver of a dameuse must not only flatten the bumps, cover the ice and spread the new snow, but also ensure the camber is maintained across the piste. They work at night so that the pistes are in pristine condition in the morning for everyone to enjoy.

The piste we had just slid down had been flattened, and the wetness of the snow meant our marks were very obvious, with footsteps, toboggan lines and even dog paw prints embedded in the flat, previously perfectly groomed piste. When the driver of the dameuse saw the damage we had done, he drove very close to our group and put the brakes on. We said ‘bonsoir‘ in high spirits, and one of our party pointed to Elodie and said in French that it was her birthday. The driver was unimpressed. ‘So?’ he said. ‘Look what you’ve done to the piste. I spent ages flattening it and now it’s damaged.’

Of course he was right, but given that there are at least two restaurants open in the evenings at Beauregard, this must be a regular, even nightly, problem. Do the locals expect us to walk in the heavy, deep snow on the side of the piste when we all live here for the joy of sliding down the mountains? What’s the point in walking to a restaurant in the middle of nowhere if you can’t enjoy the thrill of a night-time slide on the way home? Has La Clusaz not thought about perhaps preparing this piste later in the night or first thing in the morning? I know that some work in the morning because they hold up the opening of La Balme after the security staff have declared it safe for skiing after a big dump of snow. Why not do the same at Beauregard?

But back to The Night Of The Angry Man In A Dameuse. He ranted for a few minutes about the state of the piste and a few of us said sorry. His rant continued and he was aggressive with his words. I wondered if everyone else felt as much like a naughty child being told off by an angry teacher as I did. He drove off in his dameuse, missing a snowboarder perched on the side of the piste by centimetres — perhaps to emphasise his anger. If his over-the-top anger hadn’t already spurred some of us on to dig more heavily into his piste, his closeness to one of our group fueled the motivation for the rest of us. We hung around until he was out of sight, then carried on down the piste towards Croix Fry. Had he found us again, I suspect we would have witnessed a scene out of a C-grade horror film (surely named ‘The Night Of The Angry Man In A Dameuse‘), and I wouldn’t be here to tell the story!

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This is part two of three posts about how to annoy the locals merely by giving them your custom.

As you may recall, my friend, Elodie, celebrated her birthday last week, and she started the evening with an apero in Croix Fry. We then took a cross-country skiing track towards the top of the Beauregard peak of La Clusaz, and walked for 45 minutes in sleet, with the promise of fondue and other Savoyard treats awaiting us.

We were off to a refuge! Visiting a refuge normally involves a lot of cheese and a lot of alcohol, and if you choose to stay overnight, accommodation can vary from one big room with bunk beds and a pot belly stove to keep warm through to more luxurious, private rooms with en suites. Here’s a scene from the famous French movie, Les Bronzés Font Du Ski. Even if you don’t speak French, the actions are pretty obvious:

Les bronzés font du ski les montagnards et la… par Nico7812

I’ve been to refuges just like this, where men dressed as farmers serve home-made booze from a bottle with a dead scaly animal inside. One refuge owner had to start up a generator to provide lighting, and another one told a group of us, when we stayed overnight, not to use the gas heating during the night. I don’t remember what the reason was, but I do remember being very cold. However, the next morning, with snowboards or skis on our feet, the owner fired up his skidoo with a rope attached and towed us all along the flat field so we could easily enjoy the downhill ride, complete with fresh powder.

For Elodie’s birthday, we headed to Les Matins Bleus — a big, fairly modern refuge. The owner had already taken our food orders (including dessert) from Elodie soon after Elodie had made the booking. As I’d had a tasteless fondue there once before , I ordered fondue aux cepes (fondue with local mushrooms added), hoping it would be tastier.

We were the only customers that night, and the lady was friendly enough, but not all that motivated to keep us happy: she was hard to find when we needed more water, wine or bread. She begrudgingly brought out a fourth bowl of salad, which isn’t all that much for 19 people, and promptly disappeared again. The mushrooms added a little flavour to the fondue, but it was still pretty tasteless. As we neared the end of the fondue, it was time to dump an egg, some kirsch and bread into the dish and mix it up. She’d left the eggs on the tables for us to do ourselves (pictured, along with empty bottles of drink), but no kirsch in sight. It was a totally half-hearted effort of ‘serving’ us. Worse still, most of us were still hungry. Poor Elodie went to ask her for more fondue, and after a long discussion (because no French conversation can be short!), the owner agreed to bring more fondue and tartiflette — for an additional price. So, only the hungriest ate, and they got through everything. The owner had told Elodie she had used the usual 200 grams of cheese per person, but our fondue pot for three contained less than what I’d expect for three people. Regardless, I’ve been to restaurants that keep on refilling the fondue until you’re full, free of charge.

Now, dessert. Whether pre-ordered or not, slices of berry crumble and the surprise birthday chocolate pie were thrust upon all of us, with pie demand outstripping berry demand, but not enough to go around. Berry crumble was handed to those who missed out.

At the end of the night, Elodie painstakingly figured out who had ordered what, who had drunk wine and who had not, and then took money from everyone. Regardless of her efforts, she told me afterwards it worked out to at least €35 per person anyway — the price another refuge had offered as a flat rate for the whole evening, which she figured was too expensive.

So far, Elodie’s birthday had consisted of apologising to a bar in Croix Fry for wanting to come for an apero, then spending far too much of her birthday meal negotiating with the owner of the refuge for more food for the hungry guests, then about half an hour accounting how much each person should pay. That’s two businesses who seemed put out to have our business! These were hardly ideal moments during the night, but the descent to was still to come. What could possibly go wrong?

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