cheeseit

After a good night's sleep, apart from being woken at some unearthly hour by James removing his ski boots from the radiator, we headed down to breakfast at 7:45. We were then ready and out well before 9am and half way across the hotel car park on our way to the Daille chair lift, a local told us that all the runs were closed, but some may be open by 10. So we dropped our skis back in the boot room and headed off to see if there was any sign of when anything would open. The Daille chair and the Funival funicular train are a very short walk from our hotel, and by the time we got to the Funival it was clear that the nursery slope next to it (albeit with a dreaded button lift) was open.

After getting back to the hotel and picking up our skis, we headed back over to the Funival, which was now open, so we hopped on that. It is quite an interesting piece of ski transport, being a train at a permanent angle that goes up a tunnel through the mountain. Anyway once we got to the top, we discovered that there was good reason for all the chair lifts being closed, namely it was ridiculously windy. We decided to brave it anyway, but within the first few yards of our run down the blue "Diebold" my goggles had frozen up (on the inside) and the wind was so strong that in places whilst it felt like you were moving looking at the ground proved that in fact you weren't. Still we persevered on,and despite a few tumbles on my part eventually made it down the lower reaches of the run where it was clear, with some lovely powder.

We then took a quick stop off at the local ski shop before heading back up, we ended up going up the Funival about 4 times, and the Daille chair lift a couple of times, although that was pretty fierce. There weren't many runs so I think we only managed Diebold, and bits of Verte, Orange and Criterium. After we stopped for lunch at "Fasty Food", which was anything but speedy, the Daille chair was closed, so we took another run before calling it a day as the wind was getting up again.

After afternoon tea and a bath - although the tub is far too small and requires no end of contortion to get your knees under the water) we headed down for aperatifs and dinner at the earlier sitting, and had the fun of watching people trying to drive in the snow, including an impressive hand brake turn around a roundabout. Hopefully tomorrow morning will be better, although to be honest we're lucky being down in La Daille opposed to the main village in Val as all they had open was a few green slopes.

* I'm not actually sure what direction the wind was predominantly blowing in, so the title of this post may be incorrect, but I've had said Kansas song in my head all afternoon.