The start of winter...in mid January?

After a rather slow start to the winter, the snow has finally arrived!

Photo credit: Heather swift
www.heather-swift.com/

Photo credit: Heather swift
www.heather-swift.com/

The first big dump of the winter gently floated its way down onto the slopes and Saturday was a truly fantastic powder day. Unfortunately, the gorgeous fluffy powder was covering a multitude of hidden rocks, meaning that I now know a collection of people with core shot skis (when you strip off the bottom of the ski down to the wooden core-ouchy ouchy ski!) and I myself have very scratched skis. Despite this I have had some amazing runs off the top lift of Grand Montets with the 'girly shred crew' in the the fluffy stuff this weekend, as illustrated by these pictures...

Amazing powder through the trees!
Photo credit: Heather swift
www.heather-swift.com/

A rather sparser snow day at the Brevent the previous weekend
Photo credit: Heather swift
www.heather-swift.com/

Leading up to this first snowfall, the winter has been rather sparse. I passed New Years down in the Pyrenees doing some winter assessment prep with Claire, Alistar and his son, Magnus. The week started off horrendously cold and windy and ended up too warm by the end. We looked at lots of trees and animal tracks and stuff like that, and barely covered any ground.

A powder day...on snowshoes.
Hmmmf

And by the end of the week,
most of the snow had melted...

My whole family were here for Christmas which means we were running around like headless chickens trying to find something to do in the complete lack of snow, but had some good days skiing at Les Contamines (Rosie totally smashed her first off piste experience), a couple of days snowshoeing, and just some normal walking in the valley as well. Also had the achievement of doing Christmas dinner for 8 in my 19m2 flat!

The aftermath of the Bulgarian
 present exchange

This is what 'fresh tracks' look
like when there is very little snow

Rosie totally shredding the nasty sun crust at Contamines

Team snowshoe out at Le tour

Need straight legs!
Photo credit: Heather swift
www.heather-swift.com

Standard, mainly spending
my time sitting of the mats
Photo credit: Heather swift
www.heather-swift.com

In between all this, I've been climbing indoors alot, until I hurt my shoulder last week. I've been feeling really good and strong moving about on the plastic so its a bit of a bummer to have injured myself, but I have been very aware that my core has been letting me down, so going to take this opportunity to address that, so sit up city here I come...