Alpine Days

It’s been a really long time since I wrote anything. Mainly because time is scarce in mountain life. When I am not working I am either up the mountain or sleeping; there’s not a lot of time left over. We get paid very little for the amount we work so I’ve decided to take my payment in snowboarding time. I weave my day around the best mountain time, and try and get out as much as possible, no matter how knackered I am. As they say, I can sleep when I’m dead – or in my case when the season is over..! Which is exactly one month today.

I still can't get over how stunning it is here. This is looking down at the cloud sitting in the valley below.

I’ve managed to explore the 3 Valleys a bit recently. I spent a day in Val Thorens, carving up the park slope which has boxes, kickers, bridges and giant hands that you can high 5 along the route, ending in a giant igloo. And we went across to Meribel on the most beautiful sunny day after a heavy snowfall. It was incredible, full of long runs through forests and along stunning cliff edges. There’s a giant airbag in Meribel that I’m gunning for so hopefully I’ll get the chance to go across there again!

It's great going boarding with a big group - although you always end up waiting on half the group or chasing down people that have gone the wrong way. This was the greatest day out, on Clare my roomie from training's last day.

I really don't know where to begin, there's been so much going on.

From building snowmen…

 meeting snow dogs…

and snow gods…

 to squeezing through super tiny snow holes in a snow labyrinth

and finding ancient igloo carvings of Pacman!

I also got to meet an elephant - not who you'd expect to see in the Alps.

And I'm having A LOT of fun dressing up as our mascot, Monty the marmot

And even more fun when someone else does it and I'm just 'Monty's Handler'. Trying to get him in the car was an experience I'll never forget..! The you-can-never-let-Monty-be-seen-without-his-head rule made things a little bit more challenging!

Bunny has been having more fun too.

From hot chocolate at the top of the mountain to making new friends =]

There has been so much snow lately that there is fresh powder every day and I’ve been having the best snowboarding I’ve ever known. I love riding off piste more than anything because there’s nothing better than carving fresh lines in untouched snow!! It feels like gliding through the sky. Taking on the side of the mountain and forging my own path – it’s like nothing else.

And of course with lots of snow come lots of moguls – lumps of snow that gets pushed together with paths carved around them – and so the chance to get some air *jump*. Sometimes completely unintentionally because you don’t spot the bulge in front of you – it’s a huge adrenaline rush when you land an unexpected jump! And a literal kick in the butt when you stack it; which happens fairly regularly. I couldn’t sit down for a week after one session when I went down hard twice on the same spot!!!

I’ve been having a lot of fun in the BK Park too. [Don’t ask me what the BK stands for, I have no idea.] Started out with the rollers, rolling bumps kinda like giant speed bumps where you pick up speed going up and down. Then I moved on to the jumps. There’s a row of 4 and by the third you’ve picked up so much speed that you shoot over with a good couple of feet of air underneath you. It is utterly terrifying, I honestly don’t breathe for the whole time and I constantly think I’m about to die, but MY GOD is it a rush!!! I will have to try and get photos/videos.

I’m also practicing 180 jumps and turning 360 as I go downhill. That’s really fun. Though my current favourite thing is ‘buttering’ which I tried for the first time the other day. You put all your weight on your back leg and lean as far back as possible, lifting the front of your board in the air.

So I’m really enjoying learning new tricks and just being out on the mountain. It’s mostly to do with the guy that I’ve been boarding so much with. He’s really good and inspires me to try harder and push myself. His name’s Tom and he works for Massage Me, a company who come to our chalets and give massages to our guests.

The season has been long and hard, with far too little rest, and a lot of pushing my body to the limits. So I guess it’s good my friend is a massage therapist!!

In fact, said massage therapist might be a little bit more than just a friend. And in fact instead of flying home a month today I might be wending my way back through Europe in said massage therapist’s car… 
Watch this space…

January in Rebbers

This is Reberty.

And that is the piste. 100m from my front door.

We’re the highest village on the mountain and have to ski/board down to get to a chairlift to take us further up. Please appreciate this shot – I nearly dropped my phone from the chair lift trying to get it! =]

And here's a shot of the village from the other side of the valley. Reberty is the top little triangle of buildings.

This is Chalet Eva, our biggest chalet. I used to live just behind the car underneath the balcony but Murren and I moved this week into the staff accom further down the road. A lot of nannies are leaving and we’ve got new staff coming in so to deal with the whole male/female sharing ratio thing we’ve all shuffled around. It’s nice to not have to walk down the street to use the kettle, though we still have to go down the stairs which are outside.

Times have been busy here in the Alps. The snow has been endless. Last week we had about 2m of snow in 3 days, on top of the meter or so that was already there. We’ve had the most snow in 21 years and the people who’ve been here for many seasons can’t believe it. I’ve been shovelling my little heart out and I’m pleased to say the muscles are coming along nicely!

The biggest challenge has been the Eva playroom balcony. Because I’ve been so busy recently and hadn’t got round to clearing it, the snow piled up around 1m deep, and the bottom couple of feet had frozen to pure ice. I’ve been slugging at it for about 3 days and I’m still nowhere near the bottom.

There’s nowhere to put the snow except on the road so it’s a case of flinging it over the balcony. In the process I built my own mountain! I guess I figured that if I didn't have time to go to the mountain I'd create my own - or whatever that old line is.

Everyone is throwing all their snow out onto the road and the snowplough is failing to clear it all quick enough, which meant the road became pretty impassable. Car after car got stuck in the snow, even when they have snow chains on they just got beached. So many people must have almost burned their engines out as their wheels just span. I’ve had to dig out at least 3 cars this week. One of our families drove to the resort and after it had been stationary for a week it took me maybe 2 hours to dig it out of the snow which had piled half way up the windows!

It’s not just car windows, this is the view from our lounge onto the road outside.

And it’s not just cars and windows that get covered either..!

(That's someone's satellite dish if you can't quite make it out!)

My biggest challenge is clearing a path from the road to the boot rooms where skis are stored. The banks are getting so high I’m now having to carry the snow from the doorway down the path and onto the road, rather than just pile it on top.

 The snowplough is both good and bad at the same time. While he clears the roads so we can all move around he pushes all the snow to the side, and covers up my freshly dug pathways! And then he piles snow up in really inconvenient places which mean I have to dig through icy boulders!

The kids have been helping me clear some of the snow though. I introduce you to Bernie, my first snowman of the season.

Bunny has been helping too, but he’s a bit small to hold a shovel!

Mostly he’s been up to his usual tricks of playing around. He’s tried bum boarding…

And he came out snowboarding with me today…

 But he wasn’t very good at it so he just decided to admire the view.

I haven’t introduced you to my babies yet. These girls are what make all the hard graft worth it. I’m working anywhere from 12 – 18 hour days so there’s no usually chance to head up the mountain, especially when it’s snowing so much. But today the sun came out and for the first time in a couple of weeks I got to really put them through their paces. As my confidence is increasing again I’m absolutely loving picking up a bit of speed, knowing I’ve got the skills to handle it.

The sun setting over La Pointe De Masse was stunningly beautiful.

Another part of my job is chopping wood for all the fires in the chalets. That’s a lot of fun. I’m getting really good at it. I think I’ve really found my niche. 'Niche', gettit? Cause you have to force the axe deeper and deeper into a niche in the log, yeah, gettit? Gettit? =] 

I know, seriously cheesy. 

On that note, cheese anyone?

Reberty 2000

I’ve been at my resort for almost a month now. It’s in a small village called Reberty in Les Menuires, part of the Savoie region. I live in a tiny ‘apartment’ with one of our chefs, Murren, from Gurnsey, and Haley, one of the childcare team. I say apartment but it’s actually just 2 bedrooms joined by a tiny bathroom. Our lounge/kitchen is 100m down the street – which is great for getting a cup of tea in the middle of a blizzard like right now…

We have 3 chalets here, Eva, Katie 1 and Katie 2 which all sleep between 11 and 17 guests. I haven't got any good photos of them but you can click on the names to see them. My job as the Resort Host is to make sure everything is running smoothly. I test and maintain the hot tubs, sort out ski hire, make sure the chalets have everything they need, help out with the kids, do any odd jobs, fill in where I’m needed and shovel A LOT of snow. I start at 7am until around 1pm and then get a few hours free before I’m back to work at 4pm where I host in chalet Katie 2. I work with the chef Joe to set up and serve kids tea and a 3 course meal for the adults with prosecco and canapés. It involves A LOT of washing up. I usually finish around 10pm.

In between snow shovelling and washing up I try and get out on the mountain as much as possible. I’ll snowboard every day unless the conditions are bad like right now or I really need to sleep, or sometimes I just don’t have time to stop.

Altitude

I’m sitting at 2000m above sea level. Coming from Dorset which is at sea level is a big difference. Last week I got hit with altitude sickness. After boarding down the mountain to a small town nearby all of a sudden I just couldn’t stand up any more. I went really dizzy and weak and when I sat down with my friend to get some food I couldn’t eat anything. I went to bed and slept for the next 3 days.

Transfer Day Trauma

I didn’t get up until 5am on Saturday to take the guests back to the airport and pick up the new ones. This week’s transfer, with week 2’s guests leaving and week 3’s arriving was dramatic and stressful and at times pretty horrific…

It usually takes about 3 hours to get to Geneva airport but we left early because of a huge snowstorm on Friday night. The bus had snowchains on the tires and we travelled at about 10kmph down the mountain through heavy snow. I got a call from Josh, my manager, who told me that a guest from another company had put their bag on our bus by mistake and could I get it off and leave it somewhere nearby as they were travelling to a different airport – not possible as we were running late and I already had nervous passengers. We arrived just in time before check in closed.

But no time to breathe. Mad dash over to terminal 2 to meet the new guests and warn them that we’re looking at a double long journey because of the weather conditions and the fact that everybody in the Alps is on the move on a Saturday. 30,000 cars were expected to be on the road. With only 1 café and at least an hour long que of everyone stocking up for a long journey we decide to stop en route for supplies.

We did stop. But not for sandwiches. 

We were gridlocked on the freeway for 2 hours. I’m alone on the coach with 24 people, half of whom are bored and tired children, the other half are bored and tired adults. I got a phonecall from the director of the company to say the road between us and the mountain was closed because of an avalanche and he’d booked us all into a hotel for the night. A hotel an hour in the wrong direction. Cue very frustrated guests. Most of them were great and very understanding but there were some who would not be appeased.

Eventually we managed to get off the freeway – luckily we’d been near an off ramp – and drove to Grenoble to our hotel. Which we couldn’t find. The driver had never been to Grenoble before and inner city one way streets with a coach is never simple. When we finally found it the barrier into the car park was too low for the bus and we had to drive around the block before we could pull in beside it. And thankfully, yes they’d got a booking for Ski Famille! Relief.

Or not.

As I’m helping unpack cases from the coach I get told our booking is not right. The guy at reception says the Ski Famille booking contains 54 names which are not ours and he doesn’t have another list. I have everyone pushing up behind me trying to find out what is going on and no one who might have any idea what has happened is answering their phone.

So not a great situation…

Then Will turns up. He does the same job as me in another of our resorts, Bruyeres, just a bit down the mountain, and he’s got 52 guests plus a bus driver. The booking is his. But he’s able to tell me that my booking is under the company director’s name. How the receptionist didn’t figure out that his booking for 26 people was for the big crowd of people in his lobby is beyond me. And then the rooms we had were only 4 people rooms, not great for families with 3 kids. There was no restaurant there, only a McDonalds in the closed mall down the street, and McDonald’s in France don’t serve anything vegetarian, so it was just fries for tea.

Next morning we left at 6am. The road had been cleared and there was no traffic so we were able to race to the resort. We were too early to find anywhere open for breakfast so stomachs were growling and throats were seriously dry as we finally arrived in resort at 8:30. I was able to take everybody up to Ski Set our hire shop and get them kitted out with skis and snowboards and they got on the slopes for 11am. Success. Nailed it. Phew…

Christmas

Christmas Day was a lot of fun. We all took an hour to head up the mountain together. Bruyere staff joined us too, and we drank Prosecco from the bottle before skiing/boarding down in a group 20 strong. It was a beautiful sunny day and there was fresh powder on the slopes. It was perfect.

So life here is good. Even though the days are long and exhausting. It gets a bit monotonous and it often feels quite futile. I shovel snow and clear paths and balconies and by the time I’ve finished they’re covered again. But it’s all worth it when I get up on the mountain. It’s so stunningly beautiful sitting up above the clouds with the sun shining down on my face.

The snow is really coming in now! We’ve had about 50cm in the last couple of days and it’s only going to get deeper…