Thursday, February 17
Moon Groom
After changing the glow plugs on the Mondeo, resulting in a bust turbo-injector-return hose (another story altogether!), RC and I packed another car headed up the mountain.
We parked at the first car park and started skinning up "Vallée Blanche" in the moonlight. Fantastic conditions: warm weather (0 degrees), clear skies, almost full moon, freshly groomed slope. We climbed for an hour at a good "just being able to talk" pace.
We'd talked about doing it for years and finally it was happening! Seeing the lights of Les 2 Alpes getting smaller, feeling the wind on our face, watching people night skiing (under lights) on the slopes across the valley, admiring the stars in the clear skies above, and following the sights and sounds the grooming cats' progress were all feasts for the senses.
We joked about having "first tracks" on the groomed slopes and how people in Aspen waited for the "noon groom"...
Almost at the top we heard a hissing sound: the snow canons were starting to shoot out their micro-snow. The shadow these snow-clouds cast was amazing, but nothing compared to the feeling we had climbing underneath them: like being on a massive wave, in a giant tube...
After a Mars bar and beverage on the top of the (our) world, we took the skins off and enjoyed some sweet, sweet tele turns back to the car on freshly "moon groomed" steep blue slopes. The feeling of skiing in the moonlight is totally different to daytime and, as you can't always see if you're moving or how fast you're going, it heightens the senses and you ski by touch... hopefully we'll have clear skies for the next one in a month's time!
After changing the glow plugs on the Mondeo, resulting in a bust turbo-injector-return hose (another story altogether!), RC and I packed another car headed up the mountain.
We parked at the first car park and started skinning up "Vallée Blanche" in the moonlight. Fantastic conditions: warm weather (0 degrees), clear skies, almost full moon, freshly groomed slope. We climbed for an hour at a good "just being able to talk" pace.
We'd talked about doing it for years and finally it was happening! Seeing the lights of Les 2 Alpes getting smaller, feeling the wind on our face, watching people night skiing (under lights) on the slopes across the valley, admiring the stars in the clear skies above, and following the sights and sounds the grooming cats' progress were all feasts for the senses.
We joked about having "first tracks" on the groomed slopes and how people in Aspen waited for the "noon groom"...
Almost at the top we heard a hissing sound: the snow canons were starting to shoot out their micro-snow. The shadow these snow-clouds cast was amazing, but nothing compared to the feeling we had climbing underneath them: like being on a massive wave, in a giant tube...
After a Mars bar and beverage on the top of the (our) world, we took the skins off and enjoyed some sweet, sweet tele turns back to the car on freshly "moon groomed" steep blue slopes. The feeling of skiing in the moonlight is totally different to daytime and, as you can't always see if you're moving or how fast you're going, it heightens the senses and you ski by touch... hopefully we'll have clear skies for the next one in a month's time!
