An Ethereal Meribel

After a very busy first half of the winter season ski instructing here in Meribel, this week has seen a slow down of work for me. This is far from a disaster, it has been nice to have a short lull in the proceedings before the next busy period starts in February. It just so happens that the weather and snow conditions are gradually on the move. In the last few days we've had very little sunshine to speak about, and a couple of little snowfall top ups.

There is still no doubt that the Alps could do with a frothing great big dump to sort things out. In the meantime we are bumbling along dealing with life in the mountains. Speaking of which, the weather forecast for this morning was on the overcast side, again. So waking up and heading down to Chaudanne first thing in the morning was a little less motivating than normal. However....... there was a glimpse, just a tiny glimpse, of something slightly brighter higher up in the gloom. I wasn't sure, but a desperate gut feeling told me to put my ski boots on.

I grabbed my freshly serviced pair of skis down in the locker room, and took hold of my eternal friend called Canon. And up we went, higher and higher, through the dullness of the thick clouds. Occasionally you could see a brighter patch in the sky. Not much, but enough for you to chase that elusive sunshine. To be honest it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Or waiting for the dump of the winter season to arrive!

However, the lighting on the mountain this morning was just majestic. I could hear skiers all around me mention words like formidable, agréable, incroyable, and the odd English voice saying "blimey that's made my day". We hardly saw the direct sun, but the scenes were quite special. Forgive me for a moment if I'm getting a little carried away here with being all arty farty with Canon.

I'm so pleased that I made the effort to go for a slide, and take Canon along with me as well. Otherwise views like these quickly fade away. I'm very rarely smug in life, but with Canon in the mountains sometimes I am very Smug, a Smug McSmuggingtons in Smugtown! I wonder what French for Smug McSmuggintons is?

I bumped into a few colleagues of mine on the mountain who were also bamboozled by the scenes. It was amazing to be part of this experience, and share it with everyone up there.

Anyway, enough of that. It actually looks as if, in a couple of days or so, we are in for a season changing, ruddy great big frothing dump of snow. All sorts of figures and snow depths are being forecast and thrown around on social media. It's very easy to get carried away with such things in a frenzy in these circumstances. Needless to say, fingers and toes crossed.

If you enjoyed this blog post you might like to read another I wrote last year on a similar subject, titled 'One Of Those Days', click here for the link. Please feel free to share away on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ by using the social media icons. Or leave a comment below. In the meantime, Live With Passion. Smug McSmugginton (Martin).