Happy New Year 2020 From Méribel

Happy New Year everybody, and welcome back to another post from your favourite blogging ski instructor in Méribel. Wow, the Festive Period has been and gone already this winter. And we are just about to ease into another quiet part of the season in early January. Thanks to the excellent snow conditions leading up to this busy time of the winter, we all had some fantastic skiing. In fact, the first few days of Christmas week gave us a couple more snow storms to help top us up.......

During Christmas week I had the pleasure (and a huge amount of fun) of skiing with the Harringtons, and occasionally Gilly & John. Then the second week, New Years week, I skied with Gilly & John again and this time with their good friends the Buckroyds. We made full use of our Les 3 Vallées lift passes and popped over into the other valleys bordering Méribel. Each morning it felt as though we were spoilt for choice of where to ski. As recorded on my Twitter account, @mh2ski, with my daily entries for the 'Piste du Jour'.

New Years week gave us wall to wall sunshine, which was very welcome after a couple of weeks of challenging weather. It doesn't get better than that: great snow conditions, sunny weather, and a buzzing holiday feeling in resort. On New Years Eve I came up with a plan to show the Buckroyds an area away from the crowds.  We went across to Les Menuires, up and over the other side of La Masse and skied down the Lac du Lou itinerary.

This itinerary is a lovely ski depending on the snow conditions. It's important to know the route and it is an atmospheric experience being a long way away from pistes and lifts. An added highlight is visiting the Refuge du Lac du Lou towards the bottom of the route, for either a drinks stop or lunch. Well done to the Buckroyds for skiing down their first itinerary.

Later that evening I was on ski school duty with the New Years Eve display, in particular the torchlight descent. After finishing work I went for a cheeky vin chaud in the Tremplin next to the Chaudanne area, before the 5.15pm rendezvous with the school at the bottom of the Legends chairlift. After going up on the lift in twilight, which is a very special experience, we turned right and regrouped next to the bottom of the Caves drag lift. To help kill time in the chill, the school had kindly organised some home brew (more vin chaud) to help keep us warm before the off. This winter the school has changed our torches from a naked burning flame to a more modern LED torch set up. Now we can select various different colours. The standard white setting is amazing and gives off loads of light to help you see in the dark. However just as we started the descent, one of our directors shouted out 'ROUGE', which meant we quickly changed the LED setting to red - which hardly gave out any light at all!

Tonight I had another torchlight descent, this time to celebrate the Orthodox Christmas, which should mark the final part of the Festive Period. I have a few days skiing now with some Russians who are staying in Méribel's brand new 5 star hotel called Le Cou Cou. It looks like we have at least another week of fun in the sun. Fingers crossed with some fresh snow after that.

That's it from me for the moment, good luck with your New Year's resolutions, and please come back soon for another post.

Don't forget ...... Live.With.Passion. Martin.

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