Post Festive Period And Early January Catchup

Hi everyone, and welcome to the first post in 2022 from your favourite blogging ski instructor in Méribel. I hope you are all well and had a fantastic Christmas and New Year holiday period. It's been reasonably busy here the last few weeks, and in a way it was interesting trying to figure out when the peak visitor numbers would be. Possibly because Christmas Day and New Year Day both fell on Saturdays making it less predictable. Then there were other European countries on holiday slightly later than others, with many Dutch, Belgians and Spanish around last week. Not so many Russians around this winter though!

Perhaps it is often like this, but with next to no British skiers (who would normally dominate my work) here at the moment, I'm noticing other nationalities more. The last two weeks my work has been open to the ESF ski school, and I've had a great time. I've taught a Ukranian family, to be fair most of the time I was with Yeva the eight year old daughter. I had a couple of days skiing with a Parisian lawyer and his two grown up sons. They had lived in the United States for several years, and were fascinating people. And then last week I taught a boy from Barcelona and his cousin from Germany all week. From tomorrow I'll be teaching an Anglo Dutch combo, who have just contacted me.

There's no doubting whatsoever that the resort is missing British visitors. I'm certainly not going to start ranting about the situation, because it is out of everyone's control. I really hope it changes for you all at some point, preferably sooner rather than later. I'll be keeping my fingers and toes crossed for you.

The snow conditions have been all over the place. After an epic week of skiing conditions before Christmas Day, the weather turned mild. So mild in fact that it rained for three days. Yes three days, even right to the top of Saulire, you would've hated it. Sometimes when it rains, before clearing up, you get a few hours of snowfall that freshens up and resets things. Well, this didn't happen. The rain stopped, and it continued to stay very mild. We had several nights where the pistes on the lower half of the mountain didn't freeze over night.

Thankfully a few days ago the temperature turned to absolutely freezing. The snow cannons have been switched back on where needed, and we've had quite a lot of fresh snow. There was about 20cms for Thursday's skiing, and it's been snowing off and on since last Friday evening. As I'm tapping away (Sunday afternoon), it's thumping down outside my apartment here in Méribel Town.

I'm very much looking forward to the coming week, with all of this fresh snow around, and the return of the sun from tomorrow. January is one of my favourite skiing months. Yes it can be cold, but the pistes normally have a decent covering of snow, and there will now be a few quiet weeks before the Feb school holidays. I really really hope there will be good news soon for British skiers here in France. The mountains aren't going anywhere, we just have to be a little bit more patient. Oh, and I've just had my Covid booster jab in the local pharmacie today, so all up to date now. Live With Passion. Martin.