Judith's blog

Sun, sun, sun.

We went to ski at Masella under a baby blue sky. The forecast was for warm weather (max temp was 12C in the Pyrenees) and we worried about slush, but the snow was excellent, especially at the top of the mountain. After sitting in the cafe in our shirts, I realised I didn’t use enough sun cream and have burnt my nose.

Geoff’s skis are better, but not entirely back to their original splendour. He has to lift his foot to really turn them and they tend to dig in a little on the straight. We took them back to the shop where they apologised profusely and they are going skiing with them this weekend to diagnose the fault properly. Hopefully by next week Geoff will have his beloved Dynarods back.

It was also flyable – the people who flew had a good day.

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The forecast for today had substantially gone downhill when we got up this morning, and outside the window was thick fog. Subsequently, there was some discussion whether it was worth going skiing. Despite all the info we were given, the web cams at Masella showed lovely sun shine, so we went despite the forecast of snow later in the afternoon.

By the time we left home there was sun in Castellfollit, but we drove back into the fog in the Vall de Bianya. We finally cleared it after Ribes, where we briefly stopped to collect Geoff’s skis. On getting to Masella it was lovely and sunny and we raced to the lifts, only for Geoff to fall on the first run. When he caught up with me, he looked very concerned. The lads at the repair shop had not just filled in the gashes on the skis, but also sharpened the edges and the skis wouldn’t turn. We swapped and I tried them, but thought they were so dangerous I refused to go more than a couple of hundred meters. There was no choice but for Geoff to ski down, take his boots off and drive the 25 minutes back to Ribes to have them fixed again. There was no point in both of us going, so I had a couple of hours skiing on my own. A novel experience.

I decided to go right up to the top of the resort, and took the quick button lift. As I was going up, I realised that the cloud had come in and we were going to be in clag. No concerns there, except that visibility got so bad I could barely see the cable above me. Suddenly 5 skiers appeared out of nowhere – they must have got lost in the cloud and missed the piste and had to come down the button lift track. With the cloud coming in, the sky looked amazing – blues, greys, blacks all made of a real spectacle.

Once Geoff got back I met him at the bottom and the minute we got on the lift, it started to hail. Great! He got off the lift with some trepidation. His skis were better, but nowhere near as good as they were before. I had another try, but still couldn’t satisfactorily parallel turn them and my cartilage depleted knees can’t take snow-plowing. The sun came out again, so Geoff was keen to try to keep going, but after another couple of runs he had to admit defeat for his own safety. I had skied a lot, so I handed him mine and went to read my book. As soon as he got back on the lift, it started snowing hard. Just not his day, I guess!

His skis are back at the shop for repair and it rained cats and dogs on the way home. Hope that means more snow as it was looking a bit bare in places.

See photos of today.

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Geoff writes: after looking at the forecast again this morning, we decided to go skiing, but this time to Vall de Nuria. Because we have a season ticket for Masella, we also get free day passes for some other resorts, and Nuria is one of them. We’ve never bothered going before because it’s a bit of a Legoland type of resort – a ski resort in miniature, with only about 7km of piste (yes, seven kilometres). But it is in a spectacular location, so we thought we would go. The other thing is, you can’t drive there. You have to get the Cremallera. This literally means zip, but actually is a rack and pinion railway. This is the only access to the valley, and is a 13km trip, which costs a small fortune, but the ticket was included in our free pass, and it’s a nice ride up the valley.

Unfortunately, when we got to Ribes, and went to get the ticket, the guy said the runs weren’t open because of 78km/h winds – something which wasn’t really forecast.

So we decided to use a different free pass, and went to La Molina. This is just before Masella, much prettier, better views, but usually less snow (not that that should be an issue at the moment), and they are pretty bad at grooming the pistes – which is more of an issue.

We took the telecabina almost to the top, skied down a little, and took a button lift a bit higher, checking first that that run was open. It was, and was amazingly well groomed, and we thought everything was fine. Then the grooming abruptly stopped, and the red run became more of a scree slope than a ski slope. Incredibly difficult to ski down, and with a lot of stones – and rocks – just beneath the snow. Everybody was having a problem getting down (not that there were that many people up there). We were doing fine, almost at the bottom of the rocks, when I hit something, heard that awful crunching sound of stone on ski, and, for the first time for ages, fell. When I finally recovered my skis, there were some big gouges in them. Amazingly, though, it didn’t seem to make any difference and they still behaved properly – maybe because the gouges were in the centre, rather than at the two ends. (Or maybe I’m just so bad at skiing I can’t tell the difference).

The rest of the day went really well. We avoided the slopes with thin snow (thin because it was windblown away) and generally had a nice time in the sun. Judith’s skis are faster than mine, and I did wonder if the damage I’d done was slowing them down, so we tried a slide angle contest – stopping at the top of a small slope, pushing off, seeing who went the fastest. She did …. but what’s new?

At the end of the day, we skied back to the bottom, and I managed to fall again. This time, we’d stopped, I’d taken my skis off and was about to set off walking back to the van when I promptly tripped over them. I wasn’t even going downhill. Pathetic (and embarassing, in front of loads of people sitting outside the cafe).

We had the usual beer and sandwiches, then on the way back, dropped off the skis at Marc’s ski shop in Ribes, so he could fix them for next time.

So apart from trashing my skis, a great day out. And it never was particularly windy (and it was flyable back here, apparently, too).

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Another gorgeous day of sunny, crisp weather. We’re making the most of the good snow, so we headed up to Masella, where it was marginally more crowded than the other day (we had to ski round people once or twice!). It was a perfect blue sky, and in the afternoon the cumulus started popping. More runs we haven’t skied on this year, so it was nice exploring more nooks and crannies.

Some people were off flying at Santa Brigida today, but not sure how it was.

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We finally got to go skiing again today, after our season tickets were not valid during the holidays and then the weather wasn’t good last week. It was a lovely day, sunny with a little high cloud. With all the snow over the last few days nearly every run is open and we had 63km to play with. Not that we got anywhere near round all of it, but we skied a lot of runs we haven’t been able to so far this year or which were closed last year. The snow quality was excellent, in fact some of the best snow I have ever skied on.

They have been doing some work at Masella and have opened a new ski lift, the Pia Express, which is super fast and a whole new sector (La Pia) which has added about 5km extra piste to the resort. We can park there and save ourselves the drive all the way to Masella proper, so it also saves 10 mins each way of the journey too.

With everyone having finally gone back to work today the place was deserted. It gave the impression that they just opened the whole place for us, which was jolly nice.

See photos of today.

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The wall-to-wall sunshine forecast changed to completely overcast this morning and the pressure charts showed fairly close together isobars, so we abandoned any thoughts of flying and dusted down our cross country skis. Literally. We’ve worked out that the last time we used them was 5 years ago. We were a bit disorganised leaving the house and as we were driving through Olot I remembered that I had forgotten to take my gloves. I have bad circulation in my hands and my fingers usually get really cold, but since we needed diesel, I raided the plastic glove dispenser at the petrol station. Two pairs on each hand and I was toasty – no wind chill and when the sun came out they were like little greenhouses. I’ve kept them for future use.

We got to Croscat and the snow hadn’t melted in the slightest, so we skied round the volcano view point and then headed down to ski towards La Fageda. It took us a while to figure out the bindings again. Geoff had trouble getting his skis on and I was laughing at him until it came to taking my skis off, which I failed to do miserably. Having giggled at him, Geoff was not inclined to help!

As we walked a short way down the road to get onto the track, we could hear this weird flapping noise and on closer examination realised that the plastic sole on Geoff’s boots has degraded and come off nearly entirely. While XC skiing, you lift your foot up anyway, so it was still possible to ski, and we trudged on. By the time we were half way back the other sole had gone too and Geoff was making flip-flop noises with each step. Very amusing.

It was weird being on cross country skis again, after five years of downhill skiing. I can see why we felt really insecure then, with the speed and getting the sensation that the skis are running away with you. I had exactly the same sensation today, but for the opposite reason. I felt really insecure because the skis wouldn’t turn. Still, once we got going and I got back into the swing of it, I really enjoyed it.

Far from it being cloudy and windy, it was sunny with just a gentle breeze and we checked the conditions at Santa Brigida, but Joan told us it was N, so we went to Xenacs instead. Nice little walk, picnic and great views.

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The forecast was significantly nicer north today, so we headed up into the mountains to go skiing. The weekend forecast had promised much snow on Monday, but this didn’t seem to have materialised. There wasn’t much snow on the way up and only a fraction of La Molina is open.

In Masella there is now 11km of skiable piste, but the school parties have arrived, so the lower slopes are quite churned up. Thankfully, they have opened the long top red run, although you have to get up there by button lift. Neither Geoff nor I like them. He had issues staying on them and they play havoc with my crummy knees.

We had anticipated it being very cold and the temperature gauges in Ripoll were giving -4°C. However, when we got to Masella it was overcast and therefore not as cold as we feared. By lunchtime the cloud had cleared, the sun had come out and the cold westerly wind had picked up. The views were stunning, but it did get a bit chilly.

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