Skiing
Archived posts from this Category
Thursday, 3rd December 2009
Posted by Judith on 03 Dec 2009 | Tagged as: Skiing
Skiiiiiing! First day of the snow season. Masella opened today and we went to collect our season passes and headed out into the white stuff. There’s only six kilometers open, but they’ve been desperate to open the resort before this weekend, which is a puente (bridge). In typical Spanish style, when there is a public holiday on a Thursday or Tuesday, they deem it not worth going into work in the in between day, so they make that a holiday as well. Tuesday is a holiday, so a long weekend all round. Hooray!
They’ve done a good job of making the most of what they have, so the runs that are open are pretty ones and we had a lovely day. We were a little cautious on the first run. By the second I got used to leaning forward again, by the third I was bending my knees to the required extent and by the fourth I was back to my old ways… if you can still see where you are going, you’re not going fast enough. Geoff managed only to fall over when he was trying to sit down in the coffee bar, so that was a result. Great fun all round.
On the way home we took a detour to the little village of Ventolá, which we’ve been meaning to go to for years. Great views and a nice place for a picnic and beer looking at the sunset.
Monday, 9th March 2009
Posted by Judith on 09 Mar 2009 | Tagged as: Skiing
The weather has been turning increasingly hot recently and we have been wondering how long the skiing season will last. On looking at the forecast for today, it was possibly going to be the coolest day of the week (10C at 1500m), and cloudy. It was overcast here when we got up.
We headed off to Masella as the higher runs are more easily accessible and we soon climbed out above the clouds into beautiful sunshine. It was hot in the mountains all day, and the snow was good high up, although slushy low down. We could see the clag in the valley all day and on driving back, descended into cloud again. It’s been cloudy here all day, so it was a good call to go skiing.
Tuesday, 3rd March 2009
Posted by Judith on 03 Mar 2009 | Tagged as: France, Skiing
We had another pass for a ski resort in the same valley as Formigueres, so decided to check it out for future reference. The cloud was low as we drove to Puyvalador and we could only see a small area around the bottom of the ski lift, the rest was completely concealed. I counted the cars in the car park and there were 34, so it felt like they had opened the place just for us. The resort isn’t huge, but lots of really nice runs, and you have to hand it to the French – they know a thing or two about piste grooming.
Cloud kept coming and going and a couple of times visibility was so bad I skied off the piste. We skied until it got too slushy and as we were about to finish the sun broke through and created a big blue hole above us. The scenery was stunning, made more so by the sea of cloud to the east and the impressive layers of cloud towards the west. This inspired us to carry on and we skied for another hour. We’d definitely go again.
Monday, 2nd March 2009
Posted by Judith on 03 Mar 2009 | Tagged as: France, Skiing
We got up at the crack of dawn to drive to Targasonne to drop off our gliders at
Ailipse to have them serviced/chutes repacked. The weather forecast was bad, so we headed off to Formigueres to ski. Yet another free ski pass to use up. First time we’ve been there and it’s in the valley NE of Cerdanya. It’s a nice resort for beginners, but the problem was the horizontal lifts, so it took 12 minutes to get to the midway point of the resort, so four runs an hour max. We spent so much time on the lifts we actually started talking work and planned a future project.
Most of the resort was clagged in most of the time and a couple of times we got glimpses of the scenery around, which is beautiful. Runs were ok, but nothing to write home about. We’d go again if we were in the area, but wouldn’t pay for the pleasure.
We spent the night in Font Romeu, ready for another days skiing.
Wednesday, 25th February 2009
Posted by Geoff on 25 Feb 2009 | Tagged as: Skiing
Geoff writes: A near perfect day skiing today, at Masella. Cloudless blue sky, very warm in the sun, but excellent snow (though lower down it started to get a little slushy later on); and on the higher slopes, where we spent most of the day, it was very uncrowded indeed. There were a lot of beginners at Masella, but they were much lower down.
Our ski pass season ticket is for La Molina, but we get various free day passes for other resorts (hence the trip to Andorra last week), so it was nice to be able to go back to Masella and ski runs which haven’t been open in the past couple of years because of the lack of snow – all pistes are open this year.
And because we have a season ticket, and can go a lot, the skiing works out very cheap. The season ticket was 230 euros, by the end of the season we’ll have been at least 20 times, so it’s only a little over 10 euros a day – whereas a day pass is 38 euros, so we make a huge saving.
Thursday, 19th February 2009
Posted by Judith on 19 Feb 2009 | Tagged as: Skiing
Our second day in Andorra. We were hoping to ski all the Vallnord sectors and wanted to go to the Arcalis area, but on asking how far it was to get there, we decided it wasn’t worth the 50 minute drive, so we skied the Arinsal and Pals area again. There was plenty to keep us occupied… great snow, great piste grooming and you could go really, really fast.
We burned our noses yesterday, because stupidly we forgot the sun tan lotion. We made exactly the same mistake today, leaving it not in the hotel, but in the car. We look like a couple of Rudolf look-a-likes tonight. Long drive home, but we will definitely go to Andorra again, should we get the chance.
Wednesday, 18th February 2009
Posted by Judith on 19 Feb 2009 | Tagged as: Skiing
As part of our skiing season tickets we get free entry to different resorts. This year we got two free passes for Vallnord in Andorra, so we booked a hotel in Arinsal, which turned out to be 50m from the ski lift. We’re not used to falling out of bed and straight into the white stuff, but I could get used to it. The weather started off a little cloudy, but then the sky cleared and it was gorgeous. Sunny with fantastic views of the mountains all around.
We skied the Arinsal and Pals sectors and it was excellent. Best skiing we’ve had all year. A much larger piste area than La Molina – but much too far to drive each day.