Mum and Dad stay in my Chalet

Over Easter my chalet wasn't fully booked so I called mum and dad and they managed to get a good last minute deal to come and stay with me. This meant that I got to see a lot more of them than when they came over New Year because every morning I was serving their wake up drinks, making them breakfast, then skiing with them before making their dinner. The snow was really good yet again, so mum was happy because she always maintains it never snows when she goes skiing. Luckily I lasted the week with no complaints about food, intact I think they were both quite impressed!

Winter X-Games Tignes

Between Wednesday 20th March - Friday 22nd the Winter X-Games were held in Tignes. I skied over to watch the Mens Ski Slopestyle qualifications on Wednesday morning where Jossi Wells qualified first. In the evening we got a bus over to Tignes and watched the Mens and Womens Snowboarding half-pipe qualifications under the flood lights.

The mens Ski Slopestyle was held on the Thursday but unfortunately it started snowing half way through so some of the competitors could not finish all their runs.

The top section of the slopestyle course, rails and boxes

Some of the big kickers in the second half of the course.

Watching the finals with Val Claret at the foot of the course.

Spectators watching the finals on Thursday

Heli Ski, March 15th

On March 15th we did a hike up to the Top of 'Mickey's Ears', which is a Satellite dish at the top of one of the mountains (it's called Mickey's ears because the two dishes look like Mickey Mouse's ears). After the 20/30 minute hike we skied down the back face through a couloir in some pretty good powder before it opened up to a wide powder field. The ski lasted just over an hour down to the big lake at the bottom of the valley between Tignes and Val d'Isere, over 1000m vertical decent. When we got to the lake our guide arranged a Heli Pick-Up to take us back into Val d'Isere rather than the 3 our hike it would have been otherwise. The skiing was amazing but having never been in a helicopter before that's probably what I enjoyed the most!

The view as we hiked up.

Me hiking and the lake we skied down to in the background.

Mickey's Ears, the satellite dishes we hiked to along the ridge.

The first face we skied down after the hike, very steep at the top.

A shot after skiing the face, you if you look really closely you can see Mickey's Ears at the top of the central peak, which is where we skied from.

Me on the ski down.

The lake we skied to before getting picked up by the Heli.

Danny, Steve (our guide), Me, Jamie and Charlie at the bottom.

Inside the Helicopter.

Ella Visits Again

Ella came back out to visit in March after her finals, and before she headed off to South Africa.

Her skiing got a lot better, (managed her first Red run!) probably helped by the sun rather than snow and poor visibility. On my day off we made it up to the eye of the needle and down to Les Brevieres for Tartiflette and Pizza. In the evening we had a social over in Tignes Le Lac where we hit a few bars and went bowling.

Day Trip to Meribel

On our day of on March 6th we went to Meribel for the day on the coach that VIP Ski sorted out for us, although it was about 2 hours drive it was good to get out of Val and see one of the other big resorts in the Alpes.

This is the view from up the mountain, the weather was alright in terms of visibility but there were really strong winds and the snow was a bit slushy due to the warm weather.

Meribel has just been voted 'Best Snowpark in the Alpes' for 2013, with the DC Area 43 park, however luckily for mum due to the high winds most of it was shut so we just skied through to look at it and did a few smaller things, pictures below.

Lunch and a few snacks throughout the day

This year Meribel has had a Folie Douce built, so now as well as the original in Val d'Isere there's also one in Val Thorens and Meribel/ Although it was much bigger than Val it wasn't as full and the atmosphere wasn't as good, I think it will take a while for it to get as popular as VT and Val, although maybe it was the weather.

After the Folie we had a few more beers in the Rond Point, the most well known après bar in Meribel.

On the ski down from the Ronnie there was a competition and fireworks on the slope opposite.

Popped into a restaurant just before leaving to grab a pizza then fell asleep for the entire 2 hour drive home!

Skiing with Paddy Graham

During the second half of the week with RedBull we had pro-skier Paddy Graham staying in our chalet. On the Saturday afternoon we got to ski with him in the snowpark. This is a couple of the photo's taken of him, in brown) and me, in a blue top and black and white salopettes.

Me doing a backflip

Paddy doing a hand-drag