Monoski: Day Five
Yesterday the conditions in Morzine, Les Gets and Avoriaz we awful: rain during the night had turned snow into slush, and packed snow into ice. The walk from the flat into town was treacherous, and the people I spoke to in the town had stories of their own small personal disasters from bad falls to car crashes. The pistes were carnage too: visibility was poor to non-existent thanks to the high humidity condensing on goggles and glasses; constantly falling snow, slush and rain made visibility even worse; leg-breaker snow jostled for prime positioning on the slopes with ice patches. Martin and I returned from a couple of hours skiing thoroughly exhausted and soaked through.
Today conditions were much better as the temperature had dropped overnight and the precipitation turned to snow. Around five inches of snow had fallen in Morzine, and that was welcome news for the higher parts of the Portes du Soleil resort. We initially tried going to Avoriaz via Super-Morzine, but TK Proclou was closed. Instead we headed to Les Gets via Pleney and covered a pretty good number of runs:
- Crocus
- Les Granges
- Choucas
- Gentiane
- Violettes
- Reine des Pistes
- Campanule
- Eglantine
- Renardière
- Faverettes
- Lièvre
- Piste N
- Piste D
- Piste C
- Piste D’
- Piste B
- Off-piste back to La Troïka
Despite discovering considerable bruising on my hips, a very noticeable large shiner on my left hip in particular, so far I am very much enjoying monoskiing; and it does attract some attention on the slopes too! On separate occasions two older guys, one skier and one snowboarder, both stopped and chatted with me about the monoski. They both said they used to monoski about twenty years ago (it’s true, monoskis were much more popular in the 1980’s) and were amazed to see one. I’m not surprised they hadn’t seen one in so long given the trouble I had buying one. The other comment was from a lady monoskier as she overtook me, waving and shouting something along the lines of “mon frère!”
Today was the first day where using the monoski felt natural and instinctive. Rather than thinking and preparing for a turn I found my body would start to move in the right way to make me go where I wanted. A great feeling!