JANUARY 25TH, 2015 - ARGENTIERE, FRANCE - DAY 161
Today we mixed things up a little bit. Our morning was pretty standard with classwork and work filling up our time, but in the afternoon we split up a little bit. Stacie went for a snowshoe and Peter and I went up to Grand Montets to ski while Lea stayed back at the apartment to do some schoolwork.
When Peter and I got to the top of the Boachard chair at the resort we could not see 15 feet in front of our faces. Even though it was a bright sunny day, there was a microclimate of fog clinging to the mountain that made skiing very difficult.
We picked our way carefully down the slope and noticed the snow composition had changed completely from Friday. The nice soft snow we had skied a couple of days ago had been blown away by high winds and we were left with hard, crusty, broken snow. It was not all that much fun. So when we reached mid mountain we had a little conference and decided to move to La Tour, the resort up the road to see if we could find better conditions. We did not want to ski all the way down on Ice, so we jumped in the bubble lift that had brought us up and headed back down the mountain. About halfway down I saw some people skiing in the trees and remembered a run our guide had taken us on last week down closer to the bottom of the mountain. I said "we should have gone and skied the trees!" Peter agreed, so we rode the lift all the way down and right through the station and back up the mountain again. It was pretty funny to see the people watch us go all the way around. See my wonderful graphic below for a full recap:
When we made it back to the top we jumped out and raced over to the trees in hopes of finding clear vision and good snow. We were more than rewarded. It had not snowed for a week, but this area of the mountain does not get much traffic because at the end of the run you have to hike out a short way and most people just want to ski right to the lift. We found fresh foot deep powder, blue skies and fun lines in the trees. We started doing laps and got 4 runs in before the lifts began to close. It was a great way to end the skiing day.
Peter hucking off a cliff in the magic forest
When we made it back to the apartment the girls were in their workout gear. They had just finished doing some circuits of the Scientific 7 Minute Workout
Stacie and I were heading out on a date night, so I showered and then we walked up the street to The Office, which is a bar / restaurant owned by an Aussie named Dave. We were having a great time drinking a beer and having some appetizers when two moms with two year olds came and sat next to us. We love kids, but on a night when we are trying to get away, the last thing we want are forks banging on the table to the tune of Barney with two year olds wailing. While we were waiting for our food a guy came over and started talking to one of the mothers. While the mothers attention was on the conversation her 2 year old decided it would be fun to run around our table screaming at the top of his lungs. Every 3 or 4 minutes the mother would stop talking and come over and try to reason with the two year old to stop making so much noise because the nice people (us, who were not feeling so nice at the moment) were trying to have a quiet dinner. Well that two year old must have really understood her, because he tried his best to yell even louder, probably thanking us for getting his mothers attention away from the nice man.
We were patient and waited them out. They ate fairly quickly and were gone, so we had our peaceful corner of the restaurant back. Then our food came, and guess what, it was delivered by the nice man along with a smile saying "it's a lot quieter over here now huh?". The man was Dave, the owner of the bar. He really was nice and we spent a few minutes convincing him that the death stares we were shooting at the little kids were not genuine and we were nice people too.
The food was great and we had a great time in the end, but a little mental note has been inscribed in my brain - on date night go to a nice restaurant, not a pub.