Back in France for Skiing

Last winter we had a really fun time skiing with a British group led by my coworker’s father. Since we had such a good time with the group, we decided to go with them again this year. Our destination was St. Gervais, France a ski resort area near Geneva. There are actually several resorts in the same area and you can get lift tickets that allow access to all the resorts. That gives the benefit of having a huge area to ski and explore – important when you on a week-long ski trip.

While the rest of the group was riding a bus from the UK to France, Dennis and I flew from Amsterdam to Geneva. The flight involved getting up at 4:30 in the morning to get the train to the airport. We decided to give ourselves a lot of time before the flight because the local trains have not been very reliable in the snowy weather we’ve been getting. But everything went smoothly and we were in Geneva before we knew it. A one-hour shuttle bus ride got us to our hotel right around lunch time. The UK group had arrived a couple hours before us and was already out skiing. We decided to take our time getting lunch and arranging the rental skis so we didn’t get to the slopes the first day.

Later, in the day the UK group got back from the slopes and it was like meeting with family. Of course, not everyone from last year was able to join us this year and there were some new faces, but it was fun to see the gang again. Since we were staying in a larger hotel this year, there were other people around who were not part of our group. Everyone was from the UK and they were all friendly even if they had very loud children. The hotel served a tea in the afternoon (did I mention that it’s a British-run hotel?) and dinner at 7:45 for all the guests.

Actually, the hotel does require a bit more description. It is located in a town in the valley, so it was not really close to the ski areas at all. The hotel ran shuttle buses to the ski hills every morning, usually two different buses (8:45 and 9:15). In the afternoon, they drove the buses back to the hotel at 4:15 or 4:30. During the day, the drivers and most of the hotel employees went skiing. This arrangement seems OK on the surface, but there was no flexibility for bad weather or if you just got tired. One day, it so foggy we gave up skiing at noon. We had to wait in a bar on the hill for four hours until it was time for the bus. Since we were in ski boots and didn’t have street shoes, we were not even able to walk around the shops in town. The town was about ½ mile from the bottom of the ski lift, so it was too far to walk in ski boots.

The food at the hotel was really good at dinner. The tea was tolerable, but breakfast was a disaster. They normally had croissants at various stages of sogginess and some ham and cheese slices. For the hot breakfast, they had weird combinations like beans, hot pears, and fried potato cakes. They served oatmeal 3 days running. But they served sausage and fried potato cakes with it. They never remembered to put napkins out and if you were a little late, there was very little left for you.

Our hotel room was very small. At least the ceilings were high enough that we could stand up in it (unlike the chalet we were in last year). But there was absolutely no ventilation in the bathroom. We had a corner room so the bathroom was very cold. The heater was on the far side of the bedroom and the heat really didn’t reach the bathroom. When we showered, there was serious condensation collecting on the walls, floor, and the sink and toilet. Hang a towel in the bathroom and it would never dry. With that much cold and damp, the shower was pretty moldy. The shower curtain was hung too far into the bathtub so it would cling around your legs when you showered. Hard to feel clean when you can’t get away from the moldy shower curtain. Yuck! To make it even worse, the staff did not clean the rooms. They came in every day, but we decided all they did was make the bed and turn the heat off. Turning the heat off only made the moisture problem worse. By the middle of the week, the towels stunk, but they never replaced them. I was not impressed. It seemed like the staff was spending more time skiing than taking care of their customers.

But a fun ski group makes up for a lot, and we still had a great time skiing. I spent a lot of time with a group of about 7 people. I was the youngest and most of the time I was the slowest. The oldest in our group was 82. Did you know that when you are over 80, you get free lift tickets? Her secret for fast skiing was to not make any turns. You just make yourself tired by making all those turns. I probably skied 4 times further because I like to make a lot of turns to keep my speed under control. The only time I skied faster was when the conditions were challenging. In the fog, I was a rock star!

Skiing in the fog is really pretty fun. We got into a fog bank so thick, we couldn’t see anything but white. Thank goodness the run was groomed because that was our only slue that we were still on the run. We watched which direction the grooming lines went and followed them. Stopping was interesting, too. Without the visual clues, it was hard to tell if you had really stopped or not. It was like being drunk. We would try to stop and fall over because we were so disoriented. One person in our group got motion sick from the sensation. We also skied right past the lift that we needed and we ended up in the wrong place entirely.

We had a couple days with sunshine and it was really nice to be able to see the views. On one of the sunny days, I was feeling really good (finally had my new ski boots broken in and adjusted correctly) and we skied with a guide that day. The guide was awesome because he took us on all the best runs and we didn’t waste any time trying to read the maps. If you’ve ever been skiing before, you know that they mark the runs by difficulty – but there is no definitive way to rate how hard a run is so some runs marked as easy are really hard and vice versa. A guide knows which runs will suit your ability, no matter how it is marked on the map. That was our best day of skiing.

The last day we skied was also awesome. We had about a foot of fresh powder over night. Even though it was still snowing, the visibility remained OK. The snow was light enough that it just fluffed over the top of your skis like down feathers. As people skied on it, the snow started to pile up into bumps that made it a little more challenging. These are the kind of conditions that I’m more used to, so it was easier for me than the rest of the group. The others preferred the fast groomed runs with no bumps. It’s more common in Europe to have all the runs groomed every night. In the US, if there is fresh snow, they don’t groom the runs. So, if you like skiing in fresh snow, stay in the US. If you love skiing really fast on groomed runs, Europe is right for you.

Dennis was having a lot of fun on the last day and almost missed the bus back to the hotel. I was getting really worried because we had a flight to catch and limited time to get our shuttle bus to the airport. I shouldn’t have worried about Dennis, though. He made it in the nick of time to the bus, but our shuttle bus was a full hour late. It’s a good thing I always schedule to be at the airport 2 hours before the flight. Even with the hour delay, we easily made our flight home.