Neither Andy nor Melanie is skiing down with Chris and me. We leave
them in the cafe, saddle up and head down the blue. Straight into
cloud. Wind whips up the surface snow into our eyes as we traverse a
narrow section near the top. Blindness plus narrowness minus barrier
equals stop.
As we descend further it eases off. We come to the conflux of
multiple runs; choices choices! Just then Barrie pops up from nowhere.
Using some sort of hypno-ray he persuades us to forget the blue and to
take a more interesting route: some blue, with a bit of red, and a
hint of (easy) black. The red/black bits of this route are apparently
wider than the blue, but steeper and bumpier.
Chris tumbles once on the first red section due to overcrowding;
I’m OK. The black part is pretty straightforward really, considering
it’s my first black. Then there’s a blue section that snakes through
the trees, quite shallow and narrow, but very pleasant. Barrie takes a
black shortcut to avoid it and meets us again a few minutes
later. Then there’s another red section that Chris is a bit uneasy
about but we both do fine.
The run back to Verbier ends with more scenic blue through the forest,
punctuated by hairy rutted hairpin turns. We safely negotiate those
and finish by the Médran station. Where Chris promptly falls
over.
Time to head back to the apartment. Following the lead of some
other skiers we ski a bit down the road towards the centre of town,
making way for traffic, until it gets a little too roadlike for
comfort. We walk the rest.
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