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Saturday afternoon was cloudy and on Sunday it snowed. But on Monday
the sun came out again to reveal the nice light powder snow. Just what
all the off-piste skiing fans had waited for! On Sunday morning we
managed to be in the first cabin up to L'Olympique.
We had rented avalanche beepers, small radio transmitters that are
weared under the ski suit. If one gets caught in an avalanche and
buried under snow, other people in the group can turn their devices
into reception mode and locate the victim rather quickly. Certainly a
piece of equipment you should have if you plan to ski outside the
marked slopes. Of course the normal precautions must also be taken to
prevent accidents in the first place - respect the warning signs, avoid
dangerous looking places, keep enough distance to each other etc.
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Saku, Tuomas and Ville headed for the Vallon d'Arbi high mountain
tour, a route that is marked on the map but not taken care of by the
staff, you ski there on your own risk. I had only about a week of
snowboarding experience, none of it in deep snow, so I decided to
practise on easier slopes first.
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The views were nice.
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One of the main runs down. In total there were dozens of slopes and
lifts, enough to spend several days just exploring.
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On Monday afternoon all the clouds had already disappeared.
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The village down in the valley. This isn't Monday afternoon but a few
days later, on a bright morning.
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On Tuesday the most popular slopes were already visited by too many
skiers, so we headed to the Nendaz-Veysonnaz area to find untouched
spots. Here is Tuomas.
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I learned quickly to enjoy the powder too, it wasn't too difficult
after all. And having tried both skis and a snowboard I would
recommend the latter. Blue sky, sunshine, not too many people -
wonderful!
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Occasionally also upside down, but that didn't matter, the light weight
snow was like a soft cushion to fell on.
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On Wednesday we had a fondue evening. The food was tasty and price ok
(about 20 CHF for cheese and 35 CHF for meat fondue), but service
could have been better. There were clearly too few waiters to keep up
with our group of about 40 people. A nice evening anyway, after the
fondue we went to pub Mont Fort and some continued to discos later.
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On most of the evenings we cooked our dinner ourselves at the
house. Pasta and some kind of minced meat and tomato sauce was the
most common setup, but also rice, omelettes, fish, and different kinds
of vegetables proved to be good. We even had fondue once after finding
all the necessary equipment for it in the kitchen.
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No, this is not Tuomas's reaction to the smell - the oven door proved
to be a bit too difficult to open for an average engineering student.
Well, after some tweaking we got it work and could have our
pancake. Yum!
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Copyright Arto Teräs
<ajt@iki.fi> 2000.
Redistribution of this document as a whole or any of the pictures
individually is permitted in any medium as long as this copyright
notice is preserved.
Last update 15.2.2000
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