Morning off summer skiing in France

Mike posing at Tignes Ski field

28/6/06
Yesterday we had the morning off and went summer skiing in Tignes, 30minutes drive from Bourg St Maurice. The fact that it was summer did not stop the huge numbers of skiers and snowboarders piling onto the underground train that took us to the top of the glacier.

We didn’t have any skiing gear as this was a spear of the moment thing, so we had to make do with thermals instead of ski jackets and pants and oven mitts instead of gloves. The guy in the ski shop where we hired our boots couldn’t stop laughing and looked at us like we were completely nuts.

The views from the top of the ski field were amazing. Just kilometres and kilometres of snow topped mountains as far as the eye could see.

It was a shaky start for me having not skied for two years. It didn’t help that our first run was on a black marked track, which we latter found out was the hardest run you could do. This is probably why I fell over 6 times and twisted my leg. After an hour I got the hang of it again and was really starting to enjoy myself.

We went from 9 degrees on the mountain to 34 degrees 2000 metres below in Bourg St Maurice. A huge temperature change in very little time

It was an action packed morning which left me with a very sore leg for training in the afternoon. We finished the day by having dinner at Pascal and Robs place, some French people I stayed with the last time I was in Bourg for the World Cup final in 2003.