The weekend in Montalbert turned out to be very enjoyable, despite the predicted sweltering temperatures on Saturday and despite the lost battle of the wounded knee.
The giant slalom went ahead as planned, but la bienheureuse was forced to withdraw from the competition. She made one trial run on Saturday morning but that was all her knee would allow. It was thus left to me to uphold family honour in the race, and I duly made a negligible impact on the final rankings. In my defence, I'm bound to say that I did in my quickest time yet, shaving a full 6 seconds off last year's run. Short video of the finish below.
Now, if it looks as though I'm not going very fast, then that's because, well, I'm not. However, I can assure you that it felt quite fast enough. In an attempt to prove the point, a rough short calculation follows:
The lift that runs parallel to the course drops 255 metres over a distance of 817m (average slope 34%). True, the course finished perhaps 50m further up the slope than the bottom of the lift, but bear in mind that the slalom course gates zigzag down the slope, so that the distance travelled is much further than the shortest route from top to bottom. Assuming a zigzag with 90 degree angles gives a distance actually covered of about 1075m, divide by my time of 1m20s, and one arrives at an average speed of about 48 km/h, roughly 30mph. Respectable? I'll leave you to decide...
The rest of the weekend was very enjoyable. Warm sunny weather on Saturday, perfect for the mass barbecue on the slopes for lunch. While I enjoyed the lovely snow higher up, la bienheureuse stuck to the gentler pastime (for her knees at least) of walking through the snowy forest around and about. Sunday night it pissed down with rain at the level of the resort, but by early morning it had turned to snow, which boded well for conditions higher up.
And things looked set even fairer when the clouds cleared just as I got out onto the slopes, and for two hours I enjoyed skiing on 20cm of fresh snow in lovely, sunny weather. However, just before midday the clouds rolled in and for the rest of the afternoon it snowed, heavily at times. Still rather enjoyable though. Meanwhile la bienheureuse was trying her hand at rackets, the snow-shoe, walking variety, and she enjoyed a lovely three and a half hour stomp through the snow-covered forest.
