FUNWEEK - aka. “No powder on a friends day” - February 11-18, 2012

            Earlier this month, a set of very fun people and circumstances converged in Grenoble. Carrie and Thad's and plan to live in Paris for three months turned out to be the perfect set up for a week of Alps skiing – Carrie was on school break (on top of perma-vacay), and Thad was able to take his first full week off from Google since beginning work there two years ago. Brian, Thad’s old college roommate and generally great dude, flew out from LAX to Paris with a dream and his cardigan, not to mention some standard California-issue Volkls with Marker Dukes. Definitely not a Tahoe party here in the Alps, but Brian took the Euro ski mountaineering game in stride without missing a step. Hillary and I were both on school vacation, and so the FUNWEEK stage was set…

Round 1 – Refuge de la Pra, Belledonne 

The generous and flexible vacation plan of French government employees came through once again and our friend Olivier was able to take two days off from work and join for us a three-day trip in Belledonne. Although communicating with five Americans proved to be a challenge, Olivier did coin the phrase that is the title of this post... The snow was indeed terrible (wind f***$$ on all aspects above treeline), but multiple 8000-9000 ft. summits and two days of undercast big pretty mostly compensated for the crusty survival skiing conditions.  

This photo is not posed, seriously. Left to right: Thaddeus, Carrie, Hill, Brad, Olivier (if you find yourself asking the question, "Where is Brian?", Brian is behind the camera*).

 A few more blower face shots before dinner at the hut. 

Hey look, it's Thad and his old college roommate, Brian! On the summit of the Grande Lance de Domène (9,120 ft).  

Carrie getting after some heady ski mountaineering on the Grande Lauzière (8,992 ft). Myself, Thad and Hill got stuffed trying to ski this peak in 2009 during our Belledonne début together. Anybody else scoping that couloir in the background?

*Admittedly there is there some inside ball going on around here -- if you say, "Where is Brian?" to any French person, they will quickly respond "Brian is in the kitchen!" and burst out laughing. This is because the national English learning curriculum includes a unit on I'm guessing household vocabulary and questions relating to place, featuring Brian.


Round 2 - Téléphérique de la Grave/la Meije 

Frozen pipes foiled our plan to spend two nights with François and Mathilde at François' family place near la Grave, which is too bad because this is one of the most special places I've encountered (Hillary took the blog cover photo of the Meije practically from their doorstep, plus the wall decorations feature vintage wooden piolets). So we settled for one day of firm, no fall-zone couloir skiing and a night at the local hostel, Gîte le Rocher, before starting our hut trip a day earlier than planned. We also had an off-the-chain dinner Au Vieux Guide - tartiflette, ravioles, rabbit something or other, foie gras... I still don't feel worthy....

It was the day after Valentine's Day after all. 

Instructions for going #2?

Oh hey, it's Thad and his old college roommate. 

Coolest tram ever.

Round 3 - Four-day hut skiing extravaganza in les Cerces

Day one was super, super windy and made for combat-esque conditions: the five of us hunkered down behind a ridge, followed by an unsuccessful attempt at making forward progress crawling on all fours with our skis on our backs. Things got a little weird up there, for sure. Fortunately we were able to pull off some whiteout navigating over to a lower, slightly less windy pass, which put us back on track for our point A to B tour to the hut. The contrast of one moment being stressed, scared and seriously contending followed by the next ensconced in a cozy dining room being told where to dry our things by a friendly face and served hot tea with spiced bread consistently blows my mind. I think “refuge,” the French word for hut, is particularly appropriate in this sense.

For the following three days the wind died down and the sun came out. Snow conditions remained either lunar or dangerously wind loaded, and for the most part we oriented our agenda towards epic-scenery-low-angle-schussing. Brian pointed out that we can all look forward to practicing this form of the sport at least through our 60s, which sounds pretty good to me. 

The evil W at work. 

Bad snow for skiing = great cramponing conditions (!)  Heading to the summit of the Pic du Lac Blanc (9,776 ft). 

Hillary captures Thad and Carrie shredding some of the only good snow of the trip. I swear, sometimes there is powder in the French Alps -- not often, but it happens.  Note the Barre des Ecrins (13,454 ft) and lots of other burly Ecrin peaks in the background. 

N'importe quoi! Needless to say it's been difficult for all of us to make the transition from FUNWEEK back to the routine...

And lastly, here is a link to Brian's comprehensive photo album, Big Ski Adventure. 

Happy February Everyone!

After a long silence from me, I'm finally ready to post. Before I get so ambitious as to provide anything thing like 'news' or novel information, I, too, need to recap.

In all of Brad's wonderful accounts of our fall adventures, he forgot to mention visits from three very special and important ladies, which I think cannot continue to go unnoticed:

1) In October, my dear mother decided hop a flight across the pond to pay me a visit. Brad and

I were both very excited to show her a window into our lives here (though I think my excitement trumped Brads...). During her all too brief visit, we enjoyed foliage which reportedly rivaled Vermont's this year, finally checked out the Musée de Grenoble for a casual viewing of

fine art, headed north to see Annecy in the rain, and hopped a Big Fast Train west to Paris. And of course, as expected, we enjoyed some ridiculously delicious food.

2) When I took my mom to

the airport in Paris, I actually did a a little switcheroo and picked up Morgan, who flew out from New York to get Frenchified for a few days. We hung out with Eileen in her cute little apartment, did what all Americans do visiting Paris (dress the same and make silly dance videos, obviously) and also drank the coolest cocktails ever. Next we took the Big Fast Train back to Grenoble and I reveled in my joy at being back in my livable home-city. We ate delicious fondue, bought some stuff and almostgot blown off a mountain before heading even further east over the border to Torino. Once in Italy Morgan blew me away with her tenacious grasp on the Italian language.

Thanks to her communication skills, we were able to makethe best of would otherwise have been just a really rainy two days. We went to the world's coolest museum (Musuo Nazionale del Cinema) and ate the most delicious fresh pasta which I am still dreaming about.

Finally, it was time to part ways and I headed back to Grenoble while Morgan pioneered on to a rainy Milan.

At the end of the visit, I asked Morgan "what was your favorite part of the trip?"

And she replied "You are going to be so pleased with yourself, I don't even want to tell you. The hike."

3) After spending all fall in Paris, Eileen made it to Grenoble to pay me a visit just before we both headed home for the holidays. Brad was wading his way through the thick of exams and still managed to be a great host to my dear friend from home.

While her visit was altogether too short, we had some beautiful weather and managed to make it up into the snowy dream land of Belledonne. We also had a delicious raclette dinner with my ladies english group; and drank some very tasty green chaud at the festive Christmas markets.

Next up on the visits list:

Carrie, Thad and Brian will be joining us for 9 days of skiing starting next week (it is also noteworthy that Carrie and Thad have already been here twice in January!!)

and

Julian who will cross two continents and an ocean to visit with us in April.

Thank goodness for French school vacations!