Avoriaz Again

Today I again went skiing with the Université de Genève Sports Universitaire. I was worried about setting back the healing process of my finger and hip, but it was the last week that they were running their Samedis de Ski, and I didn't want to miss another skiing day. They returned to Avoriaz, the first resort we went to in January, and with my finger in mind, I went back to the beginner class, as I didn't want to fall and put pressure on my hand.

It was a lovely day, warm and summy; the first time I wasn't cold while skiing, I even saw a few people skiing without jackets on. This meant the snow conditions weren't so great though - hard and icy in the morning, and softer in the afternoon as it was melted by the sun.

The resort was also very busy, which wasn't so pleasant. It took us about an hour between the bus arriving and getting our skis on. Firstly because the instructors were very unorganised, they split the skiers into beginner and intermediate groups, and then figured out who of the six instructors where going to take which level. Secondly because there was only two cable cars from the car park to the ski resort, which were very slow, and very busy, with people leaving the resort, as well as people arriving with a weeks worth of luggage. There were a couple of chair lifts which could have been taken instead, which the snowboarding classes cleverly took, but we didn't for some strange reason.

We spent the morning doing drills on a green slope. I finally learnt how to stop without using snow plough. I'm not very good at it though, because I think I don't distribute my weight in my boots properly. In the afternoon, it was time to hit the big slopes. It was hard going, since there were so many people at the resort, all of whom had been skiing all morning, they had created moguls on almost all the the runs.

Luckily, I am a better skiier than I was the first time we went to the resort, and with an instructor giving us suggestions all the time, I really felt like I was improving, moving on from parallel turns to a little bit of carving down blue runs, since that's the easier thing to do on moguls. *grins* I think I am going to be sore tomorrow though...