Monday, February 7, 2022
I seriously didn’t think we would get Ivy to ski at all this week, not except the easiest greens. But the Ski Gods favored us with a huge dump of snow overnight, close to 30 cm. Avalanche cannons were booming throughout the valley as the sun rose, rumbling across like thunder. You could hear the cannons at the various resorts in the Chamonix valley: close by was Les Grands Montets. Further to the north, Balme. Across the valley and to the south, Brévent and Flégère.
The main gondola at Les Grands Montets didn’t open until 10 am due to avalanche precautions. There was a huge crowd waiting by time the gondola started running. Thankfully it went quickly, since this lift can carry 3,200 people per hour at maximum capacity.
We split up immediately, with Eric taking the 3 older kids and me staying with Ivy. At first, the same thing happened as the day before: she got on her skis and froze. I coaxed her down the first bit of hill and helped/forced her to take a few turns.
And then…miracle! She saw that she was skiing in fluffy, soft, deep powder. Within just a few minutes, she refused any help from me and started skiing down the hill in perfect little turns! Fairly soon, we came to the tricky part of the hill that had terrified her yesterday. And she just went down, totally unfazed. “I love this hill! I used to hate it but now I love it! I love skiing! All I needed was to watch some videos and to have powder.”
We went up the chairlift and did the hill again. We had a grand plan of how we’d keep it a secret and then surprise the rest of the family at lunch time. However, they happened to see us skiing as they were on a chairlift, and so we met up to ski together for the rest of the day.
It was SO FUN to ski together again as a family. Ivy had no problems doing both blues and reds. (The scoring system here has 4 colors: green, blue, red, and black). After showing off her skills to her siblings, she decided to go down a super long red run, Pierre à Ric, all the way to the bottom of the gondola. It has 720 m (2,360 feet) of vertical drop and she aced it!
Fun fact: Les Grands Montets has a longer lift-served vertical drop than any ski resort in the USA...and that isn't including the very highest gondola, which was destroyed recently in a fire. We skiied an astounding 1,513 m (4,964 feet) of vertical drop. When the top gondola is open, the vertical drop extends to 2,023m (6,637 feet)!
We ended up skiing that long run 3 times today. We split up for a little while after lunch so the older kids could go “hors piste” with Eric in some of the deeper powder. I like sticking to the real ski runs myself, with occasional forays into the edges right near the runs.
But wow, we skied hard today. Our muscles were jelly by the end. Zari had a big fall right before we got to the bottom and pulled her left hip flexor. Thankfully she can still ski, but it’s sore to lift that leg and walk up stairs.
Eric started an epic Monopoly game that kept younger girls up way past bedtime and still hadn’t finished! So I finally put a stop to it to get them to bed.
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