Week 16 - The end of the world is nigh...
Week Ending 26/3/6

It’s insane how fast the snow can melt. At the start of this week, the snow was at shoulder level, by the end it was about knee level. It’s started to get slushy and sticky below about 2500m as the freezing level has risen in the in the spring thaw. It really is coming towards the end of the season.

It’s still fun though, slushy is better than ice (or no snow at all!)

I started the week finding out that I was going to lose my own room to make way for a couple who are going in there. I don’t mind I suppose, logically it makes sense for a couple to go in there to get some privacy. It’s been a weird season actually for ‘relationships’ generally people all head out and go on the pull all season. If you drew an end of season relationship ‘tree,’ it’d look like a family tree from Eastenders. He shagged her, then she shagged him, before going back back to him after that guy from the other hotel. This year has been disturbingly monogamous.

Most people seem to have paired off and stayed that way. I thought I might try it with the new chalet girl that turned up, but I seem to have crashed and burned before take off. She doesn’t seem to talk much, or drink much. And that’s generally my two ‘in-roads’ chatting up girls. Fingers crossed something comes up by the end of the season though, I need a shag.

Anyway, the Natives guys were in town this week for the Val Skier/Boarder Cross over in the board park. (I always call it the board-park to wind up skiers – it’s a ‘snow park' mostly used by boarders.) We met up for dinner the night before the boarder cross and chatted about how they’re thinking of starting up a magazine later in the year. Basically I tried to sell myself as the man for the job (with my Jungle Drums experience from Spain) and they seemed pretty interested.

I’ve been chatting to Neale, my old boss in London and about maybe going back and working in the BBC World Service Control Room for VT as well. They’re two very different jobs but both interesting for different reasons.

Anyway, here’s the link to Natives with some of the pics I took of the boarder/skier cross. I spent the day taking pictures, signing people up and just generally helping out. The weirdest part of the day was boarding back into La Daille with a case of 'extreme' energy drink (one of the sponsors) in my backpack. The extra weight and the slushy snow made me board like I was about to wake up from a dream... you know when everything feels really heavy and in slow motion just before you wake up? Very strange.

By the end of this week, it started snowing again which calmed some of my fears that all the snow was going to be gone long before we go home!