Season Diary - Day 1

I ripped open the curtains and took in the view from my hotel room looking across Tignes le Lac – a view I had seen a thousand times before but nevertheless has the ability to leave me speechless.

This time, it was different. The cloud was low. The snow was bucketing it down. The sun was rising, but not high enough to breach the natural walls that create the “stadium” of mountains that ring the resort.

For once, Tignes Val Claret – a couple of miles up the valley over the lake – was not visible. This was to be a whiteout day, with the potential to turn even worse as the day went on.

At breakfast, I forced down the continent’s sad excuse for a cooked breakfast (and this the country that wanted to stop the UK calling a sausage a sausage … ) and continued to stare out the window. The snow was falling thick and fast, and you were lost quickly as to what was cloud and what was snow.

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The weather piled on top of my nerves around today. Yes, okay, I’ve skied Tignes and Val d’Isere a million times in the past, as regular readers of this blog will know. And a bit of snow and cloud has never stopped me in the past.

But this season is different.

Apprehension about big-picture life stuff, such as where am I going with this whole skiing thing, have been at the forefront of my mind after an autumn of awesome highs (London Snow Show) and defeating lows - most of my dreams for this winter are lying dead in a gutter somewhere, riven by timing, naivety and a shock re-entry to the “real world” back in the London.

I was back on the Ski Club of Great Britain’s Reps’ Course … yes, the same one that I soldiered through last year to then go repping in Flaine. Why was I back? This was one part to the shock re-entry to the real world.

Changes in personnel at the Ski Club – my 9-5 before my 5-9 with Skiing Unlocked – meant that my world had changed completely. Far from just being a Rep, I was now managing the whole Reps programme; making sure our programme is filled with Reps in our 24 resorts, they get to where they’re going without a hiccough, and they have somewhere to stay once there. A quiet life of website managing and ski testing this was no longer to be.

Suddenly I’m back. Back in Tignes, back on the course, back with the same incredible roster of guides, instructors, and established Reps to nurture the next crop of … well, “me”s.

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With all this running riot in my mind, imagine my anxiety about joining the “top group”, all gold rated (the highest profile the Club offers) both on and off piste. I backed my technique, admittedly after a few turns first, but I was worried about my fitness.

Since, moving back from Ireland, we were no longer playing rugby. I had tried my best to get my miles in running, but I don’t think I’ve found anything that pairs strength and fitness so well as rugby. Illnesses, events, work and more had also meant I hadn’t been able to keep to a rhythm with it as much as I would have liked.

So jumped at the chance to offer my thoughts as part of the morning transceiver check; no no, I was quickly rebuffed, our job is to watch and deliver feedback at the end of the day, not jump in when we see faults. Damn my keenness.

And what of the skiing, the reason we’re here? Cold, windy, cloudy and snowy, in that order. The morning was sublime, with the long run down to La Daille in Val d’Isere some of the best conditions I have ever skied down that way.

Otherwise, we picked our way through the cloud and fog around the same laps – Tommeuse, La Daille funicular, and Marmottes being our chairlifts of choice. This was a day for the group I was working with to try their hand at this repping malarky, to get a feel for taking command of the group (but definitely not leading!).

Aware of how the conditions were likely to deteriorate over the course of the day, we packed as much as we could into the morning, so that by the time we stopped for lunch, and indeed the day, at around half-two, I was starving. More than that, I was exhausted, my legs on fire from the last run down the mountain. Serves me right for ignoring my fitness and diving right into the heart of things …