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Skiing in the ’80s and 70s

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Wednesday 24 January 2024 – Some Guy has challenged me to show myself in my skiing gear, 20th vs 21st century.

So I will.  But you’ll have to read through some  more of my ramblings first.  For every prize, there’s a price!

I started skiing in 1980, 44 years ago, when I was 27, on a visit to Sauze D’Oulx.  The fact that I’ve now visited a further eight times since then shows that I like the place.  Is it perfect? No, not for several reasons. But its character is clearly something that resonates with me.

The place has changed somewhat since that first visit.

  • The best bar in town, Andy Capp’s Pub, closed down sometime before 2003; its eponymous ski race, that I always used to look forward to participating in, therefore is no longer run. When I mentioned this race to a group of Scottish people also staying in my hotel, there was a somewhat shocked reaction as they tried to absorb the implications of running a ski race on a public piste.  But the race course was set up every week and used for racing by  punters recruited from Andy’s and also by the ski school for people who had been taking lessons. More on this later.
  • The lift system has got better – a bit. The lift near the town now carries four people at a time rather than two, but is still slow; the large number of drag lifts have been replaced by a smaller number of (better located) chair lifts; the most important chair lifts have been upgraded to high-speed operation; and a few new lifts have been installed, and these now link Sauze to neighbouring resorts in a big area called the Via Lattea – the Milky Way.  It’s great to have the possibilities of skiing further afield, but I read somewhere a telling comment that the lift operator’s business model is cost minimisation rather than market share expansion.

Some things haven’t changed much.

  • The Sportinia plateau that I mentioned earlier, is still a lively hub, with several restaurants and cafés, most of which are pretty much exactly as they were back then, and all of which provide great rest stops and a contribution to the charm of the place which (you’ll have noticed from my previous post) is important to me.

  • The best place on the mountain is still the best place – a hotel/restaurant called Ciao Pais.

  • The town is a lively place in the evenings.  There are some great bars, some dating back to 1980, like the Scotch Bar and Il Lampione, and some new ones, like the Ghost Bar. That said, I didn’t spend a lot of time in them, but that’s down to me; as a younger man, I was ever in favour of bar crawls, but I’ve grown out of that desire. Or maybe, as Robert Heinlein so memorably put it “It’s amazing how much ‘mature wisdom’ resembles being too tired”. OK, I’ll come clean; I was too tired even for a post-prandial drink in the hotel bar, far less an evening going out drinking. But I did take an after-dinner walk a couple of times around the town and it was clear that it’s still a lively place, if not quite as hooligan as I remember it.

And, finally, I’ve changed, in more than just my attitude to drinking.  I used to choose skiing resorts to visit on the basis of the extent of the ski area, as I used simply to want to cover as much of the lift system and as many of the pistes as I could.  On this holiday, I relished the exercise component of skiing; I’m now probably much fitter than I ever used to be, and my main objective this week was to ski from the start of a run to the end, without stopping (or crashing into something, of course).  This is something that I rarely, if ever, used to do, simply because I often needed to stop and rest on the way down. This week (after a slow start, admittedly), I could do a 4.5km run from top to bottom of the hill at an average 25kph with energy to spare, which I found rather gratifying at my age.

On my first day in Sauze this year, I covered 17km at an average of 18kph, and expended 747 calories doing so. On my last, I skied 18km at 25kph, expending just 395 calories, which is an elegant demonstration of how my confidence and ability increased over the course of the week. I even felt, at the end, that I was near regaining whatever used to pass for style when I was a regular skier:

A gentle potter down the piste in 1987 or thereabouts

And so to my friend Guy’s challenge – to display my skiing gear between the centuries.

Here is a selection of my various outfits between then and now.

1980, taking part in the Andy Capp Ski Race
1987 – WINNING the Andy Capp Ski Race. Be sure to clock the racing pants!
1996 – still using the Salomon boots and 205cm skis
2001 – using rented boots and more modern carving skis

And these days?  Well, the jacket and trousers haven’t changed since 2001 (just not quite so tight, these days), with one exception….

 

I used to hate wearing a hat or goggles. I only tolerated a woolly hat when my increasing baldness meant that I otherwise got a sunburnt scalp.  This year, as a precaution in case the 18-year lacuna led to a crash, I rented a helmet but was sure I wouldn’t use it after day 1.  Wrongly, as it turned out; should I ever go skiing again, I will be sure to be sporting one and using goggles as well.

And for a final laugh, here is my first ever lift pass

Will I ever buy another lift pass?  Who knows?  I certainly enjoyed myself enough to entertain the idea of skiing well into my 70s.

France v Italy

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Friday 19 January 2024 – One of the various activities that Crystal Ski had organised during the week was an outing from the Sauze end of the Via Lattea – Milky Way – skiing area over to the other end of the system: Montgenèvre, which is just over the border in France.  I had the very vaguest recollection that I might have visited there on a previous Sauze holiday, but couldn’t be certain.  Anyway, after a week of getting very familiar with the lifts and runs close to Sauze D’Oulx, I thought that a change would be as good as a rest.

I was slightly, but tellingly, wrong in that.  Read on to find out in what way….

While it’s possible to ski from Sauze to Montgenèvre, it’s somewhat time-consuming and in any case one couldn’t rely on the links being open, as high winds were bedevilling the area, resulting in some critical link lifts occasionally being closed for safety reasons. Crystal Ski had, in any case, organised a coach to take us over, a journey of about 40 minutes, at an extra cost of €25.  The coach was to depart from the Tourist information Office, which was where (you’ll remember) we were deposited on our arrival some days before – a 10 minute walk down through the town, carrying boots and skis.  So about 40 people arrived and checked in with the Crystal team, loaded skis and boots into the loading bays of the coach and hopped on board for the journey.

When we arrived, the reverse process was a little more chaotic, as people tried to unearth their skis and boots from piles of other people’s equipment

but soon enough we were heading for the nearest lift.

Montgenèvre’s skiing in split by the road. The majority of the lifts were on the same side as the coaches, but the Crystal team recommended crossing the road and heading up the other side, the Chalvet area, as this would get the benefit of the morning sun; so I hied myself thither. There was a bit of jostling for position for the gondola ride up but after only a short delay I was headed up the mountain.

At the top of the gondola, there was a very limited choice of activity – ski back down, or choose between two lifts. The nearer of these, a chair lift, was very iced up and not operational, so I headed for the other, a drag lift. As I approached it, it also stopped going, which was a bit dull. There was obviously Something Going On, as a skidoo with flashing lights headed up the track after a few minutes; perhaps someone had had a misfortune? We never knew. After some moments, people got fed up and began to drift away to other parts of the mountain, so of course the lift started again. So I hopped on.

It was a long, long drag lift – and cold. It was difficult to get an accurate idea of temperature, but I suspect it was several degrees below freezing and there was quite a stiff and chilly wind blowing.  As I went up, I looked for evidence of pistes to ski down, and such evidence seemed a bit scant.

(Actually, if you look carefully at the picture above, you can just see that there’s a track in the distance on the left.)

Having reached the top, it was clear that there was only one way down – the piste to a further lift was marked “closed”

and it was here that the difference in style between this resort and Sauze began to be borne in on me. Much of Sauze’s skiing area is below the tree line, which I find very attractive, and which helps when trying to work out which general direction one is supposed to take.  Much of  Montgenèvre’s is above the tree line, and hence very open, making the choice of direction less intuitive.  These wide open spaces are great for people who are looking to ski off-piste, but I wasn’t – it’s fucking dangerous to go off piste by oneself – so I found the area a bit disorienting.  What was even more disconcerting was the discovery that very few people had skied in the area, and so the snow was soft and deep.  Again, expert skiers tend to love this and actively seek it out.  Me? Not so much – particularly since I was on my own, meaning potential problems if I fell and incapacitated myself.  I could just about see where people had skied before and so followed this general direction

but it was hard work for me, as the soft snow highlighted the shortcomings of my technique, and frankly I didn’t enjoy myself hugely.  However, I was where I was, so I blundered about, fortunately without falling or doing anyone else any damage.  Restful, it was not – skiing in this deep stuff saw the one and only time during the week when I actually had to stop and take a breather because I was exhausted. I did, though, eventually find some satisfaction in being able to link a few turns even in the softer snow. I doubt I’d have got many points for technical expertise, but my artistic impression, consisting mainly of swearing loudly when the conditions caught me out, was certainly unique, and I have to admit that the views were pretty good.

At this point – the point at which I could really have done with a rest and a coffee, the other key difference between this French resort and the Italian one I was used to became clear – finding a mountainside restaurant was difficult, because they’re very few and far between and don’t advertise themselves with any clarity.  In Sauze, it is difficult to ski more than a few hundred metres without passing a sun deck that announces the presence of a restaurant or café.  Here, I couldn’t find any such evidence.  Montgenèvre is a purpose-built ski area, and the priority was clearly on getting people skiing rather than relaxing.

I decided to get down to the town in search of a coffee, so skied down and crossed the road.  The other side did feature some trees, but was largely more of the same wide-open space

and even standing by the main buildings, I couldn’t detect anywhere to have a coffee.  Anyway, it was getting close to lunchtime, so I decided that a restaurant was what I should seek.  I got Google Maps out and could see that there were just a couple anywhere near the skiing area, which, again, I thought was odd; I would have expected several to be available.  The first one was packed, but the second one had space, so I sat myself down to a simple, but very good, lunch of steak haché and chips with a beer.

After lunch I skied on the other side, where more people had skied and thus the pistes were firmer – indeed, icy in places.  A couple of the pistes and lifts I wanted to explore were closed, but it was a decent afternoon’s skiing.  Again, there were some fine views to be had

but I found that I had used up a lot of my energy dealing with the morning’s more challenging (to me) conditions, so I stopped skiing quite early in the afternoon, making sure that I had enough time to find that elusive cup of coffee before the 4pm deadline for getting back on the coach home.

The skiing was more varied and more challenging than in Sauze;

but, being a purpose-built skiing operation, I found it less charming.  This is not a view shared by others who were part of this excursion, for whom, the views and the existence of some very easy skiing made for great enjoyment. But I missed the charm – and particularly being able easily to stop for a coffee/beer and a rest. This is, I think, a difference in my current approach to skiing and how I used to go about things; before, I was more interested in covering ground and ticking off all the lifts and runs in an area; now, I’m more engaged by simply being active and relishing the exercise, not minding repeating pistes if I found them enjoyable. The net of this is that, at least for this limited sample of two resorts, I found the Italian experience the more attractive.

I’ve got a couple more posts up my sleeve about this holiday and how I’ve found it, so I hope you’ll check in to read them in the coming days. For now, au revoir!

A rambling about skiing and ageing

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Wednesday 17 January 2024 – Those of you agog for a post about the second day’s skiing will have been disappointed, as there wasn’t one – a post, that is; I did go skiing yesterday. I didn’t write about it principally because skiing holidays are really rather boring except for the person doing the skiing. The activity is routine: breakfast-ski-coffee-ski-lunch-ski-coffee-ski-drinks-dinner-sleep, and repeat. There are variations in the enjoyment of the skiing bit for the skier, but all else is pretty much unvarying and therefore not worth writing home about. Suffice it to say that I had a good second day’s skiing.

For today, however…

The weather conditions changed quite markedly overnight, and the consequences of that are the subject of this admittedly self-indulgent rambling. Of course, the whole thing with writing about one’s own skiing holidays is self-indulgent rambling, isn’t it? Then again, I’m the one paying the rental charge for this website, and there’s nothing that says you have to read what I write*.

This was the scene from my hotel balcony this morning,

compared with that on my arrival day – a stark comparison.

Two things contribute to my enjoyment of skiing – the quality of the snow and the quality of the light. Skiing on firm, deep snow in the sunshine is delightful. Of course, to get the firm, deep snow, in the first place there has to be loose, heavy and soft snow; and while that’s falling there’s no sunshine, and the light makes progress challenging, because it’s flat – it’s difficult to see the small but telling bumps in the terrain lying in wait to trap the unwary. Also, the air is full of bloody snow, which can get up your trouser legs and down your collar in no time at all. And don’t talk to me about getting it on your glasses.

So, frankly, skiing in snowfall can be pretty unrewarding. The good bit actually happens once the snow has stopped falling, the sun has come out and the folk in their piste-grooming sno-cats have obligingly driven around tamping the snow down to make it firm.

Soft snow is challenging. It tests one’s technique and regularly, in my case, finds it wanting. Some people love it and will spend time finding deep and untouched snow to ski in. I am not among their number. As well as making the actual act of skiing more technically difficult, soft snow punishes you for getting it wrong:

  • Having to climb out of the pit you’ve just made with your head as you Got It Wrong is hard work.
  • Scrambling back up the hill to retrieve your skis, which came off some yards away, is hard work.
  • Getting the fuckers attached back on your ski boots can be really hard work.
  • Emptying snow from inside your jacket is depressing.
  • Enduring the faux sympathy of the onlookers is mortifying.

Despite my reservations about skiing in actually falling snow, I did get out, and found the conditions not as daunting as I had expected them to be. There were even a couple of decent views among the mist and snow.

However, the extra challenge posed to my skiing technique by bumping over soft and lumpy snow did make my back twinge uncomfortably, something it had not done in the first two joyous days on the slopes. So, even though a final ski down was actually quite enjoyable, I decided to give my back a rest and take the remainder of the day off.

So I went for a walk. Obviously.

It was nice to take the chance to see parts of the town that I’d never even visited, far less photographed. It’s an attractive place, particularly in the snow, and has a charismatic “centro storico” – old town.

Before this excursion, though, my Garmin Connect account delivered some good news: my Fitness Age is now 59.5 (compared to my actual age of 71); and my VO2 Max is now 42. I know one should take the assessment from wrist-based activity monitors with a large pinch of salt, but it was pleasing to note that the exercise I’d been doing was possibly having some measurable health benefit. (The previous figures from the start of this year were 62 and 41, by the way – not bad, but it was heartening to see an improvement.)

For a geek like me, it has been very interesting to have the data available from the Garmin activity monitor I wear. I can harvest information about the distances I cover, the speeds at which I cover them and the energy I expend whilst doing that.

Heart rate figures, for example, give an elegant demonstration of the impact of getting back to skiing after a long gap, and how quickly the muscle memory came to my assistance.

For example, here’s the heart rate trace from my first day’s skiing.

And here’s that from the second.

Day one was clearly something of a struggle as I got back to grips with skiing (and my body was clearly grateful for the lunch break!). By day two, though, my improved confidence and technique meant that I could cope more easily; in fact I did more skiing on day two – more runs, a greater distance and at a higher average speed – but expended about half the energy (1,000 calories compared to 2,000) because I had become better accustomed to, and less ill-co-ordinated at, the activity.

One of the other songs in the Organ Recital of ageing is “Ooh, me knees!” I had been a little worried that recent knee twinges would in some way affect my skiing, but so far it would appear that the routine exercises I have been doing over the last years – squats and lunges – have meant that I have suffered less discomfort in these joints and related muscles than when I skied as a younger man.

Despite not having done a full day’s skiing today, I’m optimistic (unless the weather completely puts the kybosh on the whole thing) that my ageing frame will be able to undertake another day’s skiing tomorrow with reasonable dignity and minimal injury.

I’ll report back. But now it’s time for tea and cake in the hotel bar.

* Erm, excuse me? – Ed