Thursday, December 18, 2008

the adventure continues...

Day four and the team KAOS social experiment has proved at least one fact during our stay in Meribel. Relying only on good faith and optimism is not enough to secure a bluebird start to the day. Despite the low cloud, after dropping the groms in ski school, we set out on our first mission over the mountains and into Les Trois Valleys, Jimmy, The Suit and I optimistically armed with transceivers and camera equipment as we headed towards the morning lifts.
Because I knew exactly what was going on in Val Thorens and how unpleasant a Valley Rally can be for those not partaking in it, and therefore sober, we decided to head the in the other direction and made our way up the Saulire bubble to the top of the run down to Courcheval 1850. The run down through the clouds towards the top of the Verdon’s bubble up from Courcheval was a great way to start the day with the long, chopped up red run proving that the terrain on this side of the valley would be slightly more testing than that on the Meribel side.
As we picked our way down though the rollers and other natural features of the section of the hill dubbed “Supermario Land” smiles were aplenty. We were able to jump around and despite the continuing flat light; the decision to leave the Meribel Valley seemed to have been justified.
We decided to head around the resort to Courcheval 1650 and as we traversed around below the altiport it seemed as if the morning’s optimism was well placed as the sun peeked though the cloud to make its first appearance of the trip. Heading up as far as the lifts would take us looking for fresh lines and tree runs, team KAOS looked like we were going to be able to get the cover shots that Jimmy had brought his camera out for after all. Unfortunately the cloud cover was too persistent and as we headed into Courcheval 1650 the battle for visibility was once again being lost. Luckily not all our photographic efforts were fruitless as my follow-cam on James “shredding up blue runs” on the way down for lunch resulted in a quality You’ve Been Framed moment; watch this space for this on Youtube.
After the stereotypically French lunch we headed back out on to the mountain, still on the promise of blue sky, a promise that by this point in the day was a fading as quickly as the visibility. Indeed as we made our way back around to Courcheval 1850 the cloud had descended right down the visible distance was reduced to merely a few meters in any direction. And so after one final and sadly undefined run through “Supermario Land” we decided to call it a day and head back over to Meribel to meet up with the younger generation of family Knipe.
As we descended into the Meribel valley and dipped below the cloud, the temporary KAOS office came into view and beer o’clock came into sight, it became clear that the transceivers that Jimmy, Kris and I were wearing were a good idea after all as we all made it back to the office in one piece.
Tomorrow is our last full day out on the mountain so please join us in the sundance that we will be doing tonight!

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