2025 ski season wrap!

 It's a wrap for the 2025 ski season! Ups and downs ski wise - and yes, it is a pun.

Last year ended a little slow work wise, and this year began like that too, so not tons of budget for a lot of skiing, but as usual, I couldn't help do a little more than was probably reasonable. 

First, a gorgeous warm-up day in the Pyrénées aux Angles to get our ski legs back on with my brother Morgan and a friend, Barbara, at the beginning of February. Bright blue sky, and probably too hot, just enough man-made snow to ski on, but hey that's the Pyrénées these days I suppose.

Barbara had just been on a day of backcountry ski touring with her father the day before, she skies way better than Morgan and I, plus with her mom's old skis, so she has a proper 80s ski form - quite unlike my ungainly feet apart but somehow managing to keep balanced on my skis style.

In March, I thought it would be a fine idea to book two weeks of skiing in a row after the French school holidays, figuring I'll be saving on an additional train ride back to Paris.

We went to La Rosière, above Bourg-Saint-Maurice, on the Italian border. The skiing area that I'd visited in the summer of 2018 connects with La Thuile in Italy.

Katie took lessons and I just went skiing, exploring all the resort had to offer, the snow on the Italian side was gorgeous and it snowed several days while we were there. I loved going shopping for cured meats to make our lunch sandwiches in Italy, and had coffee and gelato in the sun. 

It was quiet in both resorts, little to no queue on the lifts aside from the first in the mornings, nice runs, some sides and in between the pistes to ski some fresh snow, varied terrain and lovely tree runs on the Italian side. I definitely want to go back. 

Of course I skied pretty full on and was tired at the end of the week. As mentioned, I thought it would be a good idea to book a second week. Moreover, the second week was with the UCPA in Tignes (a sports and outdoor activities camp, it's really worth looking into) for a beginners backcountry ski touring week.

Suffice to say it didn't go as planned. According the description on their website, I thought I had the right technical skiing level, and physical fitness level. At the end of the first morning of off-piste, the instructor said we needed a chat, that he was concerned about my borderline good enough technical level, and even more concerned with my physical fitness level, or lack thereof. 

Still, I joined the group for a first small hike just out of the bounds of the skiing area that afternoon, so I at least did my first ever little backcountry ski tour. I hadn't really accounted or thought of the altitude, and that hiking on skis at 3,000 meters high is actually demanding, and underestimated how tiring skiing on variable and steep snow off the piste would be. 

Plus I was exhausted from the previous week of skiing. We had our first day in Tignes free, I'd been hearing about Tignes and Val d'Isère for years, so of course I went out for a full on day from 9am to 4pm all the way to end of Val d'Isère at the Glacier du Pisaillas, and back with no visibility in the clouds. My thighs felt like jelly before going on that hike the following day. 

Maybe I'd have done better if I was more rested, though the instructor seemed to have doubts about it. The rest of the group were really nice, though for the most part happened to be a lot more experienced in off-piste and backcountry skiing, and fitter overall - from being used to hiking in altitude several times a year, to running ultra trail marathons, to completing nordic skiing circuits in a third of the time most people did.

I felt tired, deflated, embarrassed, disappointed and angry with myself, and overall vexed. Now with a little time, it was great to do a first hike like that, and I joined the group on another off-piste session a couple of days later.  

I thought going a third time to the gym per week for the past couple of months and losing a tiny bit of weight was sufficient preparation for the ski season, and it sort of was, but not at all enough for that level of backcountry skiing. I seem to have hit a limit to my skiing enthusiasm. In past courses, I've been told a few times that my level of confidence and enthusiasm without fear made up for some of my technical skill to let me follow others who were better than me. Not this time though. I was physically spent, felt not good enough, and lost morale.

On top of that, I was told at the last minute to join another traditional ski lesson group the following day, and it was a complete opposite. The first day was so challenging I was told it wouldn't work, the next day was so easy and relaxed skiing that all the other people in that new group were grumbling about the instructor.

Given I didn't know which group I was in for the afternoon anymore, and I was upset and tired, I took the afternoon off and went to the swimming pool's wellness centre: sauna, jacuzzis, steam bath, slides, and a beautiful view of the mountains.

The rest of the week there was all right, though mixed. I tried to get over myself with limited success. I skied and enjoyed the weather, reading the Codex Alera, hung out with a really crowd of people, played a cool big board game (Kemet), so definitely some good - with a sort of background shadow of disappointment.

After the fact, as I write this, I'm happy I did it, though I guess it was an expensive lesson in humility. The instructor recommended training and practice in off-piste skiing as a next step, so I might do that, I'd been wanting to before, this just seemed to be a way to do that. That's to my point about their description as a beginners backcountry training week, I seemed to have the required level (and the lessons in the second part of the week being easy showed me I did have the level stated too, but oh well). I also told them it might be worth revising their website's description of the level required, though their customer service reply didn't seem particularly sensitive or empathic with my experience.

I'm not sure what I'll be wanting to do with the next ski season, we'll see next winter. 

Right now, I need to focus on work stuff, new business and securing new clients and projects in priority. I'd finished a client project just before going away, so I kind of came back to a nearly blank slate. Whatever I do ski-wise, it's unlikely to get any cheaper, and I'll have to finance it somehow, so first things first.

To end on a positive note, skiing with a group means I do have some of the best skiing photos of me I've ever had, so that's pretty cool to show you!