Since moving here, Bill and I have become a wee bit obsessed with the temperature. Both our cars tell us the temperature outside, and we announce as it moves up or down every half a degree. Bill’s car even beeps at you when it reaches 4 degrees. Why four? No clue. Part of the degree fixation is the desire for snow and fear of ice. But in or out of the car, we’re always speculating about the temperature. Gee, it’s warm. Must be 12 degrees today. I’m cold. It’s got to be nearly zero! Part of it I think is just trying to sort out the whole Celsius thing.
Next to the cabin at Chamrousse where the ski instructors sit and wait for students to show up, there’s a sign with a thermometer on top. It’s kinda like a bank thermometer. Last Sunday, it said 9 degrees. Yesterday, it said 9 degrees. Today, it said (you guessed it) 9 degrees. So, apparently no matter the weather, it’s always 9 degrees at Chamrousse.
Whatever the actual temperature is (no way it was 9 degrees today, it was cold) Chamrousse is a lot more fun when you can ski there.
There were two things keeping us off the slopes today. Our new skis are still at the store to have the bindings attached and/or adjusted. And, maybe even more importantly, the lifts were not running again today. Yesterday, the lift operators (we think) were out on strike. Today, the sign on the road to Chamrousse said the pisteurs had a grievance. Knowing that skiing en piste means to ski on the groomed run, we presumed that the sign means that the people who upkeep the runs weren’t working today. A check of an actual French-English dictionary online corrects us: a pisteur is a member of the ski patrol. The people who keep you on the runs. Kinda important.
No lifts don’t mean no ski school, though. The Piou Piou club was up and running as usual. Kaitlyn had another great time, but she’s getting a little tired of being kept on the little kid side. More than once, an instructor caught her assuming a spot among the bigger, more experienced skiers. Without lifts running, grown up beginners also took to the Piou Piou club. They did not have to ski under the little hoops, but they did share the conveyor belt and rope tow and butt lift with the smaller set. The instructors seemed happy just to have something to do.
And no lift running didn’t mean no one was on the mountain. Word must have spread because the bottom of the main run was packed with sledders. Some dragged their plastic sleds way way up the mountain. Some got going so fast they could only stop by plowing into the people enjoying cafes at the cafe outside. There was a fair number of snowboarders weaving in and out of the sleds. We even saw a kid on a bicycle riding down the lower part of the hill. And there’s always the die-hard skier… the one who actually walks up the mountain in his skis then turns around and goes down. Bill says it’s called rando. I say it’s called insane. Although, it does eliminate the matter of having to get off the chairlift without falling.