What an amazing day today! The weather was just fantastic – clear blue sky for miles, and we skied above the clouds in the distance. We were skiing at over 11,000 feet today, and absolutely surrounded by alps – just amazing, breathtaking. And one peak we skied felt so high and exposed…it was over 11,200 feet – check this out! We took a tunnel train (The ‘Funiculaire’) ENTIRELY THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN to near the top…it felt like it was going 40 mph for 10 minutes – we couldn’t believe it. Then, we took a huge gondola up another 1000 feet – it was scary. Where you see the lift frame in this photo to the right is where the train came out, and from there we took the gondola FURTHER up, over this huge dip in the mountain! When we first arrived off the train, the gondola was closed…for wind? All the way up, Jim was saying just don’t look down, don’t look down. And when we reached the top in the gondola (all 40 or so of us standing with our skis/boards the whole way), it took another 10 minutes for the gondola to dock – because of the wind it had to go slow to completely stop rocking to get between the guide rails. And skiing down from the top (above) really gave me the heebie- jeebies – YIKES!!! I am so glad I did it, but so glad it is DONE! Irena went over the edge past the bright yellow warning signs (‘NO WAY DOWN FOR PEDESTRIANS – DANGER OF CREVASSES’), straight down on the black while we watched, carving slow scallops in the deep, heavy powder. Then Jim and I took the very narrow, steep (above left), busy, crusty, felt-like-we-could-ski-off-into-the-void red slope.

I took my gps tracker with me, and according to it, I skied 17 kilometers (about 12 miles) on only FOUR runs today. The longest run, about 4k (about 2.5 miles), had an elevation drop of 1400 meters (over 4500 feet)! And I didn’t start until 11:30…Jim and Irena went out earlier than me again today, and I joined them later, so THEY skied about 30k today, including to where this amazing keyhole rock was – photo right.

One of the weird things I experienced today was a lift carpet (see it in the photo gallery): I had noticed it earlier on my first day elsewhere, just a moving carpet like a moving sidewalk, carrying skiers up a gentle slope a short way to another lift, no rails or ropes or anything, and I remembered thinking hmmm, wonder how I would keep my balance on that? Then as we got ready to get on one of the largest lifts – 8-seater, I think – I moved forward and saw this carpet again that I had not choice now but to slide onto (imagine the National Airport voice: “…the moving carpet is UNAVOIDABLE!”), and it made me so nervous I started swearing! Irena was laughing at me and imitating me for the next hour – you know how she likes the F word!

Jim discovered tonight that our rental car’s battery is dead. So now we have to deal with that 🙁 between now and Saturday morning. And his ski binding broke on a wipe-out he had today, but he was able to keep skiing, and then to get it fixed quickly in the village when we finished skiing. We are also really bummed because we have not been able to get the DVD player working or to get the agency to fix it.