Learning to Ski Tour - Part 2/3

Pausing briefly to ask us if we all had avalanche kits (we did) Mike shot off to the right in the opposite direction of the pistes. We traversed along the ridge for quite some time before stopping. Mike looked like he was making some important decisions.

“Follow me, spread out, and watch out for rocks.” He was off. And follow him we did, into fields of untouched, fluffy powder. An impressive discovery considering it had been almost a week since the last real dump.

We flew down the mountain, following Mike over bumps and pillows, landing softly each time in the miraculously preserved powder.

All of a sudden we stopped. There were still fresh tracks for the taking but for some reason Mike decided that we were to go no further. At this point we realised that we were having a backwards lesson. We’d already done the fun part, now it was time for the hard work.

The route we had taken was down towards a small town near St Martin de Belleville that has no chairlifts at all, which explains the abundance of fresh snow. From here the only option was to skin up and hike our way back over to our side of the valley.

Mike was naturally standing, skins on, ready to go checking how many metres we had descended on his special ‘mountain geek watch’ (I want one) before most of us had managed to get our skins out of our bags. Eventually we were off, climbing back the way we came.

It was our first time skinning through powder and the sensation took a little while to get used to. The kick turn was made even more difficult by the deep snow but before long we were crawling up the mountain, clawing back the metres we’d lost.

Thankfully we were far more appropriately dressed this time and with the sun beating down on our backs it felt quite tropical. It was perfectly silent with no one else around - we felt like we owned the mountain.

After a particularly steep climb we stopped to regain our breath. Mike informed us he had taken us the most difficult way deliberately as a training exercise (thanks a lot). From here it was up to us and we took turns leading the pack to the summit.

We were elated to finally reach the top and with only 10 minutes of our lesson left and work shifts starting soon for many of us, we had a quick and eventful off piste run down to Le Raffort to finish off.

It was bumpy, icy and tracked out as hell but it was a great adventure and all of us were just about ready to crash as we reached the bottom.

For our third and final lesson we are extending the two hours to five. Let’s see what Uncle Mikey has up his sleeve next time.

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'Unkle Mikey' works for New Generation Ski School in Meribel.