In one piece

Well, we both got home in one piece after a fun week on the pistes.
Thursday was quite a good day spent practising what I learnt from my lesson then going over to 1850 to join Matthew and enjoy the better snow ( it was starting to get into a pattern of icy mornings/slushy afternoons down in 1650). I still prefer 1650 as it is a lot quieter than 1850 and has some good runs, especially towards the top. Andy, James and I also skied over to Meribel-just to make use of our 3 Valleys ski pass! it was quite nice doing a few different pistes (including quite a tough red) but the snow was a lot worse on this side.
Friday was a difficult day for me-although all the aches and pains had gone and I was definitely feeling a lot fitter, my worst skiing technique was impossible to get rid of, especially as the snow was pretty poor and icy everywhere. It didn't help that I took a very difficult red (I suspect it was a very dark red!!) that was a real struggle and then kept bumoing in to my ski instructor every time I made a mistake :-o
The snow line receded dramatically over the length of our stay, from an all-round powdering on the trees to feeling like we were skiing in the green grassy summer!
Snow was planned for Friday during the day but it actually ended up snowing all night Friday.
Which meant that we were all up bright and early on Saturday enjoying the 35cm of lovely powder...after doing a blue which felt like off-pisting (not groomed) we went straight up following Andy's inspired itinerary to do a red...but ended up doing a black! Which was a slightly scary but in-retrospect enjoyable experience, thanks to the good snow. After that we did several reds, and I finally felt myself let go of the fear in the blues, which felt rather easy after all that!
Matthew came with us on the black and did pretty well considering he was a complete beginner at the start of the week. He is now a blue-piste skier, and I would put myself as red.
All-in-all a great trip/holiday-despite the occasional hallucinations of not having left Russia??! (many, many Ruskis in 1850).