February 2008

The winter is really flying past quickly, we could really do with some more snow. Other than the big snowfall in December, there has been just a few days of light snow. It is like skiing at the end of the season with "firn" snow and some very warm days. Week 8 saw us back in St. Anton again skiing with some familiar faces. Anything within 1 hour of the pistes is completely skied to death so it meant lots of walking and even touring. Duncan did a tour were they walked up for 2.5 hours before skiing down the other side. It is a side of Rendl we have never skied before.  Michelle decided it was too far for her so she had a nice day on Piste with Peter (Canadian), Harold (South African)  and Harold's son Michael. Duncan had a lot of problems with his Bindings so the next day we spent testing the touring skis after they had been repaired. The fact is that the skis are just too soft for him, so we are looking for new skis for him. We joked for most of the week that the Tyrolean dialect has no word for clouds, the weather was perfect. On the Thursday we had one day of fog and snow we tried to get above it but couldn't so we skied near the forest. It little bit of snow we got really improved conditions of piste. We had a lovely dinner with John and Steffi, Harold and Peter and Johny at the Fahner, the food here is special but the service was run off its feet so was inattentive. It was Johny's last week for the season so we skied on the Saturday together, it was starting to get really warm so we needed to stop for a beer in St. Christoph on a sunny terrace.  The Temperatures on the last day were really crazy we had 14C at 1850m and 8C in the village, this made the snow very heavy so we decided to call it a day at lunchtime, it is not worth getting injured. It was a great but tiring week so we were glad to catch the earlier train home.  Work is really crazy in Winter, with being away every 3rd week things pile up.

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