Two different ski trips

The last two weekends have been spent for Douglas and me at the Cardrona valley.

The first was a cross country ski race called the Merino Muster. It is also part of the World Loppet series, so there were quite a few international athletes involved.

Douglas had entered the shortest race - 7km as part of the school team. School teams consist of three and the time of the three is added together. The best total time wins the school event. Indivuals are also racing in the individual race too.

Douglas's two team mates were exchange students from Italy and Denmark.

The 7km event was shorter than Douglas is used to, and he took it a bit easy. He finished the race with quite a bit if energy to spare. Turned out that even then he won the under 18 mens and was 5th overall mens.  Pretty good effort. He got a nice medal, which every competitor got, and his prize for winning his age group was a ..... soft toy merino sheep :-D

His two team mates, unfortunately, had done very little cross country skiing. The team came fourth (out of four).

(I wasn't skiing, but took the opportunity to get a great run in on the top of the Pisa range. Quite a bit of soft deep snow to contend with, so I headed downhill to meet the ski field road, and ran back up the road.)

The next weekend was a little different.

This was a venturer's trip. They organise their own activities, and this weekend had been suggested as down-hill ski trip. Pete, the venturer leader, decided that simply wasn't adventurous enough, and rang the ski field and organised that the venturers would spend the Saturday night in snow caves on the mountain.

When he got the numbers of venturers going, Pete got a bit worried, and decided to enlist some help. He was pretty cunning, ringing me with a "I just want a word about this ski/snow caving weekend" etc. etc. I had no idea what he was talking about for the first couple of calls, and then realised that I'd agreed to help in a snow-caving expedition for the venturers.

It turned out to be a good weekend. Saturday was spent downhill skiiing. We met at the top of the highest chairlift after they stopped at 4:0pm.

We had a couple of hours to get snow caves for 12 dug. The snow wasn't brilliant. Pete and I levelled a tent platform and put up some basic blocks for shelter. This gave us time to supervise the digging of four snow caves. They did really well. Three of the caves were pretty luxurious as snow caves go. The one that Douglas, Tim and Ed dug was exceptionally roomy, though the entrance sloped the wrong way. Hamish's couldn't be faulted, but was more of a tunnel. Only Alex and Lane ended up a bit cramped and having to use a flysheet as an improvised cover over the entrance, as feet prevented the entrance being closed in.

All of them seemed to have a more comfortable night than Pete and I though. We weren't cold, just cramped and uncomfortable.

Sunday was down-hill skiing again.

I hadn't skied for about 8 years, and then it was only one day on very easy stuff. Douglas is very comfortable with planks on his feet, but cross-country isn't the same as down-hill. However, he took it it like a duck to water, and was blasting down the mountain. I was pretty pleased with my efforts by the end of Sunday too. I'm certainly not good, but I was able to get down the moutain without causing chaos in the crowds or breaking anything. Three falls all weekend, which probably means I was being too cautious.

(Apologies for the poor quality pics - I took a cheap phone up as I didn't want to risk anything better in the snow.)