A Quantum Immortal

Finally got some free time to blog about this snowboard trip. This was the most interesting one yet, to say the least.

First some links, then the story.

• Alon’s photo album on Facebook
• My photo album, part 1 (it appears FB has a 60 pictures limitation on albums).
• part 2

We spent the first night in a motel in Geneva. In the middle of the night, unexpected, this korean guy pops into our room, grabs a bed and starts sleeping.

The next day, we get to the ski resort Les Menuires, a part of the 3 vallies ski area. We deposit our bags and go straight to off-piste, getting stuck in the area of this small river crossing, forcing us to walk a bit to return home.

After every day of surfing, we had to cook our own food, because, well, that was the deal. My sister joined us at this point, getting herself a very cheap flight from Irsael and staying as a 5th person in our 4 bed room (which had a spare bunk, luckily).

We continued with some more clean snow (not powder yet, but still rather fresh) and clean skies.
This is when Jonathan and me took the time to photo a few successful jump pictures:

And a rather unsucessfull one:

Unfortunately, nobody remember to bring a bottle opener

But we managed to make a toast anyways

The next day, Jonathan spairned his ankle, and we hurried to the doctor. Luckily, he didn’t get a cast, only an air-cast, which didn’t prevent him from skiing.

Around the fourth day of skiing we got a day of fresh snow fall, making the rest of the week filled with fresh and deep powder

It was in this off-piste that we found some ice stalactites.

Pisnoy and I left Jonathan at the apartment and went to a short off-piste of our own. Little did we know…
We enjoyed the powder for almost an hour out of the trails and we noticed the time was getting late. We encountered a group of skiers with an instructor that passed us by, so figured we’re ok, and we’ll get back to Les Menuiers or some other town soon enough. We were wrong. We traveled a number of kilometers by foot, and the sky was getting dark. Eventually we decided to stop at a village, only to find it totally abandoned.

We broke down two doors

Only to find they led to a garage

Of course we had no cellular reception, so we had no way to let everybody know we’re ok. Search parties were dispatched, but to no use. We spent the night shivering, woke up, and managed to get out on our own, with a ride from our friends once we reached the road and got cellular reception back again.

There was questioning at the local police station where the French cops yelled at us (in French), but our interpreter (some guy from the insurance company) translated calmly and we were back skiing the next day. That’s when Jonathan decided to ignore the warning signs on some off-piste and go right ahead.

Of course he couldn’t complete the descent, neither could he climb back up. He was stranded there and we called for Aerial Rescue. Instead, we got a team of two rescuers on skis.

Which took Jonathan down with ropes.

At the end of the week we enjoyed a night at the spa, got some Pizza

, slept on the airport floor for a few hours

and headed on home, with me making great progress on the latest George Martin.