Saturday, January 7 2012
Last year’s snow sucked. It’s just a fact. We went 4 or 5 times despite the lack of
natural and abundant snowfall, which would normally blanket the Alps with
multiple meters of snow. Yes, we made
the most of it but if conditions were to be the same this year we probably
wouldn’t feel inclined to go. However, with
several days of precipitation already, this year seems to be a different story
– exciting news!
Unfortunately we kind of limited our options
for ski weekends with all of the other trips we planned out for this winter, so
we need to take every opportunity that comes up. Our friends Mike & Michelle, Peter, and
Travers & Megan (new to the blog – they arrived to Geneva this past summer
and Travers works for Hotwire in our Geneva office) wanted to do a day-trip so
we decided to tag along.
Last year we were frequent users of the ski
bus, which was a convenient day trip option but tended to go to France more
than anywhere else. We wanted to make
sure to hit as many Swiss ski hills as possible this year so we opted out of
the ski bus. There happens to be a lift ‘easily’
reached by train and bus, just an hour or so north of Geneva, called La Dole.
It’s not the Alps, but rather the Jura
Mountains, which are a little more tame (but good for a first run of the
season to get us warmed up).
We put quotes around ‘easily’ because if you
can read French (the informational website is only in French) it would be a
piece of cake to find where we should go.
Fast forward to Saturday morning – we are all on the train, first Geneva
to Nyon, then from Nyon up to the
mountain. We understood the ski lifts to
be at the La Givrine train stop based
on the best research possible, so when we got off and found no ski hill there, we
were very confused. We should have realized
as we were getting off the train that the only other people getting off had cross-country
skis and snowshoes. Oops! Turns out we got off one stop too soon and
the train only comes once an hour. No
worries, we just did as the Europeans do and had some pre-ski breakfast (hot
chocolate and apple strudel… yum). Here’s
a shot of our crew with our best attempts of being European.
We finally made it up to the lift, which turned
out to be pretty basic. There weren’t
any changing rooms so the two of us found a small nook inside an abandoned
lodge (kind of creepy, yes) to get our gear together. We then stored our bag in the garage of the
people who rent out skis (no lockers at this place), which was very kind of
them to let us do so. The mountain was
equally basic, with only one chair lift.
The other lift options being those rope tows where you wedge a pole
between your legs… kind of a challenge on a snowboard as Dave and Travers can
attest to after falling once each and having to pray for an abandoned pole to
come by for a second try. :)
All in all it wasn’t the end of the world that
we missed the first hour of the day due to our train mix up, because there
really wasn’t a whole lot of variety to be had and most people were bored after
the first few runs. The top 1/3 of the
mountain was pretty icy (you can see from the shots below it looked like the North Pole all iced over) but the lower 2/3 of the mountain had some really
nice snow and was perfect for a first of the season warm-up, just as we
planned.
A successful first trip and we hope to squeeze
in as many more as possible!
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