They are so good at clearing the roads here that you hardly have to worry that the forecast is predicting two foot of snow for the morning. You know that they’ll be out before daybreak clearing the snow and making the roads passable. Apparently the Council workers have to do nightshifts when the forecast is for snow overnight and the person (I got the impression that it’s only one, in Combloux at least) has to check every hour and decide at what point they need to wake their workmate (again, only one I think) to start up the snowploughs and start clearing the roads. Too soon and they’ll just have to do them all over again by the morning and too late and they might have trouble shifting it all.

However, it’s a legal requirement to carry equipment for the tyres (chains or heavy duty grips) so that if you wish to drive in snowy conditions, you should be able to do so safely. I have both chains and ‘easygrips’. There are pros and cons to each. Mostly cons. To both. However, the grips went on today and no sooner was I half a mile from home when one of them decided to shred and wrap itself around my axle. Impossible to get it off on my own, so I was very impressed that I’d managed to block the road in front of a pair of Council workers (possibly those same two), one of whom helped me disentangle the offending grip.

There has been an extraordinary amount of snow in the first half of this season. The photo of Matt and Laura gives some scale to the amount on the hut roof (a picture I posted before but not with anything to give it quite this scale. This is the first week of the French half term and the slopes in any other resort would be packed. As you can see, it’ a bit different here. Combloux (and surrounding resorts here) seem to have an infinite ability to absorb people and leave you to ski empty pistes.

The other photo is of an ‘igloo’. One of 5 or 6 that they’ve created for the first time this year to the side of a lower piste with a board enticing you to spend a night (and 50€) in an igloo. Heated sleeping bags provided, apparently. How do they heat them?

I’m quite proud of these tracks as they’re mine and it’s probably one of the few times that I’ve managed to ski properly off-piste. The conditions couldn’t have been better it has to be said but I find it very difficult to ski in deep snow with any sort of finesse! The other tracks are those of a crow’s wing as he took off from the snow. We put bread out for them whenever we can and the tracks they leave behind when landing and taking off are quite amazing.

The icicles are nothing to do with animal tracks but I took this picture the same day, and the wood/icicle mix is very common at this time of year.

Conditions out here are some of the best I think I’ve ever seen. I might have said that earlier in the season too, but it is pretty magical here right now. The snow is perfect to ski on and makes for some spectacular scenery. The straight lines in the snow are caused by a piste basher that comes along when the lifts are closed and makes the pistes all lovely and flat, ready for the next day. It looks to be a pretty skilled job especially when you consider some of the gradients that the drivers have to deal with.

This photo shows a little restaurant called Petit Ravine (the smaller of the two building, though the owners own them both). They have a great view over the edge of Megeve and towards Mont Blanc when it’s not cloudy and some of the best off piste skiing around, in the field behind.

And snow it did, in spades. And a spade was what you needed to clear some of it, though the chalet owner, Guy, has a nifty little machine to do that. It’s like a rotovator and churns up the snow, sucks it up into its insides, then spits it out again in whatever direction you point the chute at. Seems like he’s aimed it very well over those cars…

After the snow comes the rain. And two days ago it just didn’t stop for a whole day and most of the following night. The snow around the chalet went from about 10cm deep to almost all gone. It finally did for our snowman, whose head fell off first, then he gradually got washed away. We said a few words. The field behind the chalet was completely waterlogged at first, then of course it got colder and all froze over again, waiting for the next snowfall.

There’s been a lot of weather around the last few days, lots of clouds, some sun, lots of snow. The views over Mont Blanc and the Aiguille du Midi have been changing by the minute today with racing clouds. The snow seems to keep on coming and just piles up in unlikely formations. The wooden structure is a starting gate for slalom races. The ‘doorway’ is about 6 foot high – and so is the snow. The cloud formations and the shodow of Mont Blanc also give some interesting light effects at sunrise.

The blue sky is an amazing backdrop for all the hot air balloons that there are around in the winter. We caught sight of one balloon heading over a few Combloux landmarks. The house in the first picture is typical of the style here I think around the turn of the 20th century. The house shape, the roof shape and the colour are all characteristic. The balloon then continued over the war memorial and the church.

I have no idea what ‘horses for courses’ means. Anyway, the annual snow polo competition is on which is always a great spectacle of both the horses and riders, and the spectactors, most of whom are from Megeve and have just wandered along from the centre of the town for a bit of ‘sport’ before warming themselves up in the BMW or Porsche hospitality tents. There are a number of local teams (needless to say they are all from Megeve) who compete over a few days for a place in Sunday’s final. For the first time, there are women’s teams, one of which the team’s colours are a hideous pink.

It was cold. Very, very cold. So we could only manage about 10 minutes of polo before we left. Still, I think (unless there are some well-hidden intricacies of the game) that we managed to work out all the rules fairly well. The referee (or whatever they’re called in polo) bravely lobs an orange plastic ball into the mass of 8 riders and horses (4 per team), who then spend the next ten minutes all galloping after the ball wherever it goes, trying to hit it with an unfeasibly long-handled and unwieldy mallet. It appears that there’s very little chance of actually hitting the ball in the direction you want it to go as the poor horses don’t have a clue what’s going on and almost always over-run the ball. This means that the rider is left ineffectually swinging at the ball and 90% of the time, missing it. It’s no wonder that occasionally one of the riders finds his head making contact with the business end of someone else’s mallet.

The object of the game is to get the ball to go between two fairly well spaced goal posts, one set at each end of the pitch. Which, by the way, is huge, so the idea that any single spectator can see what’s going on over the whole pitch is optimistic to say the least.

As it was dark and the action is all fairly frantic, the photos I took are ‘interesting’ but won’t win any competitions.

There’s a small village called St Nicholas which is situated on the slopes of the valley leading to Les Contamines. This valley is a dead end to traffic, though not to walkers as the Romans passed though this way on their way over the Alps, allegedly. Anyway, it being a dead end, and not being on any sort of main road, St Nicholas enjoys the fact that there’s no real reason to expand or to build big hotels so it’s remained a lovely traditional Savoie village.

It does have a small number of pistes and lifts but, unlike Cordon which is totally isolated as a ski area, it is linked very well into the huge ski area of St Gervais/Megeve. But the route to it from that area is pretty tucked away which means that it does stay very quiet. Fantastic. One great feature of St Nicholas is also its skiing dowfall. It’s south facing. This means that it loses the snow on it’s south-facing slopes (it has some slopes facing other directions) pretty early on in the season. Still, it has invested in some snow cannons so it does its best to keep up with its bigger neighbours.

The day we went was gorgeous. The snow was great and there was plenty of it so we could ski right down to the village. Once there, you take off your skis and walk 50 metres or so along the road to an old chairlift to take you back up again. Strangely, a lift operator takes your skis from you as you go through the ticket barrier and puts them into a box on the back of a chair. He then puts the other skis in the next chair which you then sit on at the same time. When you’re used to skiing onto a chairlift and skiing off it at the top, it’s very disconcerting being on one without skis knowing that yours are either on the back of the chair in front of you, or on the back of the one you’re on. When you get to the top, another man takes your skis off the chair and stands them up for you while you attempt to stand and run very quickly to the side and out of the way of the chair (which doesn’t stop at any time in this whole process, unless you’re unlucky enough to take a tumble). I’ve never seen a chairlift like this before.