Back to the snow
On Saturday, the boys and I headed back to the snow by ourselves. If anything, the conditions were even better than on Thursday. We'd had at least a metre of fresh snow overnight (as evidenced by the pile-of-snow-on-top-of-the-car-metre).
After a warm-up run down from the gondola, we headed up an extra chairlift for the next run, and then J and I convinced F to head all the way to the top for our third run. This time F got to the ring the bell at the top of the mountain.
Bell ringer number two.
After our long run down from the very top, both boys decided to call it a day (we'd been on the slopes for over four hours at that point – including a quick morning tea break). So I ran them back to our accommodation, handed them over to A and headed back to the snow. This time I decided to try the nearer slope to us (chair lifts only, hence why we hadn't tried it with A).
While the area with the gondola was only about a 5 to 10 minutes drive away, the nearer area was only a couple of minutes. It also had an absolutely lovely slope for learning on – long, wide, steep enough for decent speed, but not steep enough to get out of control unless you really tried. I somewhat regret not having taken the boys there – it would have been a great spot for them to work on better technique, without being so tiring. I thoroughly enjoyed just carving down, working on cleaner turns.
Carving down the hill for my second last run of the trip.
I think I packed seven or eight runs into the afternoon (they were much shorter than the morning runs... and I was generally going a LOT faster... on average). While it would have been nice to be cruising around with someone else, it was great to be able to just fang it down the slope. All in all, a lovely way to finish up the day.