I was up in the mountains with my family, over the weekend, but as Sunday was “un jour blanc” I decided to stay on an extra day and make the most of the superb conditions (i.e. bright sunshine and fresh snow) predicted for Monday. Hence the title of this post, which is the British equivalent of playing hooky, for those who’re wondering. (And yes, it was yesterday, but I’ve just realised I don’t remember ever using that particular verb in the past tense… “I skived off” is more likely than “I skove off”, I suppose. :-)
Here’s a quick animated picture generated by Google Plus – which, as I use an Android phone, I use for automatic photo back-ups even if I don’t publish anything much there – showing the view from the top of Tschentenalp down towards the village of Adelboden:
It was one of those magical days. I was on the first cable car up from the village – arriving before the T-bar and chairlift had started operating – and scooted across to my favourite piste on Tschentenalp: it’s a red called Bergrose that is often ungroomed but still has piste markers, which tends to be reassuring when there’s a relatively high avalanche risk (as there is at the moment) and you’re snowboarding alone. I ended up riding that single piste for the entire day, which usually means a fairly solid 3-4 hours before I’m completely wiped out, especially when it’s powder basically all the way down.
It was also a great day because there were so few people up on the slopes: I must have been down Bergrose perhaps 6-7 times before anyone else had even left a track on it. Fantastic.
Anyway, that’s the reason I didn’t post anything to my blog, yesterday. I have a few more technical topics that I want to look at, this week, which will no doubt be of more general interest than how I spend my time off. ;-)