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Day 2 - Cloudy with a chance of Apres - Monday Here's a quick video recap of ski day 2 in The 3 Vallees. It was still raining when @Schifand I woke up. The clouds were thick and visibility was low in the morning. The day started with breakfast of eggs and sausage with the gang at the chalet. Given Schif's wrist and the weather, we got on the chair around 10am instead of 9am — hoping the clouds would pass. But it didn’t. The visibility was crazy low. I’ve never skied in worse conditions. Since we could only see about 10 feet in front of us, the slower wet snow, and the wrist, we weren't going very fast on Monday. Our goal was to go to Val Thorens and get up high where there would be snow. We found snow but couldn’t go off-piste much because of the visibility. The videos and pictures I took were during some of best moments of visibility. When we could go slightly off trail, the snow was wonnnnnderful. To start, we took these 7 lifts 1. Tougnete 1, gondola 2. Granges 3. Bruyères 1, gondola 4. Bruyères 1, gondola 5. VT27 6. VT35 7. VT33 - Cime Caron, tram We skied over to Cime Caron and found a tram that took us to one of the highest points at 3200 meters (about 10,400 feet). It's the purple star that I marked on the map below. For comparison, the BASE of Loveland Ski Resort is at 10,500 feet. So for the most part, elevation sickness really wasn't a problem during the trip since the french alps are quite lower (in comparison to the US west). BUT - Being at the top of the tram with full-on white-out conditions, it was a bit trippy in a vertigo sense. At the top of Cime Caron, it looked like hamster tunnel. We couldn’t see a damn thing. On a clear day, you can see into Italy and Mount Blanc - I suppose. We skied down and holy cow. It was a group effort. Wind was howling. Visibility was awful. No more than 5-6 feet. Everyone was in it together and the cluster of random people helped each other. People stayed in small pods. A solo skier asked if she could ski with us. It was quite the experience but we made it down. It wasn’t that steep or challenging, just truly couldn’t see anything. The run was either a red or black. Here is a video of Mike heading towards Cime Caron after that wild run. The line of snow / mountain / ski was just all white especially at the top. We took VT31 (a small gondola) and then we took Plein Sud ... only to find Folie Douce - Val Thorens. Since Mike didn’t party yesterday, we stopped for some fist pumping. Bonus: mike was instructed to elevate his arm. Fist pumping is essentially elevating it.. right? Folie Douce is a bit of a chain. I believe there are 7 across Europe. https://www.lafoliedouce.com/en/ After the pitcher of beer, we headed back to Meribel to apres with the gang. But the gang went in early because of the awful weather. One thing about 3 Valleys is there’s a ton of variations in lifts and gondolas. We took VT4 which is a double cable gondola that runs 3 gondolas together. It's in the video above (^^) We could probably write an entire post about the lifts we experienced. On the way back we took: 8. VT4 thé three gondola 9. Plan des mains 10. Pas du lac 1 to 2 We stopped at Round Point which was so fun. They have a giant umbrella that goes up and down, which was super helpful with the weather. They had a live British band. We danced to the hits of Queen with a ton of brits. Crushed a pitcher of beer - again. And had a great time despite the conditions and injury. Mike was holding off on getting the Rx but by this point - he was in pain and the swelling was getting worse. So we stopped at Le Pharmacie for meds. Note: Turns out the green cross in France is the pharmacy and not @GrilledSteezeSandwich favorite establishment. We had dinner with the gang in the chalet. I think it was some rice and chicken combo that A made. And B made a homemade carrot cake that was banging for dessert. We ended the night playing a tortilla slap game and spent the rest of the night bullshitting with each other.

I have 93 apartments' worth of kitchen and bath cabinets arriving in port this week, I was glad to hear they were not docking in Baltimore...

Feel free to tell the conspiracy theorists that the ship did call in a mayday and the police were able to cut off traffic just in time. You can actually see the traffic stop in one of the videos. Unfortunately the construction workers weren’t able to get off which is terrible. But the mayday call and the Baltimore police saved a lot of lives.

Sometimes the most memorable parts of. Europe trip is the transit. Running around looking at signs in a different language and barely making train and bus connections. Glad you had a good trip, minus the injury.

I suppose I can chime in on this TR for a bit. Travel for those interested was on SAS (Scandanavian Air). Newark> Stockholm> Geneva. Then we booked a "mini bus" that would take us to the mountains. Turns out it was a full sized and completely full motor coach. Lots of traffic, but not terrible, pretty comfy ride. The only issue was that there was a transfer in the town of Moutiers. It's pretty much just a train/bus station town and we had an hour to kill since the traffic meant we missed the connection. Tried to eat at a restaurant, but in a small French town service is 100% on their schedule so we bailed after 10 minutes of trying to get a waiter to actually want to wait on us. At this point I wandered the town in search of a grocery store I found on the map. Slightly harder to find in person and I ended up running around like a mad man grabbing beer, wine, champagne, snacks, apples, and a huge hunk of cheese. A mad dash back to the transit station ensued with a backpack full of booze and a case of glass bottles and a bag of apples in my hands. Made the connection by the skin of our teeth. Bus dropped us off in the middle of Meribel, and it was a short walk to the Chalet. We were on the "3rd floor" which really meant going up a steep driveway from a hilly road, then up 2 flights of steps to the main entry, then another flight, then there was an elevator to get you to our floor, and when you opened the door you were faced with an interior flight of stairs which brought you up to the main floor of our 2 floor penthouse. This was obviously fun with bags and gear. Gorgeous place though and the views were sweet. After a long day of travel, the group popped a few bottles of wine and we made our way to L'igloo for some pizza and more wine. L ' IGLOO (2) (meribel-restaurants.com, and turned in ready to get up and get the first ski day in.

They are saying bumps on Razors.

One of the reasons I wear all black.

Day 1 - Afternoon Session - Part 2 “This is about to get good …” - @GrilledSteezeSandwich But seriously anything would have been better than the mishaps of the morning of day 1. @Schif goes to the airbnb to rest his broken wrist and I went to try to find the group. I take the Saulire gondola up and ski the main front face of Meribel trying to locate the group. I took the Adret lift about 3-5 times because I only kind of had phone service, so it was a bit challenging to coordinate. After a few runs, I found them at Monche Bar (https://www.meribel.net/en/apidae/le-monchu-meribel/). They stopped for shots, espresso martinis, and champagne - so I joined them for a shot and champagne. We took one lift together then we heard the sounds of Folie Douche in Meribel so we made our way over around 4pm. At Folie, we had apérol spritz and pitchers of beer. We danced on tables and sang our hearts out for about an hour. In the gang was Amy who I brought to Jeff's preseason party maybe 2 (?) years ago, B&S who lives in London, L&D who lives in Philly near us (maybe we'll bring them to blue sometime), and S who lives in Atlanta. It was a fun group. Folie Douche closes at 5pm so we shut it down. Then skiied over to Round Point which was wild. There was a line to get in so instead, we headed back to the house. Just as we got in, it started to rain and continued throughout the night. We were reading that it was snowing at higher elevations, so fingers crossed. We ate tacos with the gang at the house. Played some games. And went to bed hoping tomorrow would be even better.

I’m out for the 3rd and final closing weekend. Don’t think you could possibly top the 1st and 2nd closing weekend, what fun. Have a great time everyone!

Thanks for the shout out @skiincy

at least they didn't make you go through the hassle of packing it up and shipping it back for them to destroy.

If you get the same model goggle then you have an extra pair of lense(s) in case they scratch or crack etc... I had the goggle with the reddish/orangish tint and I think all Smiths come with a flat light lense as well. So all said and done once I proved I cut the strap they gave me voucher code values at the original product price.

Heard talk about bad fuel.

It’s not gonna be vista only. Prob just be a narrower razors

The update is I can keep the lense but cut the strap. Oh well, it is what it is.

Nuts that it ran right into one of the towers/pilings. Wonder if they lost rudder or something. Loss of life obviously the most pressing concern, but that's also going to change daily life in the entire Baltimore area significantly for quite some time. Obviously forces even more traffic through the two tunnels, but also much more the long way around the west side of the beltway, due to the tunnel-restricted loads that would have used the Key Bridge instead now all having to take that route.

Wow! What a trip report, sorry about @Schif wrist, but he seems to be on good spirits. You had all your adventures in one day!

For those that are interested in bird watching, saw these two guys as I parked at the golf course the other night.

I feel like older skis like from the 90s weren’t as durable. I had delamination issues with a pair of Pre 5a and the next year got Pre M6as they were a nice ski..my K2 El Camino and K2 Kreisler’s were my favorites prior to Salomon XScreams which were badass. Now I just ski the same pair of Kastles everyday for the last 3 years and the fat ones on pow days.

I think the tune shop is closed for the season.

Remember we’re making tye die shirts this summer. I found another rubber band.

Happened in JH to Mute and Atomic Jeff…and happened to Toasts old lady jacket.

Welcome back to the world of "supply chain issues". Baltimore is a huge port.

I think I’ll pass on Friday at Blue. Going to be out of town pretty much 4/1- 4/21.

The snow is starting to melt real fast at Blue..will be interesting to see what it’s like out there Friday and Saturday.