Hitchhiking

So gorgeous and steep, even with the heavy snowfall!

Last weekend was the first time that I have legitimately hitchhiked. A small group of us students went skiing on Saturday. (Unfortunately, Ryan was not able to come due to his injury.) We took a free bus about 30 minutes up into the mountains where it dropped us off at the bottom of a ski lift. I would call it a ski resort, but it is not. There is a bathroom, a ticket office, and a ski lift. No place to eat or put our things. Thankfully, on this day, a very nice young woman working at the ticket office offered to let us store our bags in the office in exchange for chocolate. :) Not kidding.

We bought a ski card for the year, and therefore we found the only thing we needed to do was to keep the card in our pocket. As we went through the turnstile just before the lift, the turnstile detected the card (still in my pocket of my snowpants!) and beeped. The fee for a day of skiing is immediately withdrawn from our French bank account. A day of skiing is only about $25!

We made our way across the mountains. There are just a few runs from each lift, and one of the lifts transverses the mountain and took us to another ski resort option (this one had a ski village and some sort of lodge at the bottom). That lift was taking people up both sides of the mountain, so if we got on one side of the lift, we went the opposite direction. Another first for me in skiing was seeing a two-mountain, two-way lift.

An example of white out conditions in the background

It was heavily snowing all day, making visibility very difficult at times. If you have ever skiied in white-out conditions, this was it. Lots of knee-deep powder (new runs had just opened) in places, snow falling, and very few skiiers on the mountain made it somewhat difficult to see where we were supposed to be skiing anyway. One time, we stopped to wait for the rest of our group and the snow was particularly bad. After a couple of minutes of unrelenting snow blowing in our face (seemed more than normal) we finally saw enough that we realized that they were making snow and we were between two of the snowmakers... on top of the snow which fell from the sky. Ha! We moved.

At one point, I told my fellow skiiers that I was just going to head straight down as fast as I could in that powder. The powder got deeper and deeper and thus I got slower and slower. As I watched with glee the powder puffing over my knees, one of my friends zoomed by above me, going more to the right. "You are off the piste!" he shouted with a smile. "You are piste-off!" This became a routine joke, mixing the French word for ski trail (piste, i makes and EEE sound) with our English.

We gathered at the starting point for lunch. As we found out, there were no places to sit, only a strip of stores with small pizzeria next to the ski rental shop. We opted to eat our lunch under an archway, out of the snow, but certainly on the ground. We all decided that in the future, it would be better to pack in the lunches (bearing in mind the lack of storage anyway) and eat at the top. There are supposedly some picnic spots at the tops, somewhere, but I really think the French take such pride in eating properly that most would rather sit and have a proper meal in a restaurant, even while skiing!

Eating lunch in the hallway

In the afternoon, we tried to tackle some reds (they have reds before black runs, consistent with an in-between level of difficulty) and blacks near the top of the other ski resort. One of my friends, Matthew, and I were at the very top of the mountain when we realized that they were closing the pistes. Odd, because in the US in my experience they stop the ski-lifts and let everyone make their way down except for a few of the very difficult runs or back-side bowls. So we were sifted and shuttled down a slow green trail as our only option. They closed faster runs literally right in front of us. So by the time we got to the bottom, our only option for a ski-lift still running was up to a parking lot at the ski resort. There was no way to ski back to our original resort and the place of the free return bus.

Matthew, my fellow hitchhiker and volleyball teammate is on the right. Some crazy Australian is on the left (also a volleyball teammate and student at our school)

We asked several people, including a police officer, and they confirmed that there was no free shuttle, nor a bus, and that we should get a taxi. RIIIGGHHT. Where?? On an isolated mountain, would we find a taxi....??? Several suggested the tourism office, but considering their normal hours of operation, we did not want to walk through the town in uncomfortable ski boots to find such a closed office. So, with only 45 minutes left until our bus departed, we decided that our only option was to hitchhike. I was so glad that Matthew was a former police officer with a good gut feeling about people. We looked through the parking lot for people getting into their cars, and one by one went to ask if they had extra room and were going the direction we needed. Time was ticking away, and we weren't finding anyone. A small group pointed us in the direction, AGAIN, of the tourism office, we explained that time was running out and we couldn't risk that. As we walked away, one of the guys talked to his wife, and then told us that he would give us a ride. We were so relieved and grateful. The drive to the bus stop was 25 minutes, and we pulled up behind the bus just two minutes before it left! Whew!

Lastly, on our way home, we found out that the whole group was hitchhiking our way back to Albertville. The employee shuttle driver had explained that the free bus had already left (an hour before) and that his was the last bus down. After seeing our predicament, he gave all nine of us a free ride back on the employee shuttle. Given that information, Matthew and I were quite certain that the bus would not have waited even a few minutes to see if we would arrive late. Timing could not have been more close. As we arrived back home, I knew for multiple reasons, that we should have been stuck on the mountain, or at least stuck in the parking lot, had not a lot of nice French people helped us navigate our first ski experience in the Alps.

Three lessons learned: never leave home without a box of chocolate, never stop directly underneath a snowmaker, and if you need to get lost on a mountain, get lost with a former or current police officer.