Moléson-sur-Gruyères
10th December 2006
Some reasonable of snow has finally arrived locally so skiing was on the cards. Still the options looked limited, one run at Lenk, one at Gstaad, one at Adelboden and three or four up at Les Diablerets. Leaving home late morning Les Diablerets wasn’t really an option as it’s about one and half hours drive. The most local station wasn’t running any lifts but there seemed no reason that should be a barrier. Attaching some skins to my skis I started to climb to Plan Francy. I stopped on the way up (above) for a drink which was when I realised I’d left my energy drink in the car. So, somewhat sort of energy I carried on up anyway.
There’s always people at Moleson and today was typical, it was obvious from the tracks I wasn’t the first skier and just before my break two skiers descending went by. Back at the car park the snow was really a bit poor, perfectly OK to climb up on but I wasn’t sure how good a descent it was going to be. Seeing the other skiers making a good few turns encouraged me and the snow did seem to really improve towards the top.
At this point I probably should have gone more or less straight up but I decided to contour round on the summer road, with hindsight this wasn’t the quickest line and it took me nearly another hour to reach Plan Francy.
By now another skier had caught me up and we reached Plan Francy at the same time, going through the ritual of removing skins and changing clothing layers before setting off down. My first turns in the powder were truly awful and I knew my boots were all adjusted wrong, after a minor correction I set off again and my turns steadily improved so when I passed where I’d had the break earlier I was skiing halfway reasonably. I can’t really say it champagne powder though, more like wet snow on top of grass really but quite good fun all the same.
By the time I got to the car park the sky was turning some dramatic colours.
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