Tag Archives: skiing

Gones to the Mountains: Episode 54

Casual abuse of snowboarders

As I mentioned last week, Buttons Junior and I escaped to the Portes de Soleil and continued this week, defying gravity and the limits of our ability to digest cheese. We were with old friends les Poireaux and Poireaux Junior for the first part of the trip then in a WWE tag team hand-off, my brother Buttons Minor, hot-bedded into the basement of the chalet, and we continued without missing a beat.

As a reformed ski-boarder, I think I am qualified to throw the odd judgment about our friends on planks or trays, as the less injurious parts of their more commonly used epithets describe them. The first thing to notice in Europe is that unlike in North American ski resorts, where the blight of the slope scraper is at epidemic levels, in Europe the ratio is much lower with boarders in the French part of the trip at 25% of the folks on the mountain and in Italy they were outnumbered by old ladies walking up from the gondola to get lunch with their grandchildren. The other odd thing is that when you do see a boarder in a bar or restaurant, they more often than not turn out to be a Brit or an American. The current younger generation of French hipsters may still smoke, they like their ‘Mac-do’, they may have taken to drinking IPA rather than red wine to the frustration of their elders, but they have stuck to skiing and not embraced the schlubby chic of the boarder. The terrain park that we watched the crews build at Avoriaz ahead of the weekend was hit by trick skiers when it opened, far more than by boarders. Therein probably lies the reason, terrain in the Alps is set up for skiers; lots of pistes, steeps get chopped and mogalled and valley floors have long run-ins and narrow, flat road tracks to get from one Valley to another. That is not great snowboard territory. Flats are a nightmare and when the sun warms it all up early afternoon to primordial soup texture that is soul destroyingly slow for the poor sap on a snowboard so as we use whatever slope and ski speed to avoid getting caught on the flats we whistle by frustrated boarders as they lumber or walk their weary way along.

We finished the week in Courmayeur, through the Mon Blanc tunnel and into Italy. There were plenty of road signs and places with very French names, but everyone is Italian through and through and the crowd shifted from urbane French and noisy Brits to trendy Italians of all ages up from Milan and Turin, and a smattering of Brits, less noisy and more adventurous than their thronging kin an hour and half away. The Italians, as I mentioned last week, are generally the more stylish visitors to the mountains, always good for some random fur collar trim or leather pants. They also seem to be quite fond of hi-vis neon pink and purples, an odd mix for disco wear and even more disconcerting on ski jackets. They have brands which do not make it through the Mont Blanc tunnel. We were stopped by French customs on exiting the tunnel into France on our return, they asked us whether we had any cigarettes, large amounts of cash and probably would have asked us about any garish Italian ski-wear if they had time.

One does not ski in Italy for the fashion, one goes for the great food and large selection of Amare, the herbal digestifs which are great with that last espresso at the end of the day. One lunch we had a risotto, a salad and a pizza to share amongst the three of us and ended up leaving a third of the risotto and one slice of pizza, we also had to lie down before continuing the day, it was that rich. Glorious, but not exactly exercise food. Courmayeur is steep, not exactly a beginners hill and again not great for our boarder friends, tight steep runs with random cliff edge warnings. For those who do like a fast booming run though it is a treat, we were denied by weather on the last day as what could have been lovely new snow overnight ended up being warm rain in the morning and the guy at reception at the small hotel we stayed at in Dollone, very matter-of-factly said “Not a day for skiing” so we bailed and headed home. As well as local herbal ‘Amaro’ Génépi, not to be confused with the French version, we discovered that the Aoste Valley produces some fascinating wines, Nebiollos and Enfer, which even the barman at the hotel was unaware of. Very gluggable.

The patron saint of skiers and snow-boarders is Saint Bernard of Menthon, he also looks after hiking, backpacking, and mountaineering and thanks to Pope Pius XI the patron saint of the Alps since the early 1920s. St Bernard was another son of a rich French noble who decided to abandon his familial duties and follow the churching path. He refused an honorable marriage proposed by his father and supposedly had to sneak out of the castle on the night before the arranged nuptials, he threw himself from the window, “only to be caught by angels and lowered gently to the ground 12 meters below”. Desperate to avoid that poor woman he rocked up in Aoste 400 miles to the south, where over time he became Arch-Deacon of the passes and Valleys around Courmayeur, including the two passes over into Switzerland. These today are known as the Great or Little St Bernardino passes. Bernard set up hostels at the peak of the passes, to care for the travelers, many of them pilgrims on their way to or from Rome from France or Germany. The monks over the years continued their work of caring for travelers and in the 17th century started using the local Vallais cattle dogs to help them find the lost or those trapped in falls or avalanches. The dogs became famous and synonymous with the hospices, and like them, they were named St Bernards. The most famous St. Bernard to save people at the pass was a famous dog called Barry, who reportedly saved somewhere between 40 and 100 lives. Barry was so famous that he is commemorated by a statue welcoming visitors at the “Cimetière des Chiens et Autres Animaux Domestiques” a Cemetery of Dogs and Other Domestic Animals in Paris, the most French Dog Ossuary. This elaborate pet cemetery also contains cats, horses, monkeys, lions and even fish. Barry’s actual body is preserved in the Natural History Museum in Bern. Young Barry looks different from the St. Bernard of today because of crossbreeding. The dogs never received any special training from the monks at the hospice, younger dogs would learn how to perform search and rescue operations from older dogs. The dogs only became known as St. Bernards from the middle of the 19th century. Prior to that the ever observant British travelers referred to them as Alpine Spaniels, and generally the dogs were called “Saint Dogs”, “Noble Steeds”, or “Barry Dogs”. Severe winters from 1816 to 1818 led to a catastrophic increase in numbers of avalanches, killing many of the dogs used for breeding while they were performing rescues. In an attempt to preserve the breed, the remaining St. Bernards were crossed with Newfoundlands from Canada in the 1850s, as well as with other breeds which made the breed bigger but not much better for rescue work, regardless of the caricature of the dog with its barrel of brandy around its neck. The long fur they inherited would freeze in the snowy climate of the Alps, weighing them down and reducing their effectiveness as rescue dogs. With the tunnels and helicopters changing the crossing traffic and the dangers for pilgrims being a thing of the past, the Hospice put the remaining dogs up for sale in 2004.

In terms of eating this week we had much cheese, potatoes and ham in the Savoyard places in Avoriaz, Montriond and Morzine, including a spectacular Tartiflette in the village at Abricotines. Buttons Junior had what was loosely described as une croute or toasted sandwich, which ended up being a slice of bread fit for the Flintstones, a large amount of a ham and then several kilos of cheese melted over the top; unsurprisingly he finished the whole thing. There were the normal temptations of Raclette and various fondues, but at lunchtime when skiing it seems both decadent and self-defeating. We did try out various of the Mont Blanc brewery beers, the Ambrée or red, the normal lager or Blonde, their IPA and Poireaux Junior bravely selected the Myrtille which we all agreed tasted like Ribena. I did one of the Green or Genepi variants and that was palatable, a taste of juniper without it tasting completely like cough medicine. We also managed to get a visit in to ‘Ibex’, the microbrewery in Montriond, the beer was great even if the setting in an industrial estate was not the most picturesque, it was full of the local ski workers, which showed it was good value. Italy was a shift in tone food wise. More pasta and of course every restaurant must offer pizza, just in case it misses out on the tourist’s slavery to the dish. The food seemed typical Italian rather than mountain specific offers, but I will be honest the sample size was small. What we did enjoy was the early evening drinks in the center of the old town of Courmayeur, everyone people watching the “passegiata”, and you get a thoughtful selection of foccacia, cheese and ham with your drinks.

Gones for good: Episode 10 – Fishheads and tales

Salmon is great to eat, but less impressive as a color for pants. You can farm salmon in large lakes, lochs and open sea-pens, so from the perspective of sustainability you would think it would get a hefty thumbs up. Especially as we are supposed to eat oily fish, reduce meat consumption and support a sustainable protein source with no methane emissions. In the US, partly thanks to the ubiquity of farmed salmon in sushi, the annual consumption per head is over 3 pounds of salmon. That sounds a tiny amount from a European perspective, but you have to remember vast swathes of the US eat zero fish, ever. European per capita consumption of just farmed fish production was 6.7 kilos in 2021, the last year data was available. Farmed salmon divides opinion sharply, in fact in some quarters it is demonized. When I lived in California I could choose to only eat wild salmon and its depth of flavor and color is like night and day, but in France we get one choice of Salmon, farmed. There are by contrast a plethora of options of other fish even in supermarkets and my fish guy on the market (a long-suffering PSG fan), has 2-3 whole different types of fish, 6-8 filleted fish plus shellfish of various hue, seafood preparations like quenelles, fish moussaka and preserved fish like herrings, smoked salmon and kippers. But salmon he does not sell, as he cannot compete with supermarkets and their farmed Norwegian salmon. The concern with the farmed salmon, particularly that emanating from Norway, Scotland and Chile, is that it’s raised in poor conditions of health and hygiene for the fish. The fish meal used to feed them together with insufficient water filtration means that the farms cause real destruction around them and have effectively killed off the wild varieties of salmon that gave the original reputation to those fish origins. There are efforts to identify those sources that do play by the rules, but it’s not always that easy on markets or where wet fish is sold to identify whether you are buying good or evil salmon. Being marked as Organic is also a false friend, as that can refer to the food on which they are raised rather than the overall farming regime.

I once went wild salmon fishing off Morro Bay on the Central Coast of California. A friend won a prize at a private school fund-raiser that his kid went to. Another parent was a salmon fisherman, so he, and a plus one, got to go out on his commercial fishing boat. I was roped into being the plus one and at 6.00 am one Saturday morning was picked up to go and fish. My friend forced down me some disgusting anti-seasickness med with coffee, despite my protestations that as a semi-experienced sailor, it didn’t bother me. Off we sailed on a small fishing boat on a pretty flat, sunny morning sea while the Dramamine fucked with me. I felt like death for the first 45 minutes as we headed out to sea, finally the mate cooked us a fried breakfast – part of the prize thank god – and finally the nausea disappeared. We were using sonar to find the shoal of King Salmon the captain was in search of. This was definitely not Ahab and the beast, this was technology provided mastery of our domain. The visual clues were dolphins and seabirds, the dolphins smash into the shoal, which for safety swim in giant spherical shapes. The dolphin impact stuns and breaks off the salmon swimming on the perimeter of the ball, and they float up, stunned, to be gobbled up by the dolphins or the diving seabirds. The ball shape shows up clearly on the sonar, and we let out the fishing lines. Again, no romance here, just large hooks with shiny reflective aluminum lures on lines 800 yards long get trailed off the back of the boat as we slowly drift over the battered ball below us. We haul the lines back in and every 6-8 feet there is a large king salmon flailing on a hook, some of these are immense, the size of small sheep, 30-40 pounds in weight. Friend and I help with the hauling-in of the lines but the Mate and the skipper do the execution work, the gift to the school ensures we don’t have to bludgeon our way to our prize. An hour or so later we putt-putted back into Morro Bay, the catch nicely snuggled in the chiller hold covered in ice. We were each given one cleaned King Salmon as our bounty-come souvenir of our morning’s adventure on the high sea.

I am, as the regular reader will have spotted, quite fascinated by the daily saint’s days that the baker’s shop writes on the chalk board each day. So last Tuesday the 9th of April was in honor of St Gaultier. He should be the patron saint of reluctant labors, like my salmon fishing, and is in fact I was delighted to discover invoked in case of work related stress. He is also patron saint of Vintners, which is a good cause. St Gaultier was a professor of philosophy and rhetoric which was so exciting he became a Benedictine monk near Meaux, of mustard fame. He was appointed by the king, Philip 1st, abbot of a new foundation at Pontoise. The discipline at this new Abbey was lax, and he ran away several times to avoid the responsibility of making it less lax. He gave up completely and went to Cluny, which is actually not far from us at Charolles and was at the time the biggest and richest abbey in Eastern France. They sent him back to Pontoise. He tried to escape to Tourraine and hid himself on an island in the Loire, before yet again being led back to the abbey. He also escaped to an oratory near Tours before being recognized by a fellow pilgrim, who grassed him up. 

After being forced to return yet again to Pontoise, this time he decided to go to Rome to appeal directly to Pope Gregory and gave him his written resignation. Gregory instead ordered him to resume his responsibilities as abbot and never leave again. Accepting his fate, he campaigned against the abuses and corruptions of his fellow Benedictines, and was beaten and imprisoned for his troubles, which may have been why he was not so keen on the job in the first place. He resumed his work after being released and died in 1099.

St Gaultier or St Walter as he is known in English, was buried in the abbey at Pontoise, the place he had strived so hard to avoid. He was canonized by Hugh, Archbishop of Rouen in 1153, and was the last saint in Western Europe to have been canonized by an authority other than the pope. He did finally escape Pontoise, as they managed to lose his body during the Revolution.

I have escaped the city life of Lyon this week by taking a late break to ski with Dan in the Val D’Iseres, staying with a friend in Tignes 1800. It’s typical spring skiing so today we had sun, sleet, snow and rain. It is by coincidence the last week of the Easter school break for Paris so the resorts, although not full as it is late, are awash in Parisians. Some are gloriously old school in terms of spring skiing means one thing and one thing only, working on your tan. There are great examples of people at each bar and restaurant with pine yellow tans, working hard to get them to the full dark oak tan that some of the older French ski-instructors sport. It was a sunny day yesterday and there were folks laying out in deck chairs at 10.30 in the morning at 2500 meters above sea level. If I hadn’t watched him play badly against Villa later that day, I would not have been surprised to spot Ben White of Arsenal fame laying out there too. He is a young man who seems to have taken upon himself the curation of a serious tan all winter and with his odd goatee, looks more and more like a pantomime Captain Hook, grease paint and all. 

We are this week in the former land of Savoy, Italy is just over the mountain to our East, and so much cheese, ham and pasta is consumed. They have basically exhausted any way of cooking cheese, ham and potatoes and all combinations are sold for lunch and dinner. Tartiflette, raclette, baked whole Mont D’or and Rebluchon. Pasta with cheese, pasta with ham and cheese, pasta with cheese, ham and potatoes dominate the menus. The good news is that the local wines from Savoie are good accompaniments and great value, we had a Chignin Bergeron last night which was a bright pretty white without being floral. If you are spring skiing, you oscillate between being cold, wind swept and needing staunch hearty food and being hot and sun burned and wanting salads and bottles of rosé at lunch. Happily, the quality of food at French ski resorts puts to shame the rarefied efforts, at what is basically fast food, that masquerades as $45 lunches at any US ski resort. We are surrounded by valleys that in summer provide pasture for cows that deliver the milk for the Beaufort, the Abondance, the Raclette and the various Tomme de Savoies that enrich the local dishes. The other local drink owes much to St Gaultier’s fellow Benedictines, Chartreuse. In both Green and Yellow forms, the bottles are behind every bar, in every restaurant, in every shop. Here in the Alps they also have local Jenepé liqueurs which compete taste wise with Chartreuse and both the original and the local versions turn up in ice-cream and deserts. Lyon celebrates its affinity to Chartreuse like San Francisco does to Fernet, but for some reason our local wine shop on Felix Faure cannot seem to secure regular supplies. I am going to have a Chartreuse with a coffee one morning this week, just because it seems to be the done thing, and maybe I bring a bottle home.