Is it cold enough yet?
The coldest day of the holiday began with another leisurely breakfast, before braving the Alpine snow, splitting off immediately so that I could head back to the Meeting Point to join Martin (2) ready for my lesson.
I took a quick detour back via the button lift to get a bit of practice again, but was very quickly shown up by the Kinder who were parallel skiing on seemingly their second day!
Back with Martin, and the new starters, our group initially only had 3 "survivors" from day one, but this soon ballooned to 12 with new additions, until Martin 3 (the German), got his wish of moving up a group, and someone else decided they wanted to ski in the lower group with their friend, so off we set a new group of 10.
Today we got a bit more tuition from the off, with a little more correction than yesterday's "You must do better, just do it better yah?". We did another gentle forest run as a warm up, then headed right to the top of the St Anton bit, where the temperature read -22C and there was a fierce wind blowing. Fortunately, the mixture of bamboo face and head masks, and vintage body suit kept me toasty, although I think we were all a bit relieved when Martin said that it was too cold for this 82 year old bones. Yes, 82, Martin is 82, and makes it look effortless!
We did some more blue runs, and he threw in few red runs to mix it up, showing us the more gentle bits of the route that were within our skill range. We even joined a black run for part of its course, and enjoyed the slightly steeper more challenging Skiing.
Pete, Tim and Colin got the gondola up to the top from the off, and did some nice blue runs back down the St Anton, before heading off again to ski over to St Christopher, the village along the valley from St Anton, down some nice wide pistes.
After my lunch, back in Griabli, our group headed up the same gondola, and traced Pete, Colin and Tim's trail down to St Christopher, where we did a bit more technical tuition and practice on some empty blue slopes which made it easier than worrying a careering snowboarded was about to take you out!
It took most of the afternoon to get back from St Christopher, up a few button lifts chased by some young children who were obviously much better than we were!
Back in St Anton, and Pete was waiting at the bottom of the hill for my ski group to arrive, and was suitably impressed at my progress as we descended back to the gondola. We decided to make the most of the last hour of sun, and we went back up, and this time I had to match Pete's leisurely pace down a red run, while I was going at my "That's quite fast enough thank you... speed". Undamaged, we ski-in'd back into Haus Martin Tschol, to meet Colin and Tim for a quiet chill before dinner.
Pete and I chilled in the house, while Tim and Colin went for provisions after a trip to the sauna in the house. They arrived back, and we headed immediately out to the town on the free bus in search of a meal. This landed us at the bus station a few minutes later, and we wandered down to a lovely Spanish tapas bar called Bodega. Bodega offered a lovely selection of wines and tapas, and our waitress had worked in the kitchen previously so knew all the ingredients and allergens, meaning the 4 of us could share nearly all the options between us!
It was a lovely meal, and we wandered back out into the minus 12C weather in search of further beer to round off the night, finding an underground sports bar, recognising a punter from out trip to Krazy Kanguruh last night, knowing we'd also found the right sort of place!
Satiated, we braved the (probably) minus 14C temps back to the bus stop, not fancying a 45 minute wait for the bus back, and so taking a taxi back to home. A home beer, with ready salted crisps or cup of tea, all went down well before heading off to bed for a good nights sleep before heading out as a group of four tomorrow!
