Paradiski - Les Arcs

My recent snowboarding vacation took place in the southeast corner of France, the Peisey-Vallandry ski area of the French Alps. I took the train from Paris on a 5 hour trip to the closest town, passing through Albertville on the way.  Albertville, for those who don't remember, was the host city the 1992 winter olympics.  Many of the events took place outside of Albertville and I was passing through this area in the train it was easy to see why.  There were many towns located not far from each other to access as much of the Alps as possible.  As it turns out the resorts I was staying at, Les Arcs, was a spot used for some of the skiing during those olympics.  On a side note, Canada collected only 7 medals (2 gold) that year compared to 26 medals in 2010 including 14 gold.  I had the absolute pleasure of travelling to Vancouver last year and enjoying a part of the olympics with great friends but that's a whole other story involving the Molson Canadian Hockey House, multiple Team Canada hockey jerseys, twizzelators, taquitos, getting filmed on national television while belting the Canadian anthem and strolling the Vancouver streets in costumes like this....

ya, it's a one-piece

Like I said, it's a whole other story but I'll get back to my vacation.  The resort I was going to be boarding at had an elevation of 2000m which turned out to be key as much of the snow on the lower resorts had melted and the ground could be seen.  The weather was wonderful, possibly a little too warm but since I'm barely a better boarder than some one of those cocky 7 year olds whipping by me on the hill, I didn't need pristine conditions.  There was a fair bit of fresh snow that fell during the week so all-in-all I had nothing to complain about. 

Ski trips, no matter the age, tend to involve a fair bit of drinking and since I was meeting up with 5 guys from the UK it's safe to say this trip went beyond that.  It helped (or didn't help) that we were staying at a resort that had All-you-can-drink wine and $1 beers.  The quality was terrible but you couldn't beat the price.  The next most reasonable beer was $8 at other establishments so we usually stuck near home for sociables, copious amounts of drinking games including one called 'depth charge'.  If you don't know it you don't want to.  The loser of each game had to finish their drinks, of course, but there were added punishments such as having to wear a horse head to the bar or during dinner.  Don't ask me why someone decided to bring a horse head on the trip.  This was a popular punishment until it caused a little kid to freak out seeing a horse's head on a human body. That will most likely stick with him  for life, I know my traumatic horse story did.  

Due to the effectiveness of the drinking games, the guys from the UK were in top form most of the trip.  This got us into a few interesting situations of almost getting run over by a snow plow, having a pushing match with police officers in the elevator, punching our chalet host, and other scenarios I have chosen to censor. In each of these situations I was the typical Canadian peacemaker trying to keep the Brits under control.  It Seemed I could handle my alcohol a bit better than they could.  Nevertheless, these antics made us quite popular with the local ski staff and wanted to join our party. 

One night, my buddy and I were the only ones that could make it out.  The rest of the crew had too difficult of a time staying awake for dinner and keeping dinner down so we went out for a few beers, a quiet night.  We ran into a couple from Israel and chatted with them for a little while, nice people.  They were staying at the club med resort and they were telling us that it was a party every night with lots of single Belgian girls.  Being part Belgian I thought it was my duty to meet with some people with my heritage so my buddy and I made a plan to go to club med.  The couple told us it's actually quite difficult to get in since the whole idea with club med is it's a package deal and since everything is included the only one's allowed in the resort are the guests who have properly paid for the services.  Also, the couple told us not to go that night since it was getting late and they would be closing down the bar in half hour or so.  At that point, we had Belgium on the mind, so we ignored that last statement and made our plan to infiltrate club med.  My friend, being British, wanted to go with a 007 tactic and I was going with the Mission Impossible strategy but I think our styles clashed as we had three failed attempts at finding a secret entry and decided just to walk in the front door and see what happens.  The security staff at club med should be used as secret service agents since they were after us right away looking for identification, reasons for being there, where we were staying, etc. and forced us to leave as quickly as possible.  As we were told, the bar was closed anyways so our plan was doomed to fail.  A boycott on club med was put into effect after that. 

Overall, It was not a relaxing vacation but definitely worthwhile.

View from the Summit