Thick Ear

 A great days skiing at Guzet with Ian today. I felt a bit rusty at first and the snow was very compact and a little icy so you needed to be on yours edges. We soon headed over to Freychet and after a couple of runs on the right-hand side we switched to the left and found some lovely steep skiing hors piste on the steepest part of the slope. I was skiing well and about three fifths of the way down decided to stop. I managed but just lost my balance and skidded onto my bum...and I was off, sliding down the slope! It was close to forty degrees and icy and there was no way to stop. I tried self arrest with my pole, tried turning from skis first to head first but couldn't stop, I knew there was a safe run-out but I was heading for the piste to our right and at top velocity managed to narrowly miss a piste marker pole (1/2" diameter rod) except for my ear which smacked it hard. Eventually stopped about 200m lower down a little shaken but otherwise fine. Only yesterday I was reading about slopes above 35 degrees being "no fall terrain" when skiing on Wildsnow as it's impossible to stop if it's icy.

 The slide

My big red swollen ear.

Close up of my thick ear which feels like a lump of steak grafted onto my head.

It's half term at the moment in this part of France, so Guzet was heaving and it took a couple of hours to get our lunch and the queues at the lifts were long and slow, but today was about soaking up the sun (which is forecast to shine here for the next 10 - 14 days) and chewing the fat with my old friend Ian.