My holiday in Courchevel 1550

Hi everyone,
I really don't know what happened to my toe. It is as much a mystery to me as everyone else. But I did have some pretty spectacular falls and goodness knows how much pressure they put on my foot, even through my boot.

I'm pretty sure I didn't have an infection in it when I was ski-ing, because my daughter's cousin who was ski-ing with us is actually a staff nurse on the surgical wing of our local hospital, and she had a careful look at it and said something like she thought it was physical trauma rather than an infection.

And I showed it to the vet yesterday, and he didn't think it looked infected either. But last night it started hurting again, and by today it looked quite red and swollen and nasty. It was especially painful because of course all the pressure gets trapped under the nail. Maybe some dirt got into it from my wellies when I was wearing them yesterday out with the cattle. And I wouldn't be at all suprised if I had some rough or broken skin somewhere on my toe. My feet did get all hot and sweaty when I was ski-ing (even though I had my nice new expensive socks on) and that's pretty bad for feet.

Broom - what sort of holiday are you looking for? If you decide on your priorities first it is much easier to pick the right resort - like - good nightlife, no drag lifts, ski-in and out, short transfers etc. :D

Ally

I think we should see a pic of your broken big toe Ally :D

bandit wrote:I think we should see a pic of your broken big toe Ally :D

I'm afraid it's all wrapped up in a big bandage at the moment, Bandit, so there's nothing much to see. I'm supposed to go back to the GP on Friday for them to have a look at it, but presumably they'll just re-bandage it.

Sorry to disappoint you :wink:

Ally

Sounds like struggling to control your ski could very well be something as basic as boot fit. The more technical the skiing, the more important a well fitted boot is.

Edit: glad you had a good holiday despite the problems and injuries.

AllyG wrote:

bandit wrote:I think we should see a pic of your broken big toe Ally :D

I'm afraid it's all wrapped up in a big bandage at the moment, Bandit, so there's nothing much to see. I'm supposed to go back to the GP on Friday for them to have a look at it, but presumably they'll just re-bandage it.

Sorry to disappoint you :wink:

Ally

Well can we see a copy of the x ray :lol:

Sorry to hear about your toe Ally - hope it gets better soon and is not making you too immobile. Glad you enjoyed the holiday although I have to agree with others that ESF would never be my first choice. My son trained with New Gen and they really do take care of their customers. There are many other English speaking schools out there now too, Magic, Snowscool, Parallel Lines. I have lots of French friends and can converse quite well but found (most) of them quite reticent in lessons, took it all too seriously, revered the ESF instructors whether they were crap or not and took opportunities to slag off the English in their native language with them. In Chamonix we swopped to Evolution 2 who were much better. I have not had lessons with a school for a long time preferring to potter around where I want. As an early bird I often get up on the first lift and ski on my own for a couple of hours which I find invigorating and meet up with the others later. My son tries to teach me how to improve but I soon get bored with all the drills and end up pleading to be left to ski down in my own fashion plus at my age I think I'm a lost cause. )

ParalyticSkiCrazie wrote:Sorry to hear about your toe Ally - hope it gets better soon and is not making you too immobile. Glad you enjoyed the holiday although I have to agree with others that ESF would never be my first choice. My son trained with New Gen and they really do take care of their customers. There are many other English speaking schools out there now too, Magic, Snowscool, Parallel Lines. I have lots of French friends and can converse quite well but found (most) of them quite reticent in lessons, took it all too seriously, revered the ESF instructors whether they were crap or not and took opportunities to slag off the English in their native language with them. In Chamonix we swopped to Evolution 2 who were much better. I have not had lessons with a school for a long time preferring to potter around where I want. As an early bird I often get up on the first lift and ski on my own for a couple of hours which I find invigorating and meet up with the others later. My son tries to teach me how to improve but I soon get bored with all the drills and end up pleading to be left to ski down in my own fashion plus at my age I think I'm a lost cause. )

Hi PSC,
I did think about trying one of the other schools before we got out there. However, the ones I thought looked okay were incredibly expensive, much more so than the esf. Also, last year we skied with Prosneige at Val Thorens and really they were just about as bad as esf. I had an awful Prosneige instructor in the morning (with an unbelievably badly balanced group) and a fantastic one in the afternoon with a really well balanced class. My daughter, however, had a good time in the Prosneige teenage lessons both morning and afternoon - going over jumps, off piste etc.

And as for getting on with the French people in the classes - I think we all got on very well. Our morning class was supposed to be an English class, but as I said they didn't have enough people to make up the different classes, so they combined the slalom and the off piste and put 3 French people in our class - to make 8 originally in the group. However, the worst skier decided she didn't like being bottom, and left to join a lower group, leaving me as the worst skier (never a comfortable position to be in).

There were two charming French teenagers in our English group, brother and sister, aged 16 and 18, who were really nice to us, and we had lots of interesting discussions on the chair lifts, comparing where they went to school and what their parents did etc. with our own lives. They could speak some English and my daughter and I have a fair bit of French, especially when we're together, because I'm better at French grammar and she's better at understanding French conversation.

And we had quite a few laughs as well. Like, for example, I told the boy (in French) that I thought he was the best skier in the group (which he definitely was) but that I was the worst, and he tried to say something in English which to me sounded like 'Av Raj' and I couldn't understand what he meant so I asked him to say it in French and he said 'moyen' (medium) and it took me ages to realise that what he was saying was that I was 'average' just because of the accent - and we had a good laugh about whether my French was better than his English (and it was very kind of him to say that my ski-ing was average for the group).

I was exceptionally touched when they asked me to 'tutoyer' them (i.e. use the familiar 'tu' form) because although they were teenagers they were adults really and I was being very careful not to offend anyone.

My afternoon French ski instructor was really great. He didn't mind at all that I was English and in his French ski class. And neither did the others in the group. There was a Belgian lady a few years younger than me, who could actually speak quite a lot of English (far more than my French) but we stuck to French as much as we could (for one thing the instructor couldn't speak any English so it would have been very rude if we'd gone into English), and then the 2 teenage French girls, cousins, spoke French to me, and it was about 4 days before I discovered that they could in fact speak perfect English but they wanted me to continue speaking in French to them.

I had a really lovely time speaking French with my afternoon instructor and it turned out that he likes just the same awful sort of jokes as me! So, he was continually teasing me about how we were going to go down some really dreadful looking bit of off piste, and I was saying things (in my limited French) like I was going to go and phone my husband to bring his tractor up here and flatten 'les bosses' (all the moguls) so that there wouldn't be any more moguls left to ski in Courchevel (because they were causing me so much trouble). And at one point we were in the chair lift discussing my problem with moguls and another French esf instructor sitting with us joined in and said his bag was full of alcohol and if I drank all that I'd be able to ski the moguls no problem!

And at the end of the week my afternoon instructor gave me a big hug and a kiss. He is a really nice person.

Pablo,
I'd like to think my problem with moguls was to do with my boots, but I've had several different pairs of boots in all the resorts we've been in, and the problem has persisted :cry:

Also, my daughter has the same hired boots and she has absolutely no problem with moguls at all.

Plus, I have actually improved with my foot turning action. In fact, it was a very lucky thing I'd spent the whole previous afternoon practising in moguls because I discovered that one needs just the same foot action to turn in powder.

Brooksy - I'd quite like to see a copy of the X-ray as well. However, as long as my toe gets better I don't suppose it matters whether it was a break or not. It feels pretty good this morning, but I haven't tried walking on it yet.

And whoever it was who wanted to know about the luge run (sorry I forgot about it) - we didn't go on it but it is apparently pretty good. It goes all the way down from 1850 to 1550 so I suppose it's a mile or a mile and a half long, and it crosses the piste at one point. You don't have to pay to use it but you have to buy/bring/hire a plastic sledge. People were using it during the day and especially in the evening. I think the gondola kept running until about 7 p.m. so that people could use the toboggan run. We could hear the screams (of delight) from the people using it because it ran pretty much past our apartment.

Ally

...because they are all rental buckets I'd bet.