J2Ski Holiday 2014

Wow. What a lengthy report and I bet you missed loads out too!

Seems like you take everything in your stride, including terrorist issues in Paris.
Well done Ally.

Here are a few of Piste Paul's photos. He and his son took loads, but I have to check whether people mind me posting up their photos before I put them up.

Sportinia, where the restaurants and ski school etc. are. This is the Triplex - the place which accidentally stole one of my inner gloves because I had it on the table outside and it vanished. I think they must have wrapped it up inside one of their paper plates and thrown it away :(

You can see how little snow there was (on Tuesday), although the pisteurs had clearly been working very hard to get some pistes open even though the conditions were so bad!

This is Piste Paul's photo of the covered travellator at the top of Sansicario, taken on the Tuesday. It's a very windy spot just here which is why I suppose they very kindly put it there for us! :)
It's next to the gondola that goes up and down to Sestriere.

I'm not too sure, because we never got there owing to the lack of snow, links being closed, and the wind, but I think you're looking across to Monti del la Luna and Montgenevre.

Piste Paul's photo of the kids ski school lesson in Sauze, taken on Saturday. You can see there's a lot more snow around, and the conditions were great for ski-ing! :)

I remember Sportinia from 1973! The lift up to the area from Sauze itself was peculiar combination of half-chairlift, half-T-bar. There was no village level snow at Easter so you had to wait for the chairs to come around as the T-bar bit wasn't able to function. Very odd! They also had this peculiar bucket lift thing in the Moncrons area, which I think is now closed down!

Piste Paul's photo of his son by the dolphin pool on Monday.

I think this is really red 2000 but as everyone said before we went there, the piste map is pretty much a waste of time and in any case in Sauze during the first couple of days most of the area was closed so one just went up a lift and skied down a choice of about 3 runs and there was no way you could get lost or need a piste map!

Piste Paul's photo of the bottom of the Clotes piste, taken on Saturday. When we arrived it was only mud below that line where you can see people standing in a row, which is the route to the chairlift.
They seem to use the area between this line and the road as a nursery slope during the day, and it has a travelator at the side.

It was great when it snowed because we could ski down to the road and only have a very short walk back to the hotel :)

And to get to the chairlift from the hotel we could either walk up the road or take the travelator and ski across to it.

Great report Ally; hope next year's trip is as enjoyable as the last two I have been on under your auspices.