“Salut, monoskieur!”

“Salut, monoskieur! Ça va?”

“Très bien! Et vous?”

“J’adore le monoski!”

Skiers and snowboarders alike seem to have a hate-hate relationship with button lifts. I understand why. Compared to the chair lift — in my mind the most sophisticated and comfortable way to get oneself up a mountainside, and certainly the most convenient as one doesn’t have to remove skis/boards and walk around like a stormtrooper or cyberman — the button lift is something of a brute.

As we headed up the chair lift to the top of Super-Morzine we began to feel a gentle breeze. Nothing particularly strong, and not continuous but more like breathing. Foehn! True to yesterday’s “joke” I took Sjek off-piste. Just a short way off Seraussaix which we could have walked, but it’s much easier to move in deep powder on skis than in shoes. A short distance from the Alpage de Seraussaix we planted our skis and Sjek prepared her kite.

Yesterday the conditions in Morzine, Les Gets and Avoriaz we awful: rain during the night had turned snow into slush, and packed snow into ice. The walk from the flat into town was treacherous, and the people I spoke to in the town had stories of their own small personal disasters from bad falls to car crashes. The pistes were carnage too: visibility was poor to non-existent thanks to the high humidity condensing on goggles and glasses; constantly falling snow, slush and rain made visibility even worse; leg-breaker snow jostled for prime positioning on the slopes with ice patches.

Exhausted from two hard days of monoskiing the muscle fatigue sets in: I can barely stand, and I lack the strength to stop and remain balanced!