So there I was trying to compose my blog opus on my New Year trip to Chamonix and I have a quick glance at the blog my trusty sidekick Poppy (the Odie to my Garfield) has written on her NY trip to Morzine and it turns out the cheeky scamp has stolen all my thoughts! Not literally of course, though that would be mighty impressive, and probably destined to be possible in the not too distant future, but based on the conversation we had on Monday morning about: 1) how bone-chillingly bleak the return to work was, 2) how bastard busy Cham (or in her case Morzine) was, and 3) how the best powder day of the week was wasted on all of us as we were too hungover from New Year’s Eve to get up for first lifts.

That said, when we did manage to get our sorry selves up to Flegere on Jan 1st (having queued for longer than would be pleasant without feeling like vomit was imminent) we were greeted with blue skies, blazing sunshine and a beautiful mountain, that was predictably heavily tracked out. We headed up the Index and the Floria drag lift, the fresh mountain air melting away any latent feelings of nausea, and got at least 10 magical powder turns in before hitting tracks. Though in truth even the tracked stuff was fresh and fluffy and fun to ride. And we’d had some nice fresh the day before, albeit in zero visibility, but as Johnny Utah said in Point Break “Vision is highly overrated” anyway.

All in all an amazing week was had and Chamonix is still my favourite place on the planet, in spite of the insane crowds (no sign of credit crunch here), lack of off-piste at the start of the week (the pesky Foehn wind had seen to that) and plummeting pound (a pint of beer at Brevent cost £9, though vodka in a hip flask student-style sorted us in the evenings. And the whole like for like made the maths easier too eh).

Cheers to Spike for the pix, Le Vert crew for the hospitality and for NYE leverthotel.com and the Cham Tourist Office for doing what they do www.chamonix.com