A short walk in the snow

On the path down to La Rosiere - that's me (lower
down) and Sam. Lucy is the photographer.

There has not been a huge amount of snow in the Tarentaise valley so far this year, but this past week has seen a couple of snowy days and, today, it was snowing quite hard and steadily. It wasn’t too cold at our altitude, but it was sticking and building up. In the ski resorts 500 metres higher, this would be a great day for them – give the snow cannons a bit of a rest.

We were not that sure we’d get down to Bourg by car (well, we’d get down after a fashion, but not dead sure of getting back up again).

We decided that we’d walk down to Bourg and do a few jobs – get some money, put stamps on postcards, get some bread ... it was more to get out for some fresh air than anything else. I suggested we walk down into La Rosiere, so Sam, Lucy and I set off. The snow was quite deep, but not frozen so hard that you couldn’t get a heel dug in on the way down. Further down the path, it was actually quite wet and boggy and that was slippery. We would have found those snowshoes quite useful. I’d borrowed Margaret’s cagoule, so I was waterproofed against sleet. We were soon down in Bourg and soon completed the few jobs.

I really liked the machine in the post office for buying stamps. You tell the machine where the package or letter is going, you weigh it and the machine prints out a post credit. Stick it on, stick it in the postbox - simples!

Sam thought the La Rosiere route might be a bit slippery going back up so we decided to walk up through the town, join the Villaret road and walk up the hairpins. It was sleeting thickly in the town, but it turned back to snow as we gained height. It was actually a fairly quick walk and a couple of cars passed us making careful progress.

On the way up the hairpins, we met the snowplough coming back down and dumping snow in piles at the outer edge of the bends. It’s an impressive machine, a four-wheel drive tractor with massive wheels shod with thick chains. It makes a heck of a din (as I found out at 5am a few days ago). We might have been swept up and dumped with the snow, but the driver had seen us and pulled across so we could walk by. I think if I was in Villaret for a year, I’d get very good at walking up steep hills!