Victor Saunders's Weblog: 30 November 2005 Chamonix

They say that every country has it's own cobbler's last. Each nation seems to have it's own shape of foot, or at least an idea of what it's national foot should be like. I do not know if that is true, but in my experience it could be. Take today for instance.

The ski lifts have not yet opened in this valley, but we have a thin crusty under-layer and four to six inches of soft powder on top at 1000m. So, although allergic to unnecessary exercise (it gives me asthma) it seemed like a good idea to skin up the Kandahar piste in les Houches.

At first it felt strange to be back in the stiff Pebax shells. Over the summer I had forgotten just how stiff ski boots are. You have to force your feet, squeezing them like trying to get toothpaste back in the tube, on a cold day. You push until your once fresh, loose boned Anglo feet have been remolded in the foot-coffins devised by some Latin sadist from Milan. The designers have obviously been inspired by those iron maiden boxes you see in museums of torture. I have always said that the Tower of London has a lot to answer for. And my boots have also been imbued with some kind of supernatural power, a bit like my climbing harness. The harness, well it has this particular power... When you first reach for it you have no desire to go to the bath room, in fact, you have just been. So, you do up the legs, buckle the belt, rack up the gear and just as you finish, an overwhelming and surprisingly urgent need to wee wells up from no-where. It is one of life's great mysteries. My ski boots have a similar power. It is only when you have fought and won the battle to squeeze your now boneless feet into them and when you have struggled to close the buckles that you realize the hat and gloves are still upstairs in the bed room.

The skins; now they have been stuck together since april, but in any case they are designed to provided all the exercise you need just separating them. You don't really need to actually go out and ski. Separate your skins five times a day and you will will develop from a 95 pound weakling into a potential challenger for California's governorship.

My friends tell me how calming and meditative ski touring is. It is therapeutic. Well, all I can say is that it needs to be after all that stuff with the equipment.

I put on the skis in our garden, and set forth. The piste begins the other side of the garden fence. See picture:

The snow cannons had built up twenty foot high dunes of icy snow. The only tracks in the snow were animal tracks. Dogs, maybe foxes, a cat, some mousy thing and chamois or deer. In three weeks time the piste will be as crowded as a Caribbean beach. But today I was alone.

At my school they made us do an early morning run every day. Early means before breakfast. I used to hate that, but somehow an early morning ski climb seems different. In fact it was great. It was wonderful, and it really was therapeutic. . By the time I got back I had completely forgotten how much I hate ski equipment, how my forearms had ached with the lactic acid of separating the skins and how my feet had been tortured into new and foreign shapes. In fact it had been such a relaxing outing, that as I ate breakfast I thought I might like to do it again tomorrow.

30 November 2005 Chamonix

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