Winter's nearly here

Les Marades, Arinsal - Yesterday

Well, I guess summer is finally over, although I've had some pretty good days rock climbing in shorts and T-Shirt as recently as a week ago. Winter is fast approaching, as you can see from the photos above taken whilst ski touring yesterday (well skinning up the closed pistes which is sort of like ski touring). Over the next month or so ski resorts around the northern hemisphere will be opening - some in November to cater for the early bird skiers, others waiting until December giving them more time to get the pistes in good condition. Opening early is good publicity for a resort, but doesn't necessarily mean they have better snow than their neighbours. It is also true that resorts opening early may well have quite a limited portion of the ski area open.

Having said all that, there is something really satisfying about skiing up to a month before most people even consider taking their holiday. The resorts are quiet apart from the arriving seasonal staff, and the pistes that are open will probably be well prepared and empty. Squeezing in a ski weekend in November is not that dificult with budget flights and a hire car - renting a car is recommended though as it can be harder to find transfers  at this time of year. A hire car also gives you more flexibility to drive in search of the best snow. If you work Monday to Friday you will probably need to take some time off on the Friday or Monday, but it will be worth it for the envious looks of your colleagues when you get back from the slopes.

Don't be worried if you arrive in the resort and there is no snow on the ground. The best skiing will usually be higher up, and the natural snow will be backed up with snow making. Unless you are very lucky you probably will not be skiing much back country and powder, so just enjoy the empty pistes and the privilege of being amongst the first people on the slopes this year.

End of the Season

Well, the ski season is drawing to a close here in Andorra, with some resorts closing tomorrow and others a week later. As always there is plenty of snow, particularly on the higher slopes. Unusually though, the resorts have remained busy right up until the end of the season. Most years April is quiet in Arinsal and the rest of Andorra, and we get to have a few weeks enjoying snow and the sun before closing day. This year though I have been teaching classes until today, and have worked far more hours than ever before in April. The rest of the season was a little quieter than previous year, which was not unexpected due to the economic situation. It seems a lot of people who had held off booking a ski holiday decided at the last minute to go anyway.

We also had a lot of visitors recently who were on their second trip of the season to Arinsal. Some people actually commented that two weeks here cost the same as one in the Alps, It seems that in some ways the recession has helped us to extend our working season as people look for a cheaper end of season option.

Just to sign off, here is a photo of the view from our balcony - sunshine and snowy mountains...

Arinsal Closing Weekend Last Month

I am posting another picture from the last weekend in Arinsal, just to illustrate how much snow there is at the end of the season. This was the 12th April on the afternoon after the Ski School Race. Three of us had just skied the chute in the middle of the cliff band, which is pretty much the only couloir in the Arinsal ski area and had been on my list to do for a while.

I would have posted it sooner, but the trip to Chamonix for the second half of April got in the way of posting for a while, and by then I had plenty of ski touring pictures to post as well. Hopefully this will illustrate the point I have made before, that contrary to popular opinion the end of season is still a great time to go skiing.

Race photos

As promised, here are a couple of photos of the ski school race courtesy of Gustavo and Fotoski. They are both of the last gate on the course. I would have liked one from further up to analyse my skiing a bit more - all I can say here is that my hands are a bit too low to be aerodynamic and my feet could perhaps be a touch wider. I can't say much about the snowboard photo either, except I'm glad I survived the race on one.

Ski School Instructors Race

Much to everyone's surprise, including mine, I came third in the race today. I have had lots of comments all afternoon along the lines of "I didn't know you could ski properly" and "it's about time the English learnt how to ski". Obviously all the money spent training in the summer and autumn has paid off to some extent. This is a short post since I've been celebrating all afternoon at the ski school barbecue, and plan to continue shortly. I'll try and get hold of some photos of the race to post tomorrow.

The Best Apres Ski Drink

After a hard day on the slopes, it is a great feeling to hit the bars still in ski gear for a spot of apres-ski. The first drink after skiing is always the best one you will taste, and the second is not far behind.

On a sunny day most people will probably go for a cold beer or maybe a cider. On a cold snowy day, or damp one, it is hard to beat a hot wine. Known as gluhwein in German speaking areas, vin chaud in France, and vino caliente (a bit of a mouthful I know) here - the recipe is always similar. Wine, herbs, fruit, cloves, maybe a dash of brandy or other spirits mixed and heated. Actually this post was inspired by (and is a tribute to) the vino caliente pictured above. It was made by Pablo, a barman at Ciscos here in Arinsal, and as you can see he put a great deal of effort into the presentation. So much so that I had to take the photo. I was quite reluctant to drink it at all, as I didn't want to spoil the artistry, but managed to force myself in the end.

End of Season Snow

We have just over two weeks here until the end of the season and just like last year the snow is pouring out of the sky. Again March is proving the snowiest part of the winter (well spring now) and the next two weeks are again expected to be quiet. This week is actually surprisingly busy, due to an early Easter, but from Saturday until close the slopes will probably be deserted. I can never understand why more people don not ski in April. The slopes are quiet, the snow is usually good and the weather is warmer in between snow storms. People tend to assume I think that the resort closes when the snow melts, so the last couple of weeks before close day they might expect the snow cover to be patchy. In fact this resort closes in mid-April because there are not enough visitors by then to make it viable to open longer. Apparently people go to the beach instead - which is another thing I have never understood; why go to a beach when you could ski instead?

There are a string of other reasons why the end of season is a good time to ski. I think I mentioned a few this time last year. Some examples are end of season sales in the shops, cheap packages and accommodation and staff who know their jobs well after a few months in post (unlike at the start of the season where many staff are new).

With all this snow I think another post on how to ski powder could be in order, as a follow up to the last powder ski lesson I posted back in January.

Winter Snow Arrives

We are currently having what looks set to be the biggest snowfall of the season so far. Although the snow up until now has been far better than last winter, there was still less early season than last year. Just like last year the big snow has waited until March to arrive.

This is a fairly common pattern - I remember several winters over the last decade or snow where the snow has arrived late, but been excellent at the end of the season. This is one of the reasons I always suggest a later trip to people - March rather than January.

Here we are all grinning of course. I'm sitting in the flat with the log fire blazing, watching the weather through the window. On Sunday I was sat outside a mountain restaurant in a T-shirt at 4pm, sipping a beer in the sunshine. Today I had my big ski school jacket plus fleeces and thermals and I was still chilly. With the snow, wind, cold and mist it finally felt like winter had arrived. We see it again and again, but it still amazes me how things can change in the mountains.

Carnival (looking silly)

I'll try and take the promised look at ski school race tactics tomorrow, but for now here is a photo courtesy of Fotoski Arinsal from the Carnival day. This is me skiing in a borrowed dinner jacket for the day, and regretting the lack of thermals underneath. It's a pity the hat ruins the effect, and can you tell how many years it has been since I tied a bow tie?

We will put a few pictures of other instructors dressed up on the Arinsal-Andorra website over the next couple of days.

Safe Skiing

After seeing a spate of accidents on the mountain recently, including my own mishap a couple of weeks ago, I decided to write something on ski safety. Our ski school building (above) has been covered in protective orange padding since last week to protect it from the skiers hurling themselves into it's walls. Actually it was put up after a young girl crashed into the wall and was lucky to escape with a broken wrist. Hopefully now anyone skiing into the building will escape serious injury.

That collision was a one off, but out of control skiers are all too common. Whilst losing control occasionally when learning to ski is normal, putting oneself in a position where losing control could hurt somebody is reckless. Time and again I see people hurtling down the mountain without the slightest semblance of control, and then going back up to do the same thing. I have some sympathy for the 'can do' attitude, but when transferred to skiing runs way beyond your ability it is likely to be somebody else that gets injured when you knock them out of the way. The most frustrating aspect of this is when the same people continuously fly down out of control, not caring who they crash into, and getting beligerant when anyone challenges them and points out how dangerous their behaviour is to other slope users.

I have no objection to people pushing their own limits and taking a risk they have judged and accepted. However when bystanders are put at risk it is a different issue. Perhaps the biggest risk as a ski instructor is being crashed into by other skiers or snowboarders. It has happened to a number of my colleagues, some of whom have lost significant amounts of work and income as a result. All because someone is too arrogant or selfish to think about the consequences of their actions.

The Friday Presentation

The second and busiest (until February) week of the season has finished and it has flown by. I had two really nice groups to teach - one beginners, one intermediates - plus a few private lessons. In fact I haven't skied outside of teaching time all week. It has been really nice to see people making progress and enjoying themselves in the sun and snow. This really is a great job.

We generally finish the week with a presentation of certificates and a medal. Some instructors do this on the slopes immediately after skiing, but others - myself included - prefer to do it in a bar in the evening. I find this makes for a better atmosphere and is a fun way to finish the week of ski school. The problem this week was in having two adult groups. I arranged to meet one at six and one at eight, which seemed reasonable. However the six o'clock group all insisted on buying me drinks and doing their best to get me drunk and disorderly so that by eight, when I should have been returning to the bar with the second batch of certificates, I was still there and wobbling slightly. The second group also decided it was their duty to get me as drunk as possible, so that when it came to their presentation I was not quite as lucid as I should have been. It often gets to this point on a Friday where the instructor is doing their best to stay sober, while the group is doing their best to skupper this plan.

So, to recap - I had no intention of getting drunk on Friday night, it is not my fault I was drunk, I was forced into it and I'm sticking to that story. The photo is from one of my previous presentations by the way - I don't have any from Friday.

Don't let your water bottle freeze

Here are a couple of photos of my water bottle that I took to Tignes. I have posted them to demonstrate what happens when you leave a full bottle of water in the car overnight and the temperature drops to -20 degrees centigrade. In the close up, you can just see the ice coming out through the crack. This is a metal Sigg bottle by the way - the sort I thought was virtually indestructible.





Back in Arinsal, conditions on the mountain are already better than most of last season. We have been skiing powder all day, and despite a bit of wind last night, most of the snow has stuck and we seem to have a pretty good base for the time of year.

Snow, snow, snow!

Just a quick post as it is chucking it down with snow so I am heading out to the pub to plan tomorrow's skiing and then getting an early night. We had six inches of fresh snow in the village last night and it has carried on all day. I was itching to get out there, but I had my second immigration medical down in Andorra La Vella, which ate up the middle of the day. So I'm really looking forward to getting up there manana.

For the last week I have endured gloating messages from friends in France and Switzerland, so now finally it is our turn. Not that I'm at all excited about the first big snow of the season.

Stolen Ski Gear

As I mentioned in my post yesterday I am back in Arinsal and following the paper chase of getting a work permit. There is not a lot of interest to be written about that, so I will use the next few posts to write a bit more about my fortnight in Tignes race training. I keep hearing reports about how much snow there is there now, and how they have had to cancel the training and go skiing powder. How my heart bleeds for them...

Anyway, I thought I would share my thoughts on security in the mountains. Not in the European sense of mountain safety, but in the sense of avoiding having your gear stolen. This is prompted by the fact that I had a rucksack stolen last week, containing my trainers, sunglasses, spare clothes and lunch. The same day, I know of at least one person who had his skis stolen. Unfortunately the setup of most ski resorts makes things far too easy for the dishonest amongst us (this is where I'm ready to type a string of expletives, but I'm trying to keep the blog clean so I'll grit my teeth and continue). Everybody who goes up the mountain has at least one valuable item with them - a pair of skis - and most people will stop to eat or drink in a mountain restaurant at some point. Since mountain restaurants do not generally allow skis inside, large numbers of skis are left leaning against the wallsoutside, just waiting for some nasty so-and-so to walk off with them.

So, what can we do - the simplest way to make life a little more difficult for the thieves is simply to split pairs of skis. This takes a second to do but hardly anybody does it. Just swap one ski with a friend and put the two odd pairs in different racks. The would be thief then has to hunt for two pairs before they can steal one, and will most likely not bother. If everybody split their skis it would be a lot harder for the bad people (running out of polite synonyms now) to get away with anything. This doesn't help the snowboarders much - probably the best thing there is to invest in a cable lock and run it through the bindings. And if you are on a training course or camp and have to leave a bag somewhere (like me), the top of the lane or the bottom of the park might be a better place than the restaurant as more people from your group will be passing it.

So, back to Arinsal where tonight El Cau, a bar in the village, are having their second opening party for the season. The reason I mention this is that they have been advertising it on RTVA, the Andorran TV channel, all yesterday and today. It is not often that I get to go to a party advertised on national TV - never in England, but this is Andorra. I will leave you with a photo of the bar in question one (beach) party night last year.

I'm Back

Well, after three weeks of wi-fi hotspots I now have a steady internet connection again. In a remarkable example of Andorran efficiency, I ordered a phone and ADSL connection on Wednesday morning and had it switched on by Thursday afternoon. I even had a phone call from the phone company today, just to ask if everything was working. If only BT could match that when I'm back in England.

I am about half way through the immigration process here now - I have visited EFPEM (the governing body for all sports and mountain instructors here) twice, the ski school, the Vallnord office, immigration (twice) and the hospital for a blood test and chest X-ray. I just have two more trips to imigration now, once to see a doctor and once to hopefully pick up my green card. So it is all pretty straightforward really. The non-EU residents working here have even more hoops to jump through.

I am still lacking a USB lead for my phone, so no new photos until I can get one sent over. In the meantime here is an picture of the bar where I have been spending most of my evenings recently, since it is about 30 seconds' walk from my front door. There is not much to see here today anyway - it is grey and rainy, but hopefully snowing higher up. The slopes are crowded as only a few runs have opened so far and it is a bank holiday weekend in Spain. However things are better than this time last year, and snow is forecast so things should be looking good by the Christmas holidays.

The Skiing Postmen

I have just been researching an article on the history of skiing in Andorra for the Arinsal-Andorra website and I made the surprising discovery that the first skiers in the principality were neither tourists, nor ancient hunter gatherers as in other parts of the world. In fact, the first skier in Andorra was a Soldeu postman by the name of Miquel Farré.

Miquel and his colleagues originally used snowshoes to make their deliveries during the winter months. Once a week, he collected some mail from the French village of Porto, where the local inhabitants used long pieces of wood to travel over the snow. One day during the winter of 1924, Miquel returned to Soldeu on a pair of these contraptions. His collegues were duly impressed and adopted the idea. The Andorra Ski Club was founded in 1932 and the rest is history.

The only downside to this research is the discovery that Soldeu, and not Arinsal, was the birthplace of Andorran skiing. Oh well, we can't have everything.

Welcome to the Winter Wonderings Blog

Well, winter has almost finished so it might not seem like the best time to start a brand new blog about winter sports and winter life. However the Alps and the Pyrenees have both had what seems like a winter's worth of snow in the space of a couple of weeks, and that's after a season of blue skies and sunshine. And when winter does finally come to a close here, it's only a couple of months until the southern hemisphere winter kicks off. You've got a wide choice of resorts and ski fields across Australasia and South America, the fun is never over.



So, since it's my first post I'd better introduce myself; I am a ski instructor based in Arinsal, Andorra for the (Northern hemisphere) winter and planning to head south to New Zealand for the other winter. I am reaching the end of my second season here (fourth as an instructor, sixth altogether). The nickname Swedish Jan was coined last year when a couple of instructors decided to see how many people they could convice I was from Sweden. For the record, I was born in Manchester, England. Anyone wanting to know more can check out my website at http://www.ianhuyton.com. I'll throw in a picture here so you can see what I look like in the oh so fetching ski school uniform...


Well enough about me, future posts will probably talk about ski instructing and the various qualifications, courses and organisations involved, travel around the world, my attempts to learn Spanish, global warming and its consequences for the ski industry, random rumours, the history of skiing and anything else I can think of. The way I see it a Blog site is just an outlet for all my musings - be prepared. For the rest of this post, I just want to say a little about where I am - the town of Arinsal.


Arinsal is one of the ski resorts in the Principality of Andorra - a small country perched in the Pyrenees on the border between France and Spain - population about 70 000, size - well it fits onto a single 1:25 000 scale map so its about 20 miles from one side to the other. The country is not part of the EU, so is an attractive duty free shopping destination for both the French and the Spanish. Tourism and banking are the main industries. The skiing is not huge in comparison to the Alps but is friendly and accessible. The Arinsal ski school makes a point of employing English speaking instructors (as well as speakers of French, Spanish, Catalan, Czech, Russian, Danish, Portugese, Hebrew, Dutch, Afrikaans etc.) and ensuring that people are taught in their own language. This is frequently not the case in local ski schools accross the Pyrenees and the Alps. Arinsal itself is the friendliest town I have ever lived in, and this is probably the reason so many people keep coming back year after year, either to holiday or to work. The town is small enough to feel homely but big enough to throw a damn good party. For me it ticks all the boxes as a great destination, and I know I'll be back next year. For more info about the town see our new website, http://www.arinsal-andorra.com and leave us a message in the forum ;-)


Hasta Luego