Spring (???) hill walking photos

It isn't exactly the hill walking season here in Andorra, but with unseasonably warm temperatures, sunshine, and receding snowlines on the south facing slopes (still plenty of snow on the ski pistes though) I decided to take a walk up the hillside behind our appartment building. Partly because I have always been curious to have a closer look at the bordes (farm buildings) which perch on the hillside opposite the ski area, and partly because I rarely get the chance to go out walking during the ski season, with being on skis pretty much every day.

For those interested in walking the Andorran mountains, and seeing a quiter side of the country away from the ski areas and tax free shopping, there is a very good Cicerone Guidebook - The Mountains of Andorra: Walks, Scrambles, Via Ferratas and Treks which covers the entire country (it is quite a small country so there is plenty of detail). Unfortunately getting a decent map of the area is not so easy, as none published here are very up to date or accurate. The 1:25000 map published by the government stops at the border, with adjacent parts of Spain and France left as white space - looking at it one half expects to see "Here be dragons" scrawled across the edges of the map.

Here are a few photographs to show you a side of Andorra not often seen by visitors to the ski resorts.

Les Marades piste (left) and Coma Pedrosa - 2939m (right)

Bordes Del Torner

Bordes de Prats Nous

Pal and Arinsal ski areas

Coma Pedrosa valley with Coll Carnisser in foreground

Bordes de Percanela

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...

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.

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.

The Tent and the Chairlift

We had some entertainment on the slopes today provided by the Andorra Sound Project. I was skiing with my afternoon beginner group (not beginners anymore, but they were on Monday). We were halfway down the mountain and decided to stop for a coffee/brandy as it was the first time above the nursery slope for some of the group. The DJ was set up under a gazebo outside the restaurant playing to a mixed response - I thought he was doing okay, but others were muttering about the tranquility of the mountains, and the volume. So we trooped into the restaurant bought coffees/brandys and sat down. Next thing we see through the window is the DJs gazebo wrapped around the cable and pylon of the adjacent chairlift, where a gust of wind had deposited it. The lift ended up stopped for around twenty minutes (with unfortunate people sitting on it in a blizzard) while the tent was removed, and soundwise, we returned the the tranquility of listening to the wind.

To Open a Piste or Not?

Back in Arinsal, nearly everything is open - all the major lifts and major runs are open as is the cable car over to Pal. The approach this year seems to have been very conservative - runs have been kept closed long after they have been ready to open. Snow has been made and pistes have been groomed, tended and prepared but only a limited area has been open until this week.

This is a marked contrast to the the Granvalira resorts on the other side of Andorra. I took a trip over there last weekend and all the links between resorts were open, and on paper at least a large proportion of the runs were open. However on most of the runs the grass was showing through the snow and my skis took a fair bit of damage from exposed rocks. On the other hand it was quite a pleasant change to be able to cover some ground and feel like we were travelling somewhere rather than just doing laps. I am not sure which is the better approach - I am sure both ski areas have their reasons but I would have thought the middle ground would be
more appropriate; opening all the runs that are ready whilst keeping the grassy, rocky ones shut.

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.

Thoughts on spring skiing

Following on from my last post where I mused about the advantages of booking a skiing holiday later rather than earlier in the season, another advantage recently occured to me. Skiing later in the season, after the clocks have gone forward, doesn't just mean that the sun goes down an hour later at night. It also means that the snow warms up an hour later as well. Meaning that you have an extra hour of good snow before it turns to slush in the mid afternoon, and also meaning that you don't have to be quite such an early bird to catch the best conditions.


The picture was taken from the Portella de Rialb near the Ordino-Arcalis Valley in Andorra the week after all the Andorran resorts had shut. As you can see, there is plenty of snow around still, and we enjoyed a fine day out ski touring with good spring conditions. I guess my main point is that April skiing can be just as good as February, so don't write off the end of the season and head for a cold wet beach. Looking at the weather reports its snowing in Andorra even as I write...

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