First ski of the winter

It's quite a long way to drive for three draglifts and a day's skiing, however, with a group of mates we headed over the border to the Swiss resort of Saas Fee on Monday. A six o'clock departure (in the fog!) got us to the bottom of the Alpin Express for about 9.30.... along with too many other like-minded skiers and boarders! We'd completely forgotten that it is half-term week so the queue was fairly hefty for the gondola and subsequent Metro Alpin funicular access lifts. The latter whisks you to an altitude of 3500m where you clatter up about 20 steps to the glacier, puffing and panting like you've just smoked a few packets of fags in preparation!

Saas Fee is a popular early season training venue for race squads and park riders so the queues for the three t-bars on the glacier were fairly sizeable - probably averaging a 15/20 minute wait each uplift.

The blue skies, sunshine and excellent snow quality made up for a lot of the grumbles and even though we only managed about eight runs, which we estimated to be a total of approximately 15 minutes ski time, we had a great day and certainly managed to break in the ski legs.... ready for Austria in 10 days time!