This is perhaps the season no skier will ever forget; warm weather, rain and light sporadic snowfall will go down as an ‘Annus Horribilis’ . The tourists arrived in various resorts to find closed pistes and little prospect of any new snow. We were no different.

Our journey started at 3a.m. leaving leafy England and heading to the Tunnel port. Since we were traveling with our dogs, we decided to break the journey down in to small three hour bursts, with long stops for the dogs to walk. Our second stop was at the beautiful Lac du Der-Chantecoq north-east of Troyes where we watched a beautiful sunset and stopped again at Langres, an ancient walled town, where we spent the night. (Both these places were worthy of a summer visit) Another early start the next morning meant we arrived at Les Rousses about mid morning.

For about two weeks prior to the holiday, I had been doggedly watching the snow reports and web-cams for the area and was hopeful, with snow falling the week before we arrived, that we may be lucky. We located the cross-country ski school meeting place, to find the snow was hard packed ice and the runs were closed. Trying not to get too disappointed, especially since we were not actually staying in Les Rousses but higher up on the plateau, we reconnoitered the area and found petrol stations, supermarket, boulangerie and tourist office. We then left Les Rousses to find the village of Bellecombe and our gite.

Needles to say we got lost! I, as the passenger, had to try my best French at the doors of random farm houses and try to locate our host’s house. At one door I just stood their mumbling, forgetting all coherent French and a very kind gentleman reminded me of the word perdu. Ah qui, je suis perdu!! As it turned out we were directly opposite the farm we were looking for and simply had to return to the road and follow the track up the other side of the valley. I say simply, if only things were so simple. There was one small car and a lorry parked at the bottom of the track we needed, which was a complete sheet of ice. So with four wheel drive engaged Ian attempted to drive up the hill. Disaster!!! After only twenty feet the car stalled and even with the hand break on we started to just slide down the hill, towards the two parked vehicles. Horror, we haven’t even introduced ourselves to our hosts and we are about to put large dents in either one or both of their cars!! Ian amazingly managed to avoid both cars by jack-knifing the trailer, which brought us to a stop, but did break the rear light cover. After putting on the chains we climbed the hill and arrived, with no further incidents, at the gite.

The following day, we rose early and headed to the only alpine slope open in the whole region. The children were fortunate, Alpine ski school was also open and they were duly enrolled for lessons, two hours each morning, then free skiing in the afternoon. With no Nordic slopes open Ian and I were not so lucky and had no school to attend, and this was our first attempt at Nordic; we were completely relying on the lessons we had had on roller skis with the London Region Nordic Ski Club. So having got the children settled, we set out to find a small area of meadow with enough snow to practice our cross country skiing. We found a small deserted golf course which was perfect for our first attempts with these long narrow twigs, too small for the term planks. We spent the majority of our time on the first day just practicing, whilst the dogs ran about having tremendous fun. By the end of several hours both Ian and I felt confident enough to harness up a dog each and have our first go at skijoering. What we had not considered was the condition of the snow which was hard and had crystallized with repeated warm weather, rain and night freezes, this made the skis very loud and scratchy and the dogs, whilst they had played happily during the morning, were extremely nervous of us skiing behind them. We persevered and tried again the next day and soon they were beginning to settle down.

One of the problems we encountered was that the dogs were trained on well defined paths through woods and meadow grasses, now we were in the middle of a snow field with no defined paths; the dogs were a little confused to say the least. They understood the hike command, but were unsure of which direction to pull. When driving about we noticed areas that looked as if they were part of the Nordic GTJ, sections that followed a valley or through a wood and appeared to have enough snow to attempt some Nordic skiing. Since the dogs were confused on the open golf course we thought we could try a wood called Le Bois de Massacre. Should have paid more attention to the translation of this name!!! Boy did the dogs know what to do. A really good hike with a fair amount of speed. Terror, where’s that quick release cord? The condition of the snow was not too bad to start with, but when we got some distance along the trail and the path narrowed the conditions were terrifying. Where people and waked, and some skied there were the most enormous ice ruts and pits, some rock showing and fallen branches; arragh !! When the path started to dip down and I was on a very rutted section with no edges on the skis I had to give in, I really felt that I was going to have a serious injury. What should have been wonderful, ended up being a long walk back to the car. Ian was braver and skied back, but with a slower dog and now going up hill it was a little less hairy. Back to the golf course tomorrow.

Now that we were working with the dogs all the time, we found that to attempt cross-country skiing all day was extremely hard work, not so much for us, but for the dogs. The dogs were out front pulling for the majority of the time and when we rested on the downhill sections, they still had to run, sometimes quite fast. Ian and I made the decision to split our time between alpine skiing and cross country, therefore giving the dogs only a half day working. So off we went to rent some more equipment for Alpine skiing. This arrangement worked quite well, as it allowed us time to observe the children skiing and watch their progress. I happened to be skiing close by when Felicity, our daughter, finished an exercise and fell just as she did a swing to the hill. I could not resist the comment, as I skied by, that she did not have to fall right at the instructor’s feet. He understood enough to laugh whilst Felicity blushed.

One of the things I found to be a problem with the cross country skiing, was controlling my speed on the downhill sections. There were no metal edges on my rental skis and I did not want to take the very gentle slopes on the golf course too fast, as I did not want to overtake, or worse hit the dog. Snow ploughing on ice crystals with no edges was a challenge. With this problem pressing on my mind on the Wednesday we decided to try some different equipment and rented some petite randonee skis and boots. These were much shorter and fatter than the cross country skis, giving the dogs a bit more room at the front, and since they had edges, gave us a bit more control going down hills. Petite randonee, was for us, a much slower sport and something we felt we could do more easily off the beaten track, which was one of our aims when starting out on this new experience. However the snow conditions did not lend themselves to getting off the beaten track, perhaps more for us to try next year.

In some ways the lack of snow acted in our favour. With condition not at their best, we were more tempted to look for other things to do during the day. We did some tobogganing every day after the dogs has finished work. Other tourists must have seen us and word spread, because by Wednesday our deserted golf course had quiet a few families with small children playing on the gentle slopes. The atmosphere was really good and nobody minded the dogs running about chasing us up and down the hill, some joining in and others watching saying ‘c’est un loup’. We tried ice skating on a frozen lake, which again was very communal and relaxed and again the dogs were welcome. There were many other things to try, swimming, cinema, disco to name just a few but these we didn’t do.

After a week of practice, trial and error, we had most of our problems solved. We loved the area and could see the fantastic potential for very good skijoring and Nordic skiing. A very big plus, which made the holiday much more enjoyable, we found the natives to be extremely friendly and tolerant of my bad French. Needless to say we have booked the same gite for next February, when we hope to have better conditions to extend our abilities further.

Thanks must go to London Region Nordic Ski Club and all their very patient tuition, without which our Skijoering would never have got off the ground.