Les Rousses, Day 3

My third day in the mountains was a little compromised, in that I suspended my rules of no work to have a teleconference about a grant proposal. It meant that I was tied up until a little after 11, and the vagaries of the Ski Bus meant that I wasn't able to get up to the pistes until around 2.

My intention was to try Le Boulu, a 12km loop in the valley between La Serra and Lamoura. I started at the eastern end, and worked my way along the southern side. It was a very flat track, slightly descending and going past some small downhill stations. The sun was shining, which was pleasant above ground, but was having a detrimental effect on the snow, which was showing brown spots in places.

As I turned around the western end of the loop, the track tunnelled through some trees alongside a creek - very pretty - then up past some farmhouses towards Lamoura, where the snow gave out and I was forced to hoof it for a few hundred metres into Lamoura. I decided to skip the remaining 5km or so in favour of catching the 4:30pm bus rather than being forced onto the later one, a decision I was glad of as I walked back through Les Rousses in the rapidly cooling evening.

Looking out from Lamoura in later afternoon

For dinner I popped into the golf club upstairs and had a fondue (nice cheese, but kind of boring as a meal), accompanied by another average Chardonnay, and followed by some blueberry pie. There was a group there arriving after a raquette (snowshoe) outing as part of an office retreat of some kind, and one girl among them was in a very bad way physically, being force-fed sugar and made to lie down before an ambulance was eventually called (although, I learnt later, not used).

For the rest of the trip:

• Les Rousses, Day 4
• Les Rousses, Day 5
• Les Rousses, le départ