The Last Runs And Dodgy Toilets

And so we come to the last days skiing and once again its clear blue skies and sunshine. After breakfast we head up Pied Moutet for the last time, and decide to do a few runs over here, unfortunately we are somewhat limited as the most of the snow has now disappeared and many runs are closed. So after a short while we are making our way back over to the main resort side and up to the glacier. At the glacier we have a final blast down Signal, get the chair back up and then catch the funicular to the top of the glacier.

Once at the top we head over to the snow park for a few small jumps, and this time we all stay upright! After all surviving the jumps we make the long run down to La Fee and carry on to the Thuit chair which brings up back up to the Diable gondola. Then it’s up the Super Diable chair and down to the Panoramic restaurant at Toura where the plan is to meet up with most of the club for lunch. Unfortunately the queue for food is all the way down the stairs and virtually out the door, and to make things worse the toilets are also out of order. And to compound things even more the restaurant had the effrontery to put up a sign basically blaming their customers for the toilets not being in use.

Now anybody who is familiar with French toilets will know that they are not built or maintained to a very high standard. In fact I am convince that somewhere in France is a shop called ‘Crap-sanitary-fittings-r-us’, where most of the mountain restaurants go to buy their toilet fixtures and fittings, because they are cheap and rubbish! So is it any wonder that they break so readily.

Anyway we did not fancy queuing for ages for food and were also desperate for some bladder relief so we headed off back down to the restaurant at Les Crètes. Thankfully their facilities were working, but obviously as operational toilets on the mountain were now at a premium, there was a queue! But the relief was worth the wait.

After a pretty basic lunch most of us used the facilities for a second time in the hope we would not get caught short again, as it is quite difficult to ski with your legs crossed. Feeling suitable refreshed and comfortable we headed back up to the glacier for the last time. After a couple of high speed runs down the glacier we then make our way over to the main snowpark area above Toura and have a go on the boarder cross and free cross runs, as these were probably the only runs we hadn’t actually skied yet.

The boarder cross was great fun with some good air to be had in one or two places, the free cross was more like a giant slalom course without the gates. You could get some good speed up carving round the turns, but if you caught someone up you had to sit behind them as attempting to overtake would surely end in disaster for one or probably both of you.

Once we had completed these runs and with the sense of achievement of having skied all there was to ski we decided to start make our way back to the hotel. On arriving back down at Les Crètes again the others were of the opinion that the black run Valatin would be so bad now that they were not going to attempt it and opted to go back down in the gondola. I however, being made of sterner stuff and probably more stupid, was not going to be put off. You can not finish your skiing holiday by getting a lift down to the resort so I headed off for the run. And I can tell you now it was no more difficult than it had been all week, so more fool them I thought as I reached the bottom and made my way to the hire shop to return my skis. So with a slight tinge of sadness and a little tear in my eye I handed my skis back and returned to the hotel. Surely this cant be the end already?