Wolves on the pistes

There was another sighting of a wolf on the piste last week, at Valloire in the Maurienne valley (i.e. one valley away from the Tarentaise and Les Arcs).  Wolves have been protected in France for several decades, and having no natural predators other than man, the population has increased exponentially since 1992. There are few mountainous, wooded or forested areas in southern France that have not experienced some kind of loupine activity recently, not least the Alps and now, Savoie.

The wolf is by nature a shy creature, and will only risk contact with human beings if extremely hungry and especially if raising cubs (much like foxes in this respect). So as the wolf population has grown, and their natural predation resources thinner on the ground, they have become bolder, and there are now frequent reports of attacks on herds of sheep, goats and even dogs and cats.

Naturally farmers and shepherds are literally 'up in arms' over the wolf, and there have been prosecutions for illegal shootings of  wolves, even when they appear to threaten livestock. On the other hand, farmers can claim compensation of about €100 euros per animal for proven wolf attacks, so perhaps turning a blind eye could be good for a shepherds cashflow. Following much controversy and outrage, there is now a National Wolf Plan (see Wolf in France for details) which aims to conserve the wolf population at sustainable levels while protecting livestock and domestic animals through the imposition of 'wolf-free zones'. I suppose it's all a question of how long its going to take the wolves to learn to read the exlcusion area warning signs...

It's only a matter of time before a wolf is spotted here in Les Arcs. Apparently at their current rate of expansion there will be wolves in the forests around Paris within the next 60 years, maybe sooner. In case you think you have spotted one from a chairlift, here's what their prints look like:

Just be careful where you tuck into your picnic ham sandwiches!

Tragedy at La Clusaz hits the headlines

News of the tragedy at La Clusaz, in which two young people died (see yesterday's blog) has made it into the national French media, and attracted some interesting reactions and a few surprising statistics. According to France Info there are 200,000 seasonal jobs in France, of which 45,000 are related to the winter sports industry. And it is reported that about a third are mal-logés, i.e. have inadequate accommodation. Some of the 65 ski resorts in Savoie have tried to repel seasonal workers who bring there own mobile accommodation, but as one contributor to the article pointed out, without the saisionners there would be no season! In  an interview with the Le Dauphiné a one pointed out that it could easily cost €1000 euros a month for 10m2 studio (equivalent to a 6 ft square broom cupboard), while most of this kind of work is paid at SMIC (the minimum wage) of around €1600 euros a month.

I haven't yet had a response from Mde. Jacqueline Peretti, the mayor of Bourg St Maurice, to my proposal to open up unsold and unused tourist accommodation, the old Gendarmerie and the 7BCA Barracks, but I put this down to the fact today is a Sunday and being Epiphany, the Russian Christmas. She's probably up there at Arc 1950 joining in the celebrations (the whole village has apparently been given over to the festival tonight as 95% of the tourists are from Russia this week).

The Russians in our chalet have asked us to organise a barbecue as their celebration. Apparently grilling meat in the open when the temperature is -30c is a popular winter pastime in Russia, especially as there's no need to further cool the vodka! Apart today and the 'normal' Christmas and New Year, there is one more Russian celebration to go:  the 'old New Year' according to the Georgian calendar, on January 10th. Any excuse for a party, it seems!

Seasonal tragedy

Two seasonal workers (a 21 year old man and his 17 year old girlfriend) died yesterday when the converted lorry in which they were living caught fire. It happened in La Clusaz, one of the increasingly popular Aravis resorts near Annecy. Many of these vehicles use paraffin heaters, and a large stock of the highly inflammable liquid would seem to have been the cause of the fire.

This terrible event serves to underline the precarious living conditions that many seasonal workers have to endure. There is just not enough accommodation at affordable prices for people wanting to come and work  in a restaurant, hotel, or in the case of the young man who died, as a lift operator (no, these people aren't lazy hippies, they just want to work and earn some cash!)

In Les Arcs, despite building a couple of 'seasonnaires hostels' in the last few years, it is well known that there isn't enough accommodation to match all the jobs that need to be filled. In order to try and move the long-established encampment at Plan Devin (Arc 1600), where often as many as 20 converted vans, coaches and lorries we parked, the commune set up a site between the old Renouveau holiday village (and therein lies a story for a future blog!) and the Canoe centre - needless to say well away from the actual Arc resorts, the town and centre and quite a long walk from the funicular. The Plan Devin encampment seems to have sprung up again, and we wish the best of luck to anyone prepared to  live in a converted UPS van in a windy spot 1600m up on the north side of the mountain.

Last season, during the extreme cold spell from the middle of January to the end of February the commune realised there could be a problem with heating - not that the vans could catch fire but that the inhabitants might perish as the night temperatures hit -28c and it didn't go above -5c for three weeks. So they opened up a nearby electricity sub-station and gave a free supply to all the campers, and where necessary provided them with safe electric heater. It was the right, and humane, thing to do.

I wonder if, in the light of the La Clusaz tragedy, they will do the same this year? I hope so. But what needs to be addressed is the whole issue of providing decent accommodation within the resorts. Look at all the empty, unsold apartments in Bourg (in the Coeur d'Or development for example) and 'cold beds' in Arc 1950 - why not commandeer these for seasonnaires, who would be able to pay a reasonable rent? And what about the 1000 or so beds now vacant in the old 7BCA barracks, and the block of flats adjoining the old Gendarmerie (empty for 2 years now)?  Perhaps there isn't really a shortage of accommodation at all, it's just all in the wrong hands.

Uplifting stories

Probably everyone who has ever used a  chairlift has wondered what would happen if it stopped while you were on it, and you were left hanging there for the night. Would you survive? Would you try and jump? Would you try and climb out and shimmy along the cable to the next pylon? From time-to-time one reads about people to whom this has happened, but it is certainly unusual for someone to choose to climb onto a chairlift in the middle of the night.

However, according to Le Dauphiné this morning a drunken scotsman did exactly this  in the wee small hours of Thursday morning. 'Aided by alcohol', to paraphrase the article, a 21 year old Scottish holiday-maker decided to climb up a pylon of the Rogoney lift in Val d'Isere and settle into one of the chairs. He apparently wanted to admire the view over the village.

A passing police patrol spotted him and tried to find out if he was OK, but he had fallen fast asleep. Lots of shouting, throwing of snowballs and the subsequent wailing of sirens as the turntable ladder from Tignes was summoned failed to arouse the inebriated tourist. Eventually the pompiers managed to lift him into the ladder's cage and return him safely to terra firma, where his companion evidently shed tears of relief!.  An hour or so later, at 6 am they had to be shoe-horned onto a bus to Geneva to fly back to Edinburgh, where no doubt he has quite a hangover but probably can't remember anything of the aerial drama.

Chairlift accidents and incidents are thankfully rare, the most recent one I can think of in Les Arcs involved a child falling from the Combettes lift a few seasons ago. Fortunately he wasn't badly hurt (the beginning of this lift is not very high off the ground)  although a major investigation was carried out. Many of the chairlifts used by ski school and children now have 'Childsafe' gadgets on the cross-bar to avoid this happening.

It's not only chairlifts that can cause problems. About 20 years ago in Les Menuires a child was badly loaded into the Roc des Marches telecabine and managed to fall out, hanging upside-down suspended only by a ski boot jammed between the doors. The lift was stopped but no one knew what to do; the lift couldn't be reversed for fear of crushing the pendulous child. Eventually someone got hold of a step-ladder and they managed to get him down, unscathed. There was a subsequent criminal investigation, resulting in the lift operators on duty at the time getting a 3 month prison sentence.

So next time an instructor asks you to accompany a small child on a lift remember, it's quite a responsibility!

There's no 7 in Bourg St Maurice, anymore...

Apart from all the new mini-roundabouts and one-way systems that have sprouted over the summer, Bourg does feel a little different this winter. And I am sure it has to do with the departure in June of the 7th Brigade of Chasseurs Alpin to new bases in Grenoble and Varces (the French army has been subject to cuts and rationalisation of regiments etc.as in Britain).

The 'Batalion de Fer'  has been based here since 1962, although Bourg has had a military presence since Napoleonic times owing to its proximity to the Italian border and the frequent threat of invasion. With over 1000 soldiers and their dependent families the population has shrunk by about 20%. Two primary schools have closed, and the popular 7BCA ski-club, which was open to all the town's children and young people, is no more. The '7', as it was know, was widely admired by the townsfolk and a source of great local pride.

The 7 BCA was regarded as an elite regiment, with specialised skills in mountaineering and, of course, skiing. I was once startled by a group of white-clad female soldiers with machine guns skiing through the chalet garden on a night exercise, and watching battle-hardened marines learning to snow-plough on the Millerette beginner slope (the 7 also taught skiing to other units of the French Army) was certainly a sight for sore eyes!

An article in the Le Dauphiné (the local paper) yesterday describes how historically the Chasseurs Alpins were the precursors of winter sports in Savoie, and credits them with the 'democratisation of Alpinism', as  opposed to almost secretive activities of the British landed gentry discovering the Alps in the late 19th and early 20th century (although many of them such as Capt. Peter Lindsey and Col. Alfred Lunn themselves had a military skiing background).

The challenge for the town council now seems to be what to do with the extensive barracks, training grounds, workshops and hangars bequeathed to it by the Ministry of Defence for the princely sum of 1 Euro!

There is all the usual waffle about 'redynamisation' and 'valorisation', and it has to be said the town doesn't have a good track-record when it comes to big projects. Examples include the now abandoned scheme to build a mineral -water bottling plant under the station, the uncompleted multi-cinema and bowling alley complex, the thermal spa project (the crucial hot spring is in someone's back garden...) and of course the controversy-dogged National Centre for High Level Skiing (CNSHN) which is struggling to get off the ground. Plans for housing, a new town-square and a 5-star hotel are all being discussed. However, municipal money is short, the skiing industry is experiencing decline and the location of 7 BCA barracks site is far from the town centre, the station and the funicular...

The 7 will be greatly missed, so lets hope that whatever does emerge will be a fitting to tribute to their contribution to the town over the last 50 years.

10 years of Paradiski

It's now 10 years since the birth of Paradiski, the radical scheme to integrate Les Arcs and La Plagne as an 'unified' ski area. It's most obvious physical embodiement is the huge Vanoise Express cable car, carrying 200 people between Plan Peisey and Montchavin a vertiginous 300m above the wild Ponthurin Gorge. Improvements to other lifts were also made to allow the smooth flow of skier traffic between the resorts, and one real benefit has been clear and intuitive direction signage throughout.

 It took twenty years of planning and wrangling to build the Vanoise Express - building things that not only link ski resorts but also different communes in France is always a political nightmare!  From the outset it was agreed that the new lift would have no pylons, to avoid any negative environmental impact. The enormity of this technical challenge once again became evident a year after the opening of the new lift: it had to close for a season after it was discovered the main running cables did not meet the original design and safety specifications.

However there's no doubt that the real success of the project has been to do with marketing. The 'Paradiski brand' has become as well known as 'The Three Valleys', 'The Portes du Soleil' and 'Espace Killy'  as a vast, intergrated ski area able to satisfy the demands of skiers of all levels and nationalities (60% of lift passes are now sold to foreigners).

The clever name and its associated images of heavenly angels and celestial cloudscapes conjour up just the right balance of originality, quirkiness and coherence. In fact, yesterday Jenny and Angus spotted the Paradiski Angel not only on earth but on skis, presumably making a celebratory 10th anniversary visit to us skiing mortals!

So Paradiski has been a great success overall. My only doubt about the project concerns the wisdom of spending €40 million on the Vanoise Express (which is in effect a 'duplex' system with two identical cable car systems running side by side) when given the lower than expected traffic between the resorts a less expensive link and more money spent on improving the various chairlifts at each end might have resulted in a better 'skier experience'. Getting from the La Plagne end at Montchavin-Les Coches to the interesting (and less crowded) skiing to the south side of the Roche de Mio is an ardous experience - one fast lift direct to the Dos Rond would surely have cost less than half a Vanoise Express!

Anyhow, Happy Birthday to the Paradiski angels and here's to the next 10 years.

So it's 2013, and the Fiscal Cliff has, it seems, been averted - something extra to celebrate. Celebrations certainly got of to a good start in the chalet last night. In addition to our carefully planned and prepared New Year Menu our Russian guests produced copious quantities of food and wine to add to the table. One of the families, of Siberian origin who arrived from Moscow yesterday, brought with them a traditional dish they had prepared at home and carried in their hand-luggage. Made from soused herring, potato, beetroot, onions, egg and a kind of mayonnaise it was delicious and fresh-tasting. I'll try and get the name right later. So in the end this was our menu for last night:

• Red caviar on baguette and butter
• Escargots (again, of course!)
• Seafood platter (oysters, prawns, shrimps, mussels etc)
• Traditional Russian dish described above
• A plate of Savoyard sausages (not sure where this came from)
• Blue cheese soufflés (beautifully cooked by Angus)
• Duck breast baked in honey and mustard with carrot and taragon pureé and puy lentils
• Cheese course (St Marcellin, Coloummiers, Roqeufort)
• Chocolate mousse (enhanced by Jenny's fantastic sugar-work decoration and real sparklers!), served with black tea, á la russe

The wines, champagnes and other drinks were to numerous to list, but one guest brought several bottles of Canadian Frozen Apple wine, which is apparently very popular in Russia. Made when the apples are mature and frozen on the trees, it has the same honey sweetness as traditional 'eiswein', but the apple flavour is there too.

The guests toasted New Year several times, having roots in Kazhakstan, Armenia and Siberia as well as Russia (so many times zones, it makes you realise what huge countries these are - I discovered, for example, that Kazhakstan is the 9th largest country in the world, completely land-locked and with a surface are greater than the whole of western Europe!).

'Our' New Year arrived with everyone in the hot-tub, and an impressive firework display in Les Granges such as I have never seen here before. 

С Новым годом !