More winter activities.

Aside from all that skiing, we enjoy the winter in other ways too.  We've done quite a bit of bobsledding with the kids and the other day we went out to see a frozen waterfall.  This waterfall (cascade d'Allieres) is only 10 mins drive from our house and I assume that it's rather rare to see it in this state, as the temperatures in the city rarely dip down as low as this year (around -15C).  Also it was quite a large tourist attraction with lots of locals taking photos and filming it!  This was my first time to see such a spectacular sight.  The huge icicles were multicolored and some water was still seeping down and freezing into snow as it fell.  A huge pile of snow was directly under the fall and all the flora that still remained intact was coated in a really nifty frozen casing.  Certainly a winter wonderland.  I've been meaning to try out ice climbing, but in order to do so I first have to take a glacier basics course with an introduction to use of crampons and axes.  Hopefully in the near future!

I've also gotten some brand new snow shoes for Christmas, but have not used them yet, so I better dust them off and take them for a walk before all the snow melts.  Another "to-do" item on my list is ski touring, but that is expensive and I feel like I need to improve on my "off-piste" skiing first.  As a start, Jakub and I did sign up for an avalanche course this winter, so we got to learn some basics and dug out some teddy bears using avalanche transcievers and probes.

The winter season is nearly over and we have one more ski trip booked on the 17th of March.  We're heading to Vaujany with Jakub's parents and our niece & nephew.  It will probably be more like spring skiing, but I don't see anything wrong with skiing in a bikini ; ).