Courchevel, Day Seven: Ripping A Red (Kinda)

And so we came to our last day of skiing. As was the case yesterday I found the lesson to be a bit of a waste - we weren't in a position to learn anything new but doing the drills we had become well versed in was a bit boring.

Since it was the last day we decided to push the boat a bit in the afternoon. In skiing terms, this meant doing a red run. Or rather I allowed the red run to do me. It wasn't very enjoyable to be honest; it mainly consisted of traversing, falling, getting up and traversing again, but looking back I'm lucky nothing worse happened. I'm glad I did it, if only because it totally showed me how rubbish my technique (and confidence in my ability) was.

Since I wanted to end with a high, I decided to then try out a blue; something I hadn't actually done yet. Possibly unsurprisingly this didn't quite work out to plan as I stacked it again - my worst fall yet as I came off both my skis, ate snow and begun to see stars.

Although there was still an hour to go before the slopes closed I didn't get a chance to end on a green; we had decided to keep the afternoon free for luging on a purpose built slope near to our chalet. I must admit that I felt a bit poignant having to give back my gear. In some ways those boots and skis had become an extension of my legs and returning them meant that my skiing days were finally over for the time being.

Luging was brilliant fun as technique and style went out of the window. Anything went as we re-enacted our own version of wacky races; we shunted, pushed, sabotaged and spun our way down at some pretty fast speeds, while counter-intuitively deliberately aiming for bumps and dips to catch some major air (as well as risking major death). I say it again: absolutely brilliant.

Quite fittingly, we ended the day with some wonderful fireworks (fortunately for us Courchevel was hosting a European air pyrotechnics festival that week) after which we hung out at the chalet and rode out our last night together. I'm not ashamed to admit that I was feeling a little sad for it to all be coming to an end. It felt like we had been in Courchevel for ages.