few Pics

Well we survived the week with 18 guests despite a few stressful moments trying to get out 18 carefully presented plates, and we even managed to pick up a much needed tip!

Snow has been a little quiet lately so we have spent many hours getting hooked on the first series of the tv program "24". Unfortunately someone lent us the DVD box set and it has subsequently taken over our lives for the last week and has seen us rushing home early from both the chalet and skiing to get the next griping instalment. Sad but true!! only 3 more hours to go...

Not much other news to report here, so we thought we'd put up a few pics from our last 6 weeks here.

The countdown has begun for Bev and Nat's arrival in a couple of weeks. Getting very pumped!


A few belated pics from our NYE celebrations at the local bar.

Em partaking in a local tradition - a communal drink called Groll containing numerous spirits, coffee and the local liquer, Genepi. Not particularly tasty, but if you put it down before passing to the next person, you have to finish it off on your own!

Dom, Jules, Claire, Nick and us enjoying a beer on Australia Day. Not quite Shelley beach on a 30 degree day but fun nonetheless.

Some of the scenery during an off piste run to Nancroix (local village)

Gav taking a breather during a bit of back country off-piste boarding, local monastry in the background.

The team at the Aguille Rouge, the resort's highest point - 3220m. Great view but pretty cold at -21 degrees!

View of Mont Blanc mountain from the local Mont Blanc Bar! (it's the one with the pink sunset cloud)


After an overload of rich chalet food and always cooking for others, the craving set in..... (we have only succumbed once!)

First Visitors

After a month of cooking and cleaning for a new bunch of strangers each week it was a pleasure to have our first batch of familiar faces come and stay in our chalet. Jen and Forta came to stay for a week while Michelle Nielson made a last minute decision to stay for a 3 day long weekend.

It was a lot of fun cooking for the guys and being able to relax in the chalet for a few beers and a bit of Sauternes sticky wine after dinner. It was also a great time on the slopes with Jen taking to the skis for the first time and managing to master the local blue runs with style despite a few memorable stacks. Meanwhile Fort was all over the 180's in his twin tip skis and was regularly seen charging down the mountain in his orange jacket in a style that we nicknamed “tuck-a-la-orange!”. Both were looking very bling in their freshly purchased ski threads although fort did look a bit like the Incredible Hulk in Gav's extra large sized ski gloves! A few photos from the guys' time with us are below and for more photos check out the Forts blog (weblink on right hand side of this site – excuse the repetition of pics as our digital camera is unfortunately broken).

The end of the week also brought a great surprise visit from Em's cousins, Dave and Mike, and with plenty of beautifully pisted smooth runs, some fast-paced family fun was had.

After all this activity we had to have a couple of days of rest (reading, sleeping and catching up on email etc), which ended up being perfect timing as 2 days later we were greeted with some solid fresh snowfall - just in time to give Em a very white birthday! Bit different to the usual summer drinks and beach trips she is used to at home! We spent the day working but managed to have a great celebration at night at the local french bar with our new friends, enjoying a few “giraffes” (beer towers with their own tap) and lots of laughs. This was followed by our weekly day off which brought with it perfect blue skies and knee deep fresh powder! Can't get a better birthday pressie than that!

On a sadder note, we had a stark reminder of the power of the mountain when we heard that 5 English guys were hit by an avalanche boarding off-piste in a dangerous and secluded area on a very high risk avalanche day, and unfortunately 3 of them lost their lives. Not somewhere we would ever considering skiing but still very sad and brings home the importance of respecting God's powerful creation.

We've been spoilt over the last week with only 9 lovely guests staying in the chalet, so we are currently getting mentally prepared for the 18 new guests arriving at 7.30am tomorrow! Should be interesting!


Pics below courtesy of Forta and Jen

Sunrise from Jen and Fort's room in our chalet


Our first familiar chalet guests....Forta, Jen and Michelle


Gav cooking up some Coq au Vin in the chalet kitchen


Em and Jen on the slopes

View from the top!

Not a bad way to spend Monday arvo - kicking back on the slopes on deckchairs in the sun!

Update from the Alps

It's been a while since our last blog update as we've been pretty busy getting into the swing of our new lives in the Alps. We are now into our third week of our jobs as a chalet couple and after a busy few weeks are starting to get the hang of cooking for 16 people 6 nights a week and figuring out how much gear to wear for -12 degrees!

Luckily things have improved dramatically from our first practice night of cooking in our chalet (no guests – just a rent-a-crowd luckily) where we took 6 hours trying to figure out how to turn on the oven and stove (we felt a little better when even our boss couldn't figure it out!), smoked out the chalet with the fire, put wine that was off in our main course sauce a minute before serving it and then to top the night off, our crème brulees didn't set (due to the late start), forcing us to serve up runny vanilla custard with toffee on top!

Fortunately the cooking has gone pretty smoothly ever since and we've been very lucky to have had two great sets of guests so far. Even on Christmas when it was really tough to be so far away from all our family, friends and church working most of the day, our guests were really cool and bought us both Christmas pressies and made us feel part of the family for the week.

While we've been missing everyone we've still managed to have a pretty awesome time so far. Our typical day here involves leaving our apartment at a 7.45 for the freezing 5 min uphill walk to the Chalet as the sun rises. Breakie at 8.15 and then we do general prep for dinner, tidy the chalet and cook cakes for afternoon tea. This gives us between around 11.30 and 5.30 free for hitting the slopes, catching up with friends or just having an afternoon siesta (which has been a common occurance as our office bodies aren't used to all this physical work!). In the evenings we get the chalet fire going, talk to the guests, clean up the multitude of tea bags (saying english like their tea is a major understatement!) and cook a 3 course dinner. After washing up we tend to get out around 10.30 and if we have the energy we head up to our local bar “the Flying Squirrel” before hitting the sack. Hopefully we will be able to refine the process to trim off a few more hours for skiing/relaxing/sleeping!

We've managed to make a few friends while we've been here. The company we are working for has 3 chalets in total and we spend a fair bit of time with the other two couples who run the other chalets – Nick & Jules from the UK and Dom & Clare from New Zealand. We've shared plenty of laughs swapping funny cooking and guest stories and reminiscing over our daily stacks on the ski slopes! Have also met a few french and english locals and there is a general good community vibe around here.

The larger resort itself is fantastic with so many runs we've only been able to scrape the surface after 3 weeks. The snow has been great so far with last weekend producing almost a metre of snow, fingers crossed it keeps falling!

Our studio apartment is pretty cool – modern, comfy, under-floor heating and a loft with spare beds! We are sleeping on a fold out couch but it's a pretty good one! The best feature is it's only 5 mins walk from the lift and our chalet and you can ski right to our back door. Although at times we do miss the 100m walk to take a dip in the ocean at home!

Looking forward to our upcoming visitors during the season – next being Jen and Fort who have taken up the last minute out-the-door offer in our chalet for next week!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year – we are thinking of you all and if you get a chance, shoot us and email and tell us what you've been up to.



Restaurant with a view on the slopes of Les Arcs

Gav with Dom (from other chalet) on the chairlift

View from a chairlift - snow is pretty good!