Sarah Bourne Photography

A couple of weeks ago a friend flew me to Scotland to shoot his wedding.  On the morning of the wedding I took a stroll down the beach as the sun rose.  It was very pretty.

More exploring now that the sun has come out again, but it’s still -15C.  A little too cold for my liking.  Can’t understate how huge this whole area is.  For the moment I’m sticking to the main ski runs until a) I know where I’m going! b) there is more snow covering the rocks c) until Rob arrives.

The panoramic in this gallery is basically our ski out from the Verbier ski area back to Siviez.  It’s not a groomed run and at the end of the day is quite tiring!  Still, downloading is cheating!

The weather is cold and clear and it’s great that the days are so much longer than in Whistler – the lifts are open ’til around 4pm and it’s not dark until 5pm.  Further South.

It’s early season so the skiing’s a bit limited.  From Nendaz there is one gondola then just a couple of reasonably long runs with poma drag lifts open.  Can’t get to Verbier or anywhere else right now, so on Saturday I just did a few laps on what was open then skied out.

On Sunday I took the bus to Siviez where you can head higher up to the Verbier area, or further West to the Thyon area.  I chose the latter.  Amazing that even though it hasn’t snowed for days there was still tons of untouched powder all around.  I had my groomer skis (I wished I’d had them yesterday), but wished I’d had my powder skis.  Having said that, my heavy luggage and days of travel caught up with me and my back seized up totally during lunch.  Not fun, so I took Monday off.

Here are a few photos.

Two planes, three trains, one hostel and a bus over 48 hours finally got me to my new apartment in Haute-Nendaz – part of Les 4 Vallees which includes Verbier.  A huge ski area.  My flight time arrival required that I stay a night in Geneva, and I’m happy to have done so.  I had the best pizza ever and they have a winter lights festival on so the shores of the lake were all lit up.

Finally in Nendaz on Friday I wandered around to get my bearings.  It’s a small town in a small valley with an outdoor ice rink in the valley as you can see from the last photo.  The mountains here are colossal!