School trip in the morning

Location Apartment for six, party zone of Chamonix. Nothing else left. | Mood Scared | Date 25 February 2006
Filed in:
Author (full name): 
Franny Armstrong
Location: 
Apartment for six, party zone of Chamonix. Nothing else left.
Mood: 
Scared
Soundtrack: 
The Magic Numbers on the laptop
Date: 
25 February 2006
Current crisis: 
Only have one day (tomorrow) when Fernand, grandson, great-grandsons and skiing cameraman can all make it. If the weather is bad, we're doomed.

We're going to try and ski / film there??We're going to try and ski / film there??

Photograph: Charlotte Rushton

 

Tomorrow is Big Adventure time, filming Fernand and the grandkids skiing the world-famous Vallée Blanche. Fernand and various other people have been giving mixed messages - it's very dangerous, you have to wear avalanche gear and harnesses, so you can get pulled out (dead or alive) if you fall in a crevasse, which are everywhere and hidden by snow and one foot (ski) wrong and... mixed with "oh yeah, your skiing is fine, we first skied the Vallée Blanche when we were six, it takes between 9 mins and 5 hours to get down". We've hired a specialised skiing cameraman, as we realised last time that skiing and filming are two difficult tasks best done separately. Adding to the sense of a big school trip in the morning, we have to get up horribly early to get over to Fernand's on the train and film him setting off.