Confessions of a 30 something seasonaire or “Hello from Les Arcs”

A snowHead

The Wrap-up

Well it's been a month or so since I've come back to the real world, and it does feel a bit like I've not been away which is a shame, but then you flip through the photos in picasa and your memory is jogged with so many great moments that just come back and put a smile on your face, that you know it was worth it. The number of friends that have commented 'you look so much more relaxed' is always a good sign, but I guess 6 months off work will do that!
Most of the Peisey crew is now scattered to the wind, a hardcore of 3-4 of the guys hit up Kos pretty much 1 week after the go home, crete, greece and other sunny spots seem to be high on peoples lists, and with the magic of Facebook, it's easy to keep in touch with the global shenanigans.

For myself it's back to reality with a bit of a jolt, bills to pay and a job to find - still it looks like there's a little more than there was (in my sectors) in Septemeber so that's a bonus, and I've been getting my skills back upto speed by doing a bit of voluntary work.

So to wrap this up I thought I might summarise some of my thoughts on the season, and give some tips for other would be 30 something seasonaires

Resort Selection
Fundamentally you'll have a great season whichever resort you end up in, however you may enjoy some resorts more than others. It's fair to say that rental seasonaire accommodation is more readily found in france (due to their love of small on-slope flats) than in other countries, however that doesn't have to be the defining factor. Clearly you want a resort with a good number of runs and strong off-piste potential as otherwise you'll quickly become a little jaded with the skiing on offer. Other factors that come into play are really down to your criteria - whether you want lots of 'offslope activities' lots of nightlife, or are happier in a smaller / 'quieter' resort and whether you are just going off on your own or have found a bunch of other mid-life crises types to come and joing you.

As I was travelling independently (aka billy no-mates) then I deliberately chose a quieter end of a big ski area, as I felt it would be easier to get to know people as there wasn't many bars around so you were likely to see the same people. For me this worked really well, and despite going out on my own, renting a flat on my own and not working I did get to know people quickly, and I wasn't short of people to drink or ride with all season. If you wanted a big night out it was about a 30 minute walk to 1800 so that was always an option if you wanted to club til 4, but Plan-Peisey wasn't for everyone as a couple of workers transferred to more lively resorts during the season.

Work / Don't work
This is a key decision in the success of your season, obviously if you can afford not to work then you'll benefit from more slope time and much greater flexibility - no need to be back at the chalet at 5pm to prepare high tea for example. If you're not used to doing DIY ski-holidays then perhaps working is better as everything will be organised for you in terms of accommodation, travel etc. If you do choose to work then have a good look at Natives for their 'job descriptions' as it will tell you which jobs are best in terms of slope time. From my viewpoint then child-care and resort manager seems to be poor for slope time, but bar work and / or chalet hosts seems to offer much more time on the piste. The guys that were working for the smaller companies seemed to have a little more flexibility in terms of their daily work, but for the larger companies one got the impression that if it was tuesday it was lasagne.

If you do work then you do get instant 'ski / drinking buddies' which is a bonus - in fact it'll be hard to miss them as you'll be living on top of each other with upto 3 per bedroom seeming to be the norm. You also will forever be known in resort as John from Skiworld so your drinking related shenanigans will get reported on if you get upto anything noteworthy, whereas in a bigger resort you might just look like another skibum! Some TO's have differing demographic profiles in their staff, Esprit for example seemed to have a younger crew, whereas SkiBeat seemed to have an average staff age of around mid- 20's so if you're looking for a job then it might be worth seeing if you can find out the age ranges of other staff, unless you're convinced you've got the stamina to part with the 19 year olds - which I normally managed for one night - not 2 or 3 in a row!!

Perhaps the strongest argument for working is the cost - if you work you'll usually get given accommodation, ski-pass and some (generally cheap) rental kit to use, all of which will have a big impact on the overall season cost - see my cost breakdown below.

Finding Accommodation
Having decided not to work then the next challenge was to find accommodation - travelling on my own and being a bit long in the tooth I didn't fancy the 'hostel room for 4' which seems to be popular with the younger fraternity, so I decided to rent a place - I'll admit to taking the easy solution and using natives.co.uk and going for one of their seasonal lets. This worked pretty well as natives managed the process and dealt with paying the landlord etc, all I had to manage was the deposit which was a touch tricky as the landlord didn't know his swift code and barclays wouldn't do the do without it. As you might imagine the prices you pay are a little more than you might pay if your 'on the ground' and obviously natives are making some money out of it as well. If you want to rent and do it a bit more on the cheap, then I'd have a chat to the local tourist office in the resort you want to go too, as they'll probably have some details of places that might be rented. If you speak the local lingo well enough then I'd just head out to your chosen resort for a weekend in say early october and then ask around in the odd bar / restaurant (assuming their open) but mainly to have a look on noticeboards - there seemed to be a number of rentals advertised on noticeboards in resort. Other places to try would be noticeboards at supermarkets (for example Super U in Bourg St. M) as these often have rental places on them too.
Other places to look would include chaletsdirect.com and some of the other 'seasonaire' websites such as erm seasonaires.com. I haven't found many french owned places being advertised on websites other than Chalets Direct as they prefer to want to use the noticeboards. If you're going to a bigger place e.g. tignes or chamonix then you might need to tie up your accommodation earlier in the year, but they also have some 'local sites' that might help such as www.cham74.com

Try and find a place that has a a balcony - as it provides some extra storage (but watch out for thieves!), ski-tuning and more! If you get a place with a southerly/southwesterly aspect that helps too as it means it'll stay warmer a bit more without over-using the central heating. It's also a nice spot for a apres beer with some mates, rather than having to spend $$$ in the pub!

Car
In my view if you can - take a car - Ok so there's a whole heap of stuff you need to think about with a car, e.g snowchains, anti-freeze, winter tyres, hi-vis jackets etc, but with all the advice on here from the drivers then you should be able to get that covered off. By taking a car you can nip down the hill to the supermarket, day trip to anothe resort, run a few people round the resort and even earn a few bob doing airport runs. For me taking a car was vital as I took too much stuff but it also gave me more flexiblity, easily getting to Cham for a clinic and even picking mates up from the airport every now and again. The one thing I wished I'd sorted for this season was a telepeage - so I didn't spend that much on tolls, probably about 300 including airport runs but it's just such a pain as a 'single-hander' to lean over and grab the ticket out of the machine that a telepeage would have been more relaxing.

I did buy snowtyres and got them fitted for the season, on reflection I possibly didn't need to bother. Yes they were fantastic in snowy conditions and no I didn't have to use chains all season, but also as a ski-bum mostly you chose when to go up/down the hill depending on the weather conditions - no need to travel if it's snowing heavily. Bit different of course if you're working and have to 'get down the hill on the day off' and do some real shopping. Of course if you're doing an airport run then you don't have so much choice as you need to leave at time x, in which snow tyres are advantageous, but for me it was perhaps £350 of unneccessary expenditure even if I do get some back by reselling them.

I'd worked myself up a little about the drive down, not sure really why but what with running around trying to get the builders out of my hair then I'd got a bit stressed about it - shouldn't have bothered as travelling on a Sunday it was one of the most relaxing drives I'd done. Actually boring springs to mind as you get to about hour 4 and you know you've got another 4 or 5 to go. Being welcomed profusley when I went to a aire for some food on the way down was a little strange, but then I noticed I was probably only the 3rd person in the place - imagine that at a service station on the M6! It did help that I was able to 'weather check' in the resort with a fellow snowhead (cheers Snowcrazy and then decided to overnight near lyon rather than drive up the hill on one of the few (only?) days of the season that the lifts were closed due to high winds. Make sure you have a decent audio book or some decent tracks on the ipod for the journey down. Travelling back was even easier, out of resort by about 06:30am, I was at Calais well in time for my ferry about 4:30pm but forgot (again) that there really is nothing in the port itself.

Stuff to take / not take
Well somewhere on here there's an ultimate 'kit packing list' which obviously I ignored. Having done a number of trips over the past few years I pretty much had a good idea of what I needed for on-slope. I took a few extras socks, thermals, t-shirts, jumper etc. I then focused on entertainment so some DVD's, playing cards, a couple of games and as I was driving down I took a box of household / food essentials such as bulk-buys of shower gel, fairy liquid etc. Also not being sure of the bedding situation then I took a couple of duvets, some pillows and linen. Laptop & powersupply! ipod & speakers and a portable radio were on the list together with an alarm clock and a english 4-way plug adaptor (good tip that one!). The portable radio in particular was well used, with Radio Les Arcs doing English language weather forecasts every morning so it was pretty handy to get the weather before you stepped out of the flat. Ipod & speakers were a 'must have', and mine were particularly in demand towards the end of the season as they had a re-chargeable battery so great for those impromptu barbeques. Books, Books and more books - I managed to read about 50 books over the course of my season, as I like to read when I'm just sitting in the flat, and so I got through a good number (good job I was driving) - Coming home for a weekend, I even pickedup a pile of books to take back out with me!!

I remembered fairly late on to chuck in some kit for spring condtions - couple of pairs of shorts and some flip flops made their way into the bottom of the pile, and these definitely came in handy when it warmed up a bit and dual roled as 'fancy dress' for the beach party theme. I also chucked in a couple of fancy dress items from the 'dressing up box' - made life easier when the themed parties came along.

Things I took but didn't use that much included a back-pack. I had a heli-pro but on normal days when I didn't need avvy stuff then I just didn't take it with me very often. Being only 20 yds from skis on/off, and with the compact nature of the les arcs domain then it was quite easy to ski back, grab what you needed and go back out. I preferred not to ride with a pack where possible as it's more comfortable when on lifts, and you don't get cold back syndrome! I did invest in one of those salomon water bottle carriers like the x-country skiers use and that was out daily when skiing - got in the way when boarding!) Had I been staying down the hill or with a bus ride to the lifts, then I think I probably would have been using the pack a lot more.

I took some timberland boots too, but again hardly used them - probably less than 10 usages all season - goretex trainers were used much more, other than on the really seriously snowydays. My 'big find' for the season was shell jackets - I bought one predominately to wear in march/april but found that having trashed my other jacket a lot earlier in the season, then the shell worked really well over the top of a mid-layer or soft-shell. Given how easy they were to wash then I could have cut back on kit with a couple of shell jackets (if I had the cash!) an no other outer jacket - as it was I took a jacket for 'wearing to the pub' and with the usually pub being 20 yds from the front door then it hardly got used at all.

The board tuning kit (Xmas present) and a £5 iron from argos, was deffo worth taking. With some tips from a mate on how to do it then I made a resonable hash of edging / waxing my kit which saved 18 euros a time from getting it done in the local shop. If I have my time again I'd book on a spyderjon course to learn how to do it properly before I go out.

I should have done the 'pile it all up and then 1/2 it rule' as I was a little oversupplied in t-shirts, middle-layers etc but as I was packing whilst re-building the flat I was pretty limited in where I had space to lay it all out - as I was renting my own place then it wasn't soo bad. If I had been flat-sharing or hostelling then i definitely had taken too much stuff - drop those extra t's, midlayers etc - if you're really really stuck then you can always buy when you are out there.

Do both sports
I did my ski-season having done about 70 days boarding and about 10 days skiing, but the skiing I hadn't done for about 4 years and I hadn't really enjoyed it when I had last done it due to a difficult ESF instructor. One of my objectives was to ski all the red runs in the resort by the end of the season, and I managed that convincingly (bar one with a really tricky entry) and quite a few of the blacks. Having the choice of both sports was a great thing to be able to do - if the pistes were hard and icy i could take skis or if they were soft and fluffy or slushy i'd tend to take my board. Certainly when you were getting a bit bored of one sport, being able to swap to the second sport for a few days was definitely a bonus - it also makes you more aware of the issues that other slope users might be having, e.g. learner boarders on cat tracks can struggle to go straight - give them a wide berth.

On the down side it did mean that you're spreading your time across 2 sports, but with 5-6 hours a day for 20 weeks of the year, you'll find that variety is important. A good number of seasonaires had a go at the 'other' sport over the course of the season, and some made a good stab at it - one or two were heard to change their allegiences of their preferred sport. A couple of brave people even gave telemarking a go, but that was a knee bend to far for me, and considering I was a novice skier before the season then I wanted to focus on the one method. I think I would have found the whole season a little repetitive if I'd just had the one sport to do.

Lessons
Lessons are quite hard to fit in if you are working - in which case see if you can find a 'freelancer' to take you out for a couple of hours - works better if you need to improve something rather than are on the 'this is how you clip your boots in' level. It's pretty standard fr seasonaires to teach/coach other seasonaires and that can work quite well depending on how good they are at explaining things. However all this free is no excuse for proper teaching and therefore I can strongly recommend booking lessons. Ask on here for recommended instructors / schools as they do differ, and there's not much point in wasting time / money with weaker schools. With ESF for example I jumped a group on the 1st morning, and then was better than everyone in group above.

Bad weather conditions (flat light / no visibility)
Being right on the edge of the slopes it was easy for me to pop out for a couple of hours to give some conditions ago, even if i thought the visibility was poor. Ok so I would only tend to stick to the runs that I knew well, but after a couple of months I'd skied all the blues and reds many times so that wasn't that limiting. I did find that initially I really really didn't enjoy it but after a few days of giving it a go, then I did start to not dislike the conditions so much, and hopefully that will stand me in good stead for forthcoming seasons.

Days off
No law against having days off, whether that's because of tiredness, doing something else or achy muscles. Sometimes having a crappy day off makes your enjoyment of the following day that much stronger. I guess I probably had about 12 or so days off over the course of the season, sometimes because of injury but other times because I wasn't feeling the flow. Nothing wrong with that, and they'll always be another day. IMHO better not to push it when it's not working as the risk of injury is greater.

Fitness
I had worked pretty hard on my core stability and general fitness prior to the season, it definitely helped as it meant I could do more on the first few days withouth it killing too much. As you do more skiing then your legs do get ski-fit and after, and combined with your technique usually improving then your 3rd week should be easier than the 1st. I would have classified my fitness levels as ok but not better prior to leaving - capable of a 5km run on a machine in under 28 minutes or 20 minutes on a concept 2 at a stroke rate of around 2.05 mins / 500 and I didn't feel like I was struggling on the hill due to fitness. Towards the end of the seaons one of the nannies definitely reckoned you could tell the difference between the bums of the guys who'd be on the mountain most days and those that had internal jobs e.g. child-care !!

Dealing with Injury
Chances are you will pickup some kind of injury hopefully not much more than a muscle strain. It's quite depressing being in a ski-resort on a good day when everyone else is on the hill and you're left to mosy round the shops. I bust-in my ribs when a mate was out, so no option on wussing out until his last day (1/2 day) when he popped out for a couple of hours whilst I read a book. Taking plenty of books is a good idea, as are DVD's as mentioned above. For me the 'box sets' worked well when injured e.g. 24 as there's a lot of hours in the one story. With a laptop and some internet access then you can easily while away a couple of hours on facebook or similar, but see the note on 'phone & internet' below. Check out the threads on here about insurance as it's important to make sure you've got good cover for the season, and if you're in france then a carre neige is a good idea.

Finding Ski Buddies
If you're working then you're all set, if you're not then you'll need to find you're own ski buddies. I didn't find this too hard given the small nature of my resort, and being naturally quite outgoing - certainly getting out and socialising every night for the 1st 2-3 weeks was definitely an investment that paid dividends. Not much 'pre-booking' seemed to go one - it was more a case of meeting up the night before and saying this lift at 11am or similar. Other suggestions might be to try reading the snowheads snow report and finding out who else is out there at certain times - there's seems to be a number of Snowhead ski-resort property owners that travel fairly often to go skiing. Other options might be to ski with the skiclub rep if you are in a resort with one - they normally have an 'all-comers' day on the sunday, but pre-book if it's a busy week as they might run out of available places in the group. With the skiclub if you aren't a member then you can ski a day for free and then if you like what they do/cover if you join via the rep then you can get a longer membership for the same money.

Phone & Internet
Based on my experience then few of the french apartment owners seem to have internet in their apartments - indeed phone lines aren't that common. Now it might be a different story in other countries, but my original idea of 'use the neighbours wifi' was shot down in flames on day one. I'd considered a mobile 3g usb dongle, but I was a bit concerned about coverage and didn't want to spend 50 euro or similar on a dongle if it wasn't going to work. I found that the local bar had free wifi so I pretty much frequented that for a post-match internet, snowheads and email session - and as long as you bought a beer then they were pretty happy with that. It also helped in terms to head there in terms of finding drinking/skiing buddies. Occasionally I'd pop up to a different bar/restaurant for a change of scene, and their internet was a little more reliable. McDonalds in BSM also had free wifi so if you were heading to town this was another option. (Techie note) - The french 'livebox' service which seemed to be the standard in the bars didn't support use of 3rd party SMTP servers, so you couldn't use a standard outlook client (even with authenticated smtp) and you were forced to use gmail or similar to send mail which was tedious.

I guess most seasonaires took their UK prepay mobiles with them, and then rapidly bought french equivalents, although you seemed to be encouraged to buy another handset when you signed up to the french service, rather than just swapping sims. I looked quite hard at the pricing and most of the French Pre-pays looked really rather expensive (IMHO) - e.g. 40cents per 1 minute or per text and you'd need to top up with about 50 euros to get a 3 month validity which was quite stingy. IIRC I think a passport might have been needed as proof of id when buying but I could have been wrong as I decided not to bother buying a french phone and then used my english phone. By dropping it onto the lowest 'bundled minutes' before I went away and ensuring it was on 'international traveller service' then I was paying around 30p per minute and only £10 per month line rental without any need to topup. Despite using the phone a reasonable amount in resort ('where are you calls / texts') I rarely spent more than £20 per month on my bill, so it didn't seem to excessive. For calls home to family/friends then I tended just to use skype or keep in touch via email/texts

Overall Costs
Total cost me £11,500 give or take. Made up as follows - Accommodation £5,000, Insurance £500, Skipass £900. Journey down/back £250 each way, couple of trips home £250 each.
The rest was spent on 'spends' whilst abroad - food on mountain (not much), beer, eating out in resort (some), day trips to other places, food, petrol and not much more. I'll ignore the kit I bought before I went (e.g. new ski boots, avvy transceiver) as I don't want to scare myself so much, and besides that's a bit of an investment.

Reasonable - well I think so. I was a bit screwed by the exchange rate getting only 1.05 thru to 1.12 on any cash out / spends on card which was a shame. I could have reduced the cost by a number of means (a) accommodation - I could have found a flatmate / gone house share / gone hostel - for example freeride chalet in peisey was £2,500 for a season 1/2 board which would have knocked a good ££ of the total cost. But it was nice to have a based that friends could come and stay at without any hassle.
(b) cut down on eating out - well I really didn't eat out that much, rarely would I eat on the mountain - probably less than 10 days in total when I was paying for it!
(c) Insurance - I bought the skiclub insurance which was expensive, but I wanted good cover - perhaps the BMC which would have bene a bit cheaper could have done as well. I paid extra for 'additional contents cover' cos I was nervous about getting the car broken into on the way down, but having found an hotel with a secured car-park and parking outside the entrace and my resort being pretty quiet, then this was perhaps unneccessary
(d) Trips home - yep 2 of those - 1x no choice as just had to be back for a course, 1x of choice to avoid half-term week and to catchup with family/freinds - again something that could have been cutdown on, but it also made you appreciate more the time in the mountains.
(e) Beer tokens - spent a few of those!!
(f) Pre-booked ferry rates are cheaper than 'walk-up' - on the trip out I didn't have a clue when I would be ready to leave, so I just turned up at dover and paid my cash but that was an additional £40 odd quid - I had to pay, drat!

I had a nationwide bank account setup with debit card prior to going out following a tip on here and although I forgot to use it the 1st time I took some money out then I remembered the second time - checking back on my statements then I got stung for a commission fee and a 'service fee' with Barclays of close to £12.00 - made up as follows. Comssion of £7.43 - fee of £4.50. Now I probaly went to the cash machine 10-15 times during the season, so that's about £120 to £150 saved there. Plus similar fees seem to apply to use of the visa debit card function, so another £100 or so saved by not using Barclays for that.

Regrets
Not much - would have been nice to have had a plan figured out for when I came back. One or two of the workers spent march looking hard for summer jobs, came home for 2 weeks and then got on a plane out to kos and are now ripping it up. I however am keen to get back to 'real work' jobs even just on a contract basis so I'm busily looking around as I type this.

I wish I'd done a few more day trips to other resorts - I'd always planned on doing my trips in March as I though more light, possibly better weather and my skiing/riding had improved enough to make the most of them. However I was a bit scuppered by getting injured in late Feb, which meant that as I was only going to be skiing for about 3 hours max each day, then it was a bit pointless going to other resorts. I would have liked to fit in a couple of days in tignes/val d'isere, ste Foy, La Rosiere and a bit of 3v. As it was I only managed 1 day in Courchevel as i had some mates there that week, but it was nice to ski a resort where you don't know the way out of the gondola lift station instinctively!

Really my only other regret was not splashing some cash on a digital SLR I'd ummed and ahhed about that before leaving but in the end decided I'd prefer the cash in the bank. However whilst I had a good compact (Canon Ixus) it would have been nice to have taken some of the landscape shots on a good quality SLR with better lenses - certainly the 'across the valley shots' didn't work as well as I would have liked as the quality of the lens wasn't strong enough over that distance. Still not a major regret and not one that will concern me too much, especially if I end up going back next season!

Overall
What a fanstastic season - lots of fun, lots of new friends and some great times as well as significantly improving my skiing/boarding. I'd certainly recommend doing a season to anyone thinking of giving it a go whether they're 19, 39 or 59 or older!

A snowHead

bertie bassett, Excellent wrap up. I wonder if just this page could be copied and put up as a sticky as a reference for others considering a seson in the Alps?

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

bertie bassett, What a great post. I thoroughly enjoyed reading that. Top man. Hope the transfer to reality won't be too hard.

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Thanks bertie bassett, Great wrap-up and very helpful.
Well done on keeping the report going through the season. Little Angel

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Stunning, just stunning...... Hats off to you bertie bassett,

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bertie bassett, Brilliant, I loved reading about all your escapades last season, do you think you will do it again? I really hope you do! Would you consider doing another country?

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

bertie bassett, Fantastic read Toofy Grin

My only regret was not meeting up for a beer or a ski when we were out - something to rectify next year if you're out again wink

After all it is free

bertie bassett, thanks so much! Super-clear, super-informative, brilliant.

bertie bassett, Thanks for the round up of your season. The only thing that makes me wince is the cost £11,500. Shocked

It looks like I have a lot of saving to do. Hope the job hunt goes well in these difficult times.

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

Hi, I know this blog hasn't been written on in a while however I'm looking to become a "skibum" for a season next year and was wondering if you could perhaps email me regarding all the apartments and costs and tips and hints that would come in handy for a seasonnaire. My email Address is the_tukksta@hotmail.com It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks xx

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bertie bassett, just read your wrap up - great comprehensive guide, thanks.

bertie bassett, just stumbled across this, really great and informative wrap up! How much scope is there for doing 1-3 nights per week bar work in where you were(vallandry?) ? I'm starting to think about doing a season or two, but probs wont be able to afford to for a good 4-5 years!

You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

bertie bassett, Indeed it probably will be completely different in five years time! Have you got another season plan in the pipeline?

A snowHead

bertie bassett, many thanks, reading this thread all over again has tipped the balance for me. I was planning on taking a sabatical and heading off for a month or so's skiing, but have now decided to look at going somewhere for the whole season, in a very similar fashion to how you did it. Not long left to plan it though.......

Now then, where to go........!

A snowHead

bertie bassett - Some assistance if possible!

Me and the misses are heading out to Peisley Vallandry for the season on 13 December for the season.

We going to be staying in Moulin, just down the mountain and are hoping to find a bit of casual work(bar work, airport tranfers, cleaning), although not essential, will make us a few more beer tokens!

Do you no anyone who might be interested in our services on a casual basis?
Cheers

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Help!!

Confessions of a 30 something seasonaire or “Hello from Les Arcs”

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