 Poster: A snowHead
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So, off I headed to Chamonix, with the knowledge that the Kandahar had been moved to Val D'Isere.
Thanks for all the advice on here before I went - everything that I could control (the travelling, the hire car etc, went fine) and if that's an example of French motorways, bring on the M1 tolls! (Ok, more to it than that I'm sure)
Anyway in a nutshell:
It dumped it down in Chamonix for three days - if only it had been frozen when it hit the ground it would have been great...
There was skiing in Val D'Isere in the Thursday (A DH practice) and Saturday (The DH itself, under perfect cloudless skies)
Unfortunately, I made the trip on Friday and Sunday 
On Friday I got as far as Albertville before a call to a friend to check Eurosport.com revealed the practice run had been cancelled do to high winds. (Did call at Annecy on the way back where it was local market day which was quite nice-it was raining there too though )
On Saturday, made it Val D'Isere where it was snowing, got a great spot as it wasn't that busy, set the camera and the 'pod up, and waited...and waited... and four times they delayed the race (I was never confident looking at the skies) Eventually, the sun appeared! Three forerunners came down, the piste cameraman came down, then the sun dissapeared and they admitted defeat and cancelled the race 
I passed Michael Walchhofer on the way back to the car but by the time I'd realised and got the camera out, he got into the back (the bit behind the seats where you put the dog strangely-and he's a big bloke) of a Team Austria people carrier. Summed the day up really.
So, four days, never saw any skiing, and more snow on the Derbyshire hills out of my office window than I saw in Chamonix.
The lack of snow was quite disturbing to be honest, though I gather they've had some since.
Here are a couple of photos which all to graphically illustrate how bad it was.
Both taken from roughly the same spot:
The Chamonix World Cup finish at the end of Jan 2006:
And here it is a year later
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