Three generations of fun.

A week to remember will always be the week that a group spanning across three generations came to play at Chalet L’Oreade. Statham junior, Lindsey Statham; Senior, Wayne Statham; Grand Senior, Eddie ‘The Eagle’.

Wayne and Lindsey were both accomplished in their own right as winter-sports enthusiasts. A bout of story telling back home aroused the keen adventurous spirit of master Eddie, the Grandfather. Far from an ageing tea drinker and purveyor of things civilised, his CV was pretty impressive already and included a skydive within recent years.

So, after careful consideration and permission seeking the adventurer was set on one more journey and extreme sport to add to the grand list. Skiing was going to be the choice of how to get down the mountain for Eddie. Although a keen water-skier in his youth this was going to be different. After the first tentative lesson he was keen to show us the progress that he had made under the masterful guidance of a top ESF coach. The trouble was that after a bottle of mulled wine, it becomes quite hard to stay in control of a pair of skis when sliding down the mountain, especially after only two hours ever on snow. So, the demonstration turned into a dash to get to Eddie before he hit the line of people innocently making their way up the drag lift. Luckily Eddie sacrificed himself for these folk and snow-ploughed himself into the off-piste where things came to a natural conclusion. Perhaps it was better to head back after such copious amounts of alcohol we all decided.

Wayne had been pursuing some of his own goals higher up on the mountainside, trying to keep up with young Lindsey who was quite the bandit on a board. Wayne brought to mind Crouching Tiger hidden Dragon style when tearing away at the slopes on his skis.

So after some fodder and the dinner-table banter of ‘tall tales from the slope’ the scene was set for some serious days of skiing rather than drinking, or so I thought, as I settled in with the new guests.

The next few days saw some great skiing, although a little cloudy at times, and soon Eddie was progressing off the beginner slopes to the tree bound mecca of Morillon, and like a hobbit on a quest to get to Mount Doom, Eddie conquered the skiing mountain with a cool, calm and collected style akin to a true professional. It was very rewarding to witness someone of Eddie’s age approaching the sport with such a fun and positive attitude, who did so well. Awesome!

While Eddie got to grips with a woodland expedition, Wayne was shown how to go straight off vertical faces into powder fields. It did not take much to encourage Wayne to go first, down a sheer twenty foot incline with a tree inches from his hooting face. Without falling, he swooped down after a massive injection of acceleration that made his face contort, to a controlled finish on the shoulder of a small hillock. Wayne looked over at me and explained very professionally that that was the first time he had done anything like that. So with that we threw ourselves headlong into an off-piste session which had Wayne making noises all day long behind me, mainly noises of excited nervousness, I think!

A splendid week was had by all, topped off by a beer drinking session in which Eddie showed us all how to drink and sing sea shanties, he won the competition and I ended up loosing out that night, but I will get my revenge next year Eddie!