It’s late in the afternoon and we’re about to head off the mountain, the heavy falling snow and lack of visibility finally proving too much for us. Yet, just as we’re at the point of no return, the sun somehow finds it’s way through the clouds, as it has been doing at random times during the day, and suddenly we can see to the top of the mountain facing us for the first time.
“Shall we?” I ask my son. It’s been a challenging day, but this looks too good an opportunity.
We head over to the long chair lift.
The start of the run is not promising; the cloud has moved back in, and we have to feel our way through the white-out. However, after half a mile, we drop below it and can see again, now able to enjoy the soft and silky snow of the piste. The boy follows my skis on his snowboard.
I spy a wide untracked field of powder to the left of the run that will allow us to rejoin the piste in the valley. I shout to him to follow me and we drop into the deep snow, moving fast. It could not be more perfect, a foot of light, new powder snow. I commit to the fall line, allowing my skis to accelerate.
Then, as the gradient steepens, I start to turn, weaving a snake of broken snow down the smooth slope. The boy is with me on my right, the wide flowing turns of his snowboard keeping pace with the tighter, more sinuous, turns of my skis. Snow is blowing up into my face and it’s perfect, absolutely perfect. This would be a joy alone; a greater joy to share with friends, but to share it with my son, my son who left university with anxiety and depression nine months ago, my son who is turning his life around as a chef, is a snatched moment of absolute perfection.
Two french guys, like us a skier and a snowboarder, arrive at the bottom of the slope from a slightly different direction and watch us carve our chosen line towards them. They whoop and wave their arms, sharing their joy with us and opening themselves to ours. We acknowledge them with shouts of our own. This shared rejoicing in the beauty of the moment adds to our day and I suspect it does to theirs
If you ski only once or twice a year, and if you say your prayers every night, you might get conditions like these once every four or five years. How wonderful then to be able to share the utter perfection of that final run with my son.
It’s something we’ll always have.
