Happy New Year

Happy New Year everybody, and welcome back to a sunny but cold Méribel. Yesterday and last night we received some fresh snow which freshened the mountain nicely. The first two photos were taken today, what a great start to 2009.These photos introduce you to Arthur, my companion for this week. At 8 years old he is a typical smiley fella, who is now increasingly on the lookout for jumps. We've certainly found plenty of those so far this week, even a few extra secret routes containing bumps and jumps in the Altiport forest. But, interestingly for his age, he also adores learning technique. This means every day I'm able to go through some exercises with him which directly improve his skiing. He is desperate to ski as well as his much older brother one day, I have no doubt that this will happen.

On New Years Eve I took part in the torchlight descent. It was as much fun as ever, and a real bonding experience with the other instructors. Maybe this is something to do with various drinks being passed around before the off. There were a couple bottles of the local brew, genepi, that I spotted which I was able to avoid. Unfortunately my hip flask of whisky didn't last long, thanks Ian and Mike !?! This time my torch didn't blow out on the way down for the first time ever, result.

We all have another descent next week to help the Russians celebrate their (orthodox) Christmas. The numbers of people on the pistes will drop drastically this weekend with the end of the festive period. Next week I'm looking forward to catching up again with Dan and Kay, and also with Jim and Geraldine.My New Year resolutions are to ski more, and eat less tartiflette and pizzas. It's not going very well though, I ate a tasty pizza at lunchtime with Arthur and family, oops. Have a great week.MartinPS. Thanks to Arthur's parents for permission to take and use the photos.