Wander & Nest

In France, the first school holiday of the new year is the ski holiday. Families flock to the mountains with the ski gear and spend a week on the slopes, at the thermal springs, and eating hearty winter fondue dinners. This may have been one of the cultural norms that I was most nervous about in moving to France… we have never been ski people, and as a general rule, I hate the cold. Also for me, skiing has always been a super elite and expensive sport that only people who have private jets participate in when they fly to Aspen. But still, we moved to France and, well this is what families do. So in the spirit of integration, we gave it a whirl. And wow, our 4 day trip to Ax-Les-Thermes in the Pyrenees totally shattered my previous negative perception of snow sports and opened up a whole new world of winter opportunity.

As with all our recent outings, we were able to do everything by train and foot, no car needed. We walked 25 min from our apartment to the train station in Toulouse, took one regional train from Toulouse to Ax-Les-Thermes, then walked 12 minutes to our Airbnb. The accessibility is really amazing! We had lunch when we arrived, checked into our airbnb, put on our snow gear, and headed up the mountain in the télécabine.

We booked individual lessons for each of us, mine was our first day from 5-6pm. Then Wylie and Mara each had theirs from 5-6pm on day 2. We learned that during these school vacations everything is set up for a full week long stay. So our options for ski classes were either 3 hour courses every day for 6 days or a single hour individual class from 5-6pm after the group courses. We only planned to be there for a few days and were quite skeptical about whether or not skiing would be for us, so we opted for the 1 hour intro class.

My one hour ski class may have been the highlight of the trip for me! Granted, I never left the beginner area but I got some basics down in just an hour and could see how it would be really fun! Mara made her first snowmen of her life while I learned the basics. The next day Wylie and Mara had their lessons and also had a great time. I was really expecting a disaster of constant falling, possibly getting hurt, or feeling really embarrassed that I didn’t know what I was doing, but that wasn’t the case at all. The instructors were fantastic – friendly, helpful, and made the sport feel so accessible. I think next year we might do the whole week and actually ski down the slopes!

On the second day, we took the télécabine up to the higher station to explore a bit on foot. Unfortunately it was grey, windy, and rainy/wet snowy so we pretty much just had lunch in the ski cantine. Mara wanted to stay and play in wet snow but we managed to convince her that the snow at the main station was better for making snowmen than the higher snow. She agreed, so we headed down for more snacks and snow play. There was much less snow down at the main station, I think most of it was artificially made. While I’d like to think that it’s a just a fluke year with less than average snow, I know, of course, this is a symptom of massive global climate change. Some things we can’t so easily escape.

The next day was clear and sunny so we went back up to the higher station where there was much more snow and got to enjoy the views and Mara’s new favorite activity – snow tubing!

We ended our last snow day with a foot soak in the thermal water foot soaking station in the central square. Yep, a post ski foot soaking station fed by natural hot spring water. Other than the requisite sulfur smell, it was delightful.

And that was a wrap on our quick, trial ski trip! What a success!