Another difficult night, manage to stay in bed till 7 o/c. Delightful breakfast in the room of cinnamon toast crunch and fruit toast, washed down with a refreshing glass of orange, raspberry & cranberry juice. Get packed and dressed then off to the ski lifts. Decide to do Blackcomb this morning, take the Excalibur gondola where we chat to a couple from Bristol, then the Excelerator express & Jersey Cream chairs. Have a great run down Jersey Cream (blue) which is so good we do it again. Take the Expressway to 7th Heaven, have some fine blue runs down Hugh’s Heaven & Panorama. Weather is great on Blackcomb today and we’re feeling really good, skiing fast from top to bottom. Quick couple of runs to get to the Rendezvous Lodge for the Peak to Peak. A very serendipitous trip as we jump on the glass bottomed gondola, our first time! Great views from down below. Jump into the Roundhouse where we have coffee and nibbles, want to keep ourselves lean and hungry for our lesson and the undoubtably huge meal we’ll have tonight.
Have to wait a while for Jenny from Sweden to arrive for our lesson but we have her to ourselves which is always good. Find her a bit annoying at first, going over basic techniques (after all I’ve been skiing twice so I know it all) but I guess we need the practice. She grows on us as we try new techniques and more challenging terrain. We do Orange Peel & Tokem (blues), Dave Murray & Bear Paw (blacks) amongst others, practice skiing all the way down on one ski (tough) and pole plants (fun). Jo has one spectacular fall, I only manage a couple of slips, including a very slow one in the slush. By the end we’ve warmed to Jenny and feel like we’ve learned a lot!
Trudge back to the room and struggle out of our gear before having a well deserved coffee in front of Family Guy. Drag ourselves down to the spa where we have the hot tub and sauna to ourselves. Jo’s feeling a little more loose, I’m rather stiff. Pushing ourselves to the limit of human endurance we get dressed for dinner. We head out for Milestones but in the second disappointment of the holiday we find that it’s become some third rate south London pub impersonation called Elephant & Castle. Menu doesn’t look good so head for the ever reliable Earls. After a short wait get settled in our booth, order two pints of honey lager and two dirty burgers. Chat about our day, what we’ve learned and where we’re going to ski tomorrow. Then our dinner arrives and we don’t say a word as we devour one pound of recently deceased cow between us. When finished we slump in the booth, the lovely Brooke enquires if we’re full, we grunt in reply then settle up and stagger back to our room. Get in at the ungodly hour of 8:45, get changed into our jammies and watch Futurama in bed.

Smoke count 5
Fall count Rob 0 Jo 1
Stats - GPS for most of the day but stopped about ½ way through the lesson
Distance 51.47km
Ave Speed 10.5km/h
Decent 4,787m