The Vaujany Experience Part 12…….Welcome to the Kick Ski Big Brother House…..The every changing Kick Ski Family!

We began the season nine strong! Two Aussies, two Welsh, one Grecian and four English. We were an eclectic bunch but by the end of the five months the Kick Ski team would be dwindled down to only seven members. With I being the lone Aussie amongst six other English! Needless to say I have been spending a lot of time with the English and I have to apologise for my ‘Aussie with a hint of added English accent!!’ which my best friend pointed out to me as we spoke on the phone. Much to my horror. You will all have to beat it out of me when I eventually come home!

So as you can see, it’s fairly obvious to see that the Kick Ski team certainly went through some changes over the five months. There were times during the season that we all felt as if there was some sort of curse that had been put on anyone wearing a kick ski polo shirt! As it was, only 3 of the employees made it all the way to end of the season and completed their contracts. And I am proud to say that I was one of them! There were times when we joked that it was like being on Big Brother……”and this week in the Big Brother house, tensions have been high, Tori has left the house leaving her boyfriend Phil behind, with the much anticipated Matt entering the house, livening things up!” It was just mad.

Our company director and owner, Darren from Lincoln in the UK began recruiting back in August 2008. I was the first employed and from then on he added Phil and Tori, a couple living in Lancaster, Sophie a horse mad West Sussex girl, Brad and Fern, a couple from Wales and Paul our Chef and a fellow Aussie. Wendy our chalet manager had already worked for Kick Ski the previous year and was returning for yet another sterling season.

It didn’t take long for the first blow to come. The first housemate to take the hit was, as I have previously written, our chef from Franrick Lodge. Paul exited the Kick Ski ranks on day eight of his five month contract. Unfortunately for Paul his cooking left much to be desired and he just didn’t fit the Kick Ski mould……Enter Kim as chef with Phil and Tori left as the remaining chalet hosts for Franrick Lodge!

The dreaded curse reared its head again on the 5th of January, my Birthday, when Brad our chalet and ski host from our other chalet, La Maitreya broke his ankle on “Le Tunnel” a deadly black run, so named because you have to enter an underground tunnel that cuts through the mountain and spits you out onto a steep mogul field the other side. Fortunately we were able to keep Brad on, he was able to have his ankle operated on in France and avoided being sent back to the UK. It was touch and go for a while, as Fern our chef in La Maitreya had decided to also leave if Brad had to be sent back to the UK for treatment. This was of course mostly out of our control and in the hands of the insurance company. Again tensions in the house were high, as we didn’t know if we would again find ourselves down another chef and two further members. We couldn’t afford to loose anymore staff. Not only were we a chalet host down in Franrick Lodge but we were also now down a chalet host in La Maitreya, due to Brad being out of action with his broken ankle, leaving just Sophie and Fern to run the chalet on their own. This was just what we needed after the manic period of Christmas and New Year weeks. We still hadn’t even felt like we had found our feet yet or begun to settle in and already life in resort was shaping up to be a minefield of disasters, one after the other.

I should probably point out at this stage that as a chalet host your required to be able to drive guests to and from the airport, be able to ski host guests three days a week on the slopes, clean rooms efficiently and help serve during breakfast and dinner services, helping the chef in anyway that is needed. It’s a big job and unfortunately not all the employed chalet hosts fitted all of these criteria. Tori unfortunately didn’t have a drivers licence and couldn’t ski host, which meant she was left to clean the chalet constantly, Brad was now obviously out of action which left Sophie to drive, clean, serve and ski host guests in our other chalet. A massive task for my gutsy, petite, 5 foot roommate. Thus we were all finding things pretty tough. I was still finding my feet within the kitchen and we were all still desperately trying to adjust to the changes happening around us and adapt and cope as best we could.

The blows were coming in quick and thick at this point as Tori decided to leave the Kick Ski Big Brother House on the 10th of January; only five days after Brad had broken his ankle. Unfortunately Tori had found the whole experience very tough and as she was spending most of her time cleaning, which she had not anticipated, she was not a happy camper, thus deciding to leave. This obviously again, made us edgy, as there was the potential that we would also loose Phil, her boyfriend as well. But Phil luckily decided to stay on and became the star chalet host within Franrick Lodge.

Enter the newest member of the team to the house. Matt joined us only a few days before Tori left. Matt, a ski mad Englishman, had just been fired from a team working in Italy (although he forgot to mention the ‘fired bit’ during his interview process) and thus joined our team, just at a time when we all needed some new blood to come and liven things up a bit. We were all in need of a break, totally exhausted and worn out emotionally and physically.

Loosing Tori was obviously a massive blow for us, especially Phil. But we soldiered on and eventually found a rhythm which seemed to work for a while. January was a relatively quiet month on the slopes and there were weeks when La Maitreya wasn’t booked with any guests at all, so we were able to go on a roster system and share the work load and savour some much needed time off. It was utter luxury to have a night off. Fern and I were obviously the luckiest as the two of us could share the cooking duties and all of a sudden I got very used to being able to relax in the evenings and explore the resort during times when I would usually be working in the kitchen.

January went by with us all being able to recuperate and finally find our feet. We skied almost everyday and partied just as much! It seemed that just as the work load decreased we upped the anti in terms of skiing and partying! January turned into a great month, but then came February….

February is notoriously busy on the slopes as it coincides with English and French school holidays and of course the best snow falls. We were back to working really long hard weeks again with both chalets at capacity. To get us through the busy period Darren employed our next newest member of the team; Jack, from Manchester. Another Englishman! Jack came into our lives and fitted into the team perfectly. He didn’t need telling what to do, he just did it. He was our resident comedian all of a sudden. He made us laugh with his many hilarious accent impersonations and jokes. He serenaded us with his guitar skills and made us all try and keep up with his drinking habits, which we all failed at miserably! I guess it’s alright for those of us who are 6 foot giants!!

So there I was, Chef with my three bitches! Phil, Matt and Jack. We all had a great time working together in Franrick Lodge. Dinner services landed up being nights filled with jokes being pulled at one another, tea towel whipping competitions, moments of choreography of silly dances that we would later taken into the swallow bar, and just the usual banter and sing-a-longs to songs which became favourites of the season. By the end of the night we were all tired from laughing so much. It came across too, as the guests always made comment about how well we all seemed to get along and how happy we were all the time. The chalet now had a great vibe and the season finally felt like it should.

And just as we had peaked and really begun to enjoy the season, the next blow came. Darren announced that redundancies would be happening in March due to poor bookings for the end of the season. It had been a tough season in terms of bookings, with the global economic crisis affecting the ski resorts and tour operators really hard. So we went from having too little staff at the beginning of the season, to eventually recovering with Matt and Jack joining the team, to then being told that we needed to reduce the numbers again. Yet more change and this time it could be any of us leaving. For most of the remaining weeks of the season, only one chalet was booked with guests. So the possibility of only needing one chef was quite high. I was seriously worried that it might be me leaving as it would make sense to get rid of a chef’s wage with only one chef needed. I was literally shaking in my boots hoping that my season wasn’t over. I was sure that if one chef had to go, it would be me, as I was sure that Darren wouldn’t make the other chef, Fern redundant. Surely not, as she was one of the original chefs employed and I was just the new recruit, pretending to be a chef!

And so redundancy procedures began. We were each interviewed at random and taken through a series of criteria which was supposed to determine our ability and contributions within the team. Criteria such as work ethic, team spirit, skills base, flexibility etc. To my absolute surprise I was praised during my interview and was apparently excelling at my job within the Alps. It came with even greater surprise that Fern, the other chef and her boyfriend, Brad were the ones to be made redundant.

So there we were, with 6 weeks left of the season to go, I was the sole remaining chef, left to take care of two kitchens and all of the food stocks. Even though Fern and I had worked closely together, each of our kitchens were our own domains. It was a huge task to try and maintain two kitchens and to keep a tab of all the stock that was in each store room. With only 6 weeks left I also had to start getting creative in the kitchen trying to use up all of the stock which had accumulated in the store rooms.

On top of these new responsibilities I was also required to train Sophie as the next in line chef. For the final busy two weeks of the season both chalets were booked to capacity for one last time. So she had to be ready to be able to cater for at least 20 people in a matter of four weeks and I had to get her there! In weeks when Franrick Lodge was empty I had to move locations and work out of La Maitreya’s kitchen, with Sophie shadowing me all the time, learning everything that I was doing. I had to teach her all of my recipes and show her how to find the rhythm of orchestrating a 6 course evening service smoothly as she would be doing it herself soon enough. Sophie was a natural cook thankfully and excelled at it. She certainly had hidden talents lurking under the surface and it was great to see her blossom in her new found role for the final two weeks of the season.

And so as the end of the season rolled in and the final guests finally drove off, those of us left standing by the side of the road, waving goodbye to the guests all took a massive breath of air and exhaled with a sigh of relief that could have been heard from the opposite side of Alpe D’Heuz. We had ridden the many unexpected ups and downs of the season and were grateful to have survived the changes and made it to the end. Phil, Sophie and I, the only original members of the Kick Ski team who had made the pilgrimage to Vaujany back in December had weathered the storm and survived the curse!

And some of us had even flourished in it. Sophie, my roommate and now fellow chef and I, had both begun the season as chalet hosts but would both be leaving with new found career paths. And with Phil and I now ready to take on the responsibility of running our own chalet, all three of us were hooked. We had become hardcore seasonaires who couldn’t wait for the winter to hurray up and return for yet more fun in the Alps! We must be mad!!

The Vaujany Experience Part 11……Social Skiing

For us seasonaires, skiing on the mountain was just as social as being in resort. Of course, there were days when you craved a day of skiing on your own with nothing but your own thoughts, your ipod plugged into your ears and your favourite runs. But the best fun had on the mountain was when we would all ski in a large pack, picking up friends along the way and people dropping off and finding their own paths back to resort. Word would go round in resort, to meet up in the snow park to watch whatever comp was happening that day, or “be on the grid at midday ready to get on the cable car, if you’re not there then you’re going to miss all the fun!”

As seasonaires we all knew the mountain so well and it became our own. We knew the best way to avoid the cues, the quickest drags, the best off piste runs and the best cliff jumps to attempt if you were feeling bold! Each day would be different on the mountain. The people you skied with changed each day, the conditions, the snow and of course where you skied. There were no two days the same, which is what made it so appealing and why you could continue to do it day in day out. There was always somewhere new to explore and as a group we could always count on stumbling along a new route or a new jump to try.

Some days on the mountain also turned into massive drinking sessions in the snow park. When a comp was organised you could guarantee there would be a group of Ski Peak and Kick Ski seasonaires situated with perfect views of the jumps where they could see the best stacks of the day and cheer on the unbelievable tricksters who momentarily swapped snow for air time!

And if the drinking didn’t start on the mountain, it was sure to start directly after back in resort. Lazy afternoons spent sitting in the sun with an après beer or two at Ski Peaks Rissou Hotel was a routine we all fell into. Without much encouragement I must add! It was a great way to hang out and relax before heading back to work for the evening. We would chat about anything and everything and just generally joke around. But mostly we chatted about our day on the mountain or the local gossip that was going around in resort that week.

Good times!

The Vaujany Experience Part 10........A Day in the Life of a Seasonaire

Don’t get me wrong; despite the skiing being our release and while I may have made most of you insanely jealous of my endless days spent skiing, there was also the work side of things. Daily life within a ski resort usually involves a mixture of strict work routines which can never be broken, long work hours spent alongside free time to get out skiing or socialising.

With the exception of my one day off a week, when I would blissfully sleep in and not even look at food if I could help it, my daily routine began at 7am every morning, when my alarm would ring into my ears, abruptly waking me from my much needed sleep. As I woke and looked out my window to the valley below and the surrounding mountains, I would quickly make an assessment of how much snow had fallen overnight thinking of the slopes that day and how good the skiing would be while calculating how long it would take to dig the minibus out of the snow. And after all of that, calculate how long I had in the shower before I had to get dressed and run out the door to the minibus so we could all drive up into the village and arrive at the chalet by 7:30am. Come to think of it, there was way too much thinking going on too early in the morning!! But that was what it was like 6 days a week for 5 months. GO GO GO! From the very minute you woke up until you decided to crawl back into your bed at whatever time you decided to inflict on yourself.

Arriving at the chalet at 7:30am and walking into the kitchen each morning, I automatically turned the oven on straight away and placed the croissants and pain chocolate that had been proving overnight in the oven, ready for the 8am arrival of the guests for their breakfast. I then quickly whipped up a cake ready to go in the oven before 8am, which is when the orders for the breakfast hot option of the day would begin to rattle around in my head. Three more scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, two orders of porridge, one without milk and two more hot waffles, one with chocolate sauce and the other with…..Oh Damn!! I don’t remember! It was chaos most mornings and from 8-9am I pretty much didn’t move from the stove as I cooked eggs in all their varying ways, waffles, pancakes, porridge, grilled mushrooms and so on, for the guests.

After 9am, when all the orders were finished and the other members of staff were clearing the dining room, washing all the dishes and cleaning the guests rooms, I got to work preparing for the meal that night, which usually involved de-boning, stuffing or marinating meats, chopping vegetables, making the desserts and having as much as I could ready to go for when I came off the slopes and got back into the kitchen. I became quite good at having everything super-prepared, which made my life in the kitchen during each dinner service very easy and stress free. I could usually finish all of my prep for the day, and have the afternoon cake out on the dining table by about 10:30am and have cleaned down the kitchen by about 11, which is when the day became my own. I was free to go skiing, back to bed, to the pub or to the pool, sauna, spa or gym to indulge in something other than skiing. Invariably as soon as we all finished our work in the chalet, we would all throw our ski gear on, grab our skis and head straight out onto the mountain for the day. Making the most of each hour on the piste. The day was ours….

And by about 4pm we would pull our tired bodies off the mountain after skiing hard all day and make our way back to the chalet, grab a quick shower and change back into our work clothes ready for the onslaught of the guests to come in from there mammoth day on the slopes. If I had to prepare a childrens dinner then I was usually back in the kitchen by about 4:30-5pm, otherwise I usually didn’t have to start work again until roughly 6pm, for the 7:30pm adults dinner service. I somehow had perfected the art of being able to prepare a 6 course dinner service into just an hour and a half!

Dinner services usually ran with either Wendy or Darren acting as the MC for the evening. Pouring the wine at the dinner table for guests and just generally adding to the atmosphere of the evening, while Phil, Matt and I looked after the kitchen and serving of the courses. At 7:30 guests would come down from their rooms and be greeted with a selection of canapés with wine. This gave the chalet hosts a good opportunity to hear all about the days events on the slopes and to generally just chat and mingle with the guests. Once the guests were seated at the table, we would serve the starter, followed by a quick palate cleanser, which gave me an extra few minutes to plate the main course after I had politely excused myself from the table and ran back into the kitchen, from eating the starter course. The main would be served, followed by a cheese board, which is very French as they prefer to eat cheese before having their sweet dessert. Following dessert Darren or Wendy would offer the guests tea, coffee or liqueurs while Phil, Matt and I got back in the kitchen. The boys got to work cleaning all the dishes and keeping the industrial dishwasher going while I gave the kitchen a thorough cleaning. Equipment, utensils, the hob, surfaces and floor all had to be spotless each night, as you would expect. We would usually be finished by about 9:30-10pm each evening. Which is when we could all relax after yet another days work in the Alps.

As if we hadn’t had enough fun for one day, as if we weren’t all tired enough, most nights we would traipse a path through the snow to Steifs Bar or the Swallow, for a game of pool and a few drinks. Well that’s if we were able to silence the sensible parts of our brains which was usually telling us to go home and get a good nights sleep. But invariably the party would begin and once it had begun, it was hard to drag yourself away and miss out on all the fun! This was when the “Ill sleep in May” statement came flying out of our mouths.

You never quite knew what to expect each time you walked through those bars doors. Some nights it would be dead quiet and you could get away with just having a game or two of pool and a few drinks catching up with friends within the village. But some nights, usually the ones when you least expected it, would turn into massive nights of mayhem and fun. Some of our best nights out were those that happened on the spare of the moment.

One of my most memorable nights out was a Thursday night when Darren, Phil and I decided to go to the swallow bar for a game of pool and a quiet drink and landed up being the only people left in the Bar when Vince, the owner decided to lock us in with him until 3 or 4 in the morning, with drinking games and dancing on tables a plenty. The notorious ‘lock in’ was to be avoided at all costs if you needed to be sober for work the next morning, but sometimes there was just no escaping them. Needless to say I was the laughing stock the next morning while trying to cook pancakes for 20 odd guests! Which is when I would swear to never do it again! But of course there was always a next time….

There were nights I would walk away from the bar and begin the 20 minute walk down the hill from the village back to our staff chalet at 5:30 in the morning knowing that I had to get to bed for at least the hour I could manage. Why did it do it to myself?!!

For some the après (partying) is the best part of the season. And without it your season just wouldn’t be the same but speaking from experience striking a balance between all the aspects of resort life is paramount. The tricky balance between work, skiing and partying is hard to find at times but totally essential for your season to be enjoyable and successful. As the consequences for neglecting or indulging in either of them can be dire.

With the exception of our changeover days on Saturdays and Thursdays when I would do the weekly shop in Grenoble, pretty much everyday existed just as I have described. Us seasonaires became creatures of habit, doing the same thing, day in day out and who could blame us for it! I know you’re all secretly jealous!