The Silitch Family

Adventures in the Alps and Beyond

Thursday, February 19, 2009

1st Place Senior Women-La Verte Envers-Les Houches

La Verte Envers is the named dubbed for the local Somfy Mountain Ski tour event held here in our Valley at Les Houches. If any of you are familiar with the world cup downhill-Kandahar / La Verte http://www.chamonixworldcup.com/ This race goes down the Verte trail. You can imagine as a world cup downhill it is pretty steep and goes pretty fast ( a few minutes) It was just last year we watched Bode fly down this hill.


Well, our race went up, 870 meters up- with 2 boot packs (ski carry's) It took Lyndsay and I around 53 minutes. This was the third year the race has been held. Lynday and I have done it each year, with our times getting better each year. This year it was snowing heavily at the start but we still managed to beat our time from last year. We came in 3rd and 4th overall for women respectively, and 1st and 2nd for senoir women.

The race was super well organized- by the EMHM (ecole military de haute montagne) These soldiers helped set up the course and were on the course throughout making sure it was safe- or serving tea or vin chaud at the finish, and helping keep the wine and water pitchers filled at the dinner. The ambience of the race is one of my favorites, as there were a lot of locals and friends from the Valley racing and cheering! It is really nice when people cheer or say "allez-allez" go go as these uphills are not exactly the easiest things on your lungs. When you get to the top vin chaud is not usually the first thing on my mind. All in all, a really fun local event for all to enjoy.