(Sestriere, Italy)

After two days of snow, we awoke to a brilliantly sunny sky for our third day of skiing.  Today’s mission:  to thoroughly explore the Sansicario ski area, located to the northwest of Sestriere.

Looking at the piste map, the main attraction here was the Olympica – the women’s downhill course at the 2006 Olympics.  As we had hoped, this long piste was steep, straight and still covered with lots of fresh snow.   Even though it was the most direct route down to the actual resort of Sansicario, it was wide enough to accommodate substantial traffic and still retain abundant stashes of untracked powder.

While this was our favourite run today, the day was really devoted to enjoying the beauty of the snowy Alps under a brilliant March sun.  There were long pistes winding through the woods…where we would be the only skiers for 10 minutes or more.  It is hard to imagine this happening in North America:  we certainly did not expect sunny silence and isolation at a major resort that had recently hosted the Olympics.

Lunch was at a strategically situated restaurant about one-third of the way down from the top of the mountain.  We were able to get an outdoor table at the edge of the balcony, gleaming in the sun and overlooking the rest of the area.  The food was simple (“Milanese”, better known as Wienerschnitzel) but satisfying.  We ate at a very leisurely pace, thoroughly feeling as if we were living la dolce vita.

Despite the leisurely lunch, we must have skied on virtually every Sansicario piste by the end of the day.   While we cut loose a little bit when we skied on Olympica, we didn’t work too hard for the most part.  We did, however, manage to scope out the next day’s route:  in order to ski to France, we would have to ski beyond Sansicario through Cesane Torinese and then Claviere.  Given the distances involved (the French resort of Montgenevre lay beyond the Italian border town of Claviere), we would not be able to make any navigational mistakes if we were to ski to France and make it back to Sestriere before the lifts closed.

Stay tuned to see if we will achieve our goal!