Friday 11th December

Woke up to bright sunshine but slightly colder temps, and good news over breakfast that we were going to ski Arcalis as Pal and Arinsal were both not open. A 35 minute car journey and we finally saw some snow.

We met up with our guide for the day, Miguel, a retited doctor and race coach, and headed off up La Basera lift to Les Portelles at 2550m. There was clearly a lot of epic off piste action to be had around here, although sadly with no fresh snow for a week and warm temps, we weren't going to be able to sample it.
The temp suddenly turned chilly up here, and we decided to head down the first piste, which was La Portalla del Mig, a steep red under the chair back to the base. This was quite a testing start for us all, first action of the season and we get thrown down a long steep red! But it felt amazing...letting the skis run eventually after negotiating the steepest section at the top. These Stockli's felt nice and grippy, and then suddenly felt very fast as we bombed off after Miguel back to the bottom lift.

We had a nice tour of the area, there is roughly 70km of skiing and all but one piste was open, and we managed to ski it all in the daym, with an hour for lunch at 1pm. There are some lovely cruisy blues around the back in La Coma area. Sadly the exciting looking L'Estany red from Cota at 2625m was the run that was shut, but would be well worth a burn down in good conditions. It was nice that the slopes were virtually empty......I reckon we saw 100 people tops all day, and most of them finished at 2 for a long lunch - what as waste of VST (valuable skiing time).
Hfu was struggling to keep up on his board; it wasn't great and he was finding it hard to maintain any speed on it, and had a couple of falls but nothing serious. Timm on the other hand was flying, and he and I started to have some fun and banter as the day wore on, resulting in the usual spraying of snow and the responding unhooking of my bindings and faceplant!
Round the front side of the resort, there are also a number of good runs including the fast red El Bosc as well as the more relaxed La Font blue, and we had an hour at the end of the day without the guide to let ourselves go a bit.
This is looking down the top part of the steep Portella del Mig red:

This is over in the sunny La Coma bowl at the back:

After a testing first day on the slopes, where better to relax than back in Andorra la Vella at the lovely Caldea spa and wellness centre with a personal 20 minute massage, followed by a selection of sauna's, steam room's and relaxation pools (after a beer, of course....)

Dinner was taken back at the hotel along with a few more beers and some shots, before being told that Pas de la Casa was being opened in the morning, so off we headed to get a decent night's kip.