The first days of this season came very late for me, much because I have become a GRANDMOTHER! How can you leave your daughter and her newborn baby girl alone in Sweden, and just go to ski? Not possible for my Italian heart!

So the first 40 days after birth are essential for living creatures to install themselves in this life and get some stability, as the tradition tells. The Tibetan Buddhists tell that it takes 40 days even after death for us to leave this life totally…

Anyway, I went to Champoluc - no rather the 1600th century village of Palouettaz that is my home in the valley - after these 40 days and enjoyed my first skiing for the season with my good friend Kicki from Nacka in Sweden and my old friend Manna from Milan. These ladies are really flying on skis and it was a pleasure to have the slopes pretty much only for us before the weekend. Good for training leg muscles for the upcoming job I have to do following my strong guests on the slopes. I am not sure the two ladies really understood each other, because the combination of Swedish, Italian and English is a little bit weird sometimes. But it seems like they had a good time together.

It is one of the big plus of living between two countries, that you can put together the best of both of them.

There are many English tourists this season in Champoluc! They come by couch each morning and fill the small area around the main lift of the village and the ski rental stores. Compared to them TheAlp is a very small agency, but consistent! Thealps has been around for 20 years, by the way! We have exactly the same concept as always: tailor made and personally genuine travels to selected destinations in the Alps and in Italy for private persons and for groups and corporate. EASY!

And we have even doubled ourselves. Since a while now, it is not only Marta who rules, but also Linnea. I am Italian from Milan and leave in Nacka, Sweden (when not in Palouettaz) and Linnea is Swedish from Tothenburg and lives in Donnas, Aosta Valley. We complete each other pretty well I believe, or what you think?

To celebrate this incredible accomplishment and jubileum we have a very kind young filmmaker hanging around with his camera making a movie about Thealps. Interview in Thealpstugan, our office and home in Palouettaz, hiking with snowshoes to Rifugio Ferraro in Resy, back and forth, skiing backwards on small snowy roads in the woods, and so on! He is very professional and really enthusiastic! Remember the name: Axel Adolfsson.

The idea is to make a short 2-3 minutes film to publish on medias. But it seams like we have already so much material that it could be a documentary about Thealps mormor (granny), more than a short film. He will be here until the end of March, so there still is long to go – ski - with the camera!

To avoid the mass of people hitting the slopes of Monterosa-ski on the weekend, me and my best friend Elisabetta, who has also been in the valley for all her life (and can therefor accept to miss a day of skiing on piste on Sunday), decide to let her try a tour on skins. Strangely enough, she has never before, in spite of the fact that she is a strong hiker in the summer. The snow conditions were not extremely favorable. We were not out for powder anyway, and it is a pleasure to walk up the mountain, in the perfect silence of the spring-winter, before water flows and keeps back the jiggling and chanting and roaring of the melting and the floods. I’d call it ski-touring rather than ski-mountaineering in this case, because we just hike from back the house and up a bit, until we are tired and need to take a sandwich and an orange and a sip of water. Palouettaz – car - Mandrou, Alpe Metzan, Alpe Vascotcha. And back a little bit on the pists of Antagnod. It goes up for almost 400 meters like this, as it shows later. Not bad for a granny, especially at the height of 2000 meters and above, what you think?

The days are warm and sunny and I spend long time at the computer as well. Not so bad if I can sit on the balcony of our beautiful home in the Alps! Waiting for the bigger part of our guests still to come through March and April. Ester is late this year!