Snow line at two thousand

The snow line sat at two thousand metres all week, which in the third week of April is roughly where it should be and still manages to feel abrupt.

Below it the valley is doing the ordinary business of spring: mud, gravel, the first green on the lower slopes, and the particular smell of ground that has been under snow for five months and is now not. Above it the mountain is entirely unchanged and will be until June.

You can walk to the line in about ninety minutes from the house. It is worth doing once. There is no gradual transition — you come round a shoulder of the path and winter simply begins, with an edge you could draw with a ruler, and it moves up the hillside at something like fifteen vertical metres a day.

The lifts close on the twenty-seventh. The last week of the season is quiet and slightly melancholy and much the best skiing for anyone prepared to be on the first car and finished by eleven.

After that the house empties, the staff scatter to Corsica and Brittany and one to a fishing boat, and Marcel goes over the road machinery with a level of care that suggests he is already thinking about November.

We close on the fourth of May and open again on the twelfth of December. In between, the building is aired, the fires are cleaned, and the beech that was cut last March finishes its second summer in the stack.