Our Blog - where we went

We wanted to give Lucy an opportunity to experience snow, and we really don't get snow in Toulouse. Luckily, we live a couple hours north of the Pyrenées, so we can pop down there on a day-trip. I did a bit of investigating and decided to go to Ax-les-Thermes and the ski station of Ax 3 Domaines. We drove and parked fairly easily, and then took the télécabine (a glass gondola) up to the first level. It seemed like there was another enclosed télécabine that could take us up another level, but we decided this time to just remain at the first level, which was at about 4700 ft high. Lucy did better on the ride up than she did last time, when we went up to an area near Mont Blanc. She still wasn't excited to go up, but remained pretty calm.

A few pictures going up, some of the town of Ax-les-Thermes down below us and then just as we were going up. There really wasn't as much snow as I had expected. It was quite brown at the bottom and about half-and-half as we went up the hill.

We weren't going to venture too far into the ski station itself, especially when Lucy seemed to bark at every person carrying skis. Instead, we headed out on a path that headed up the hill a little where you could do snowshoes or hiking. The snow was a little icy and so you can see how she mostly just walked on top of the snow that was there (while we sunk down to the ground). Every once in awhile (which you can see in the videos), she would break through the top and it was a bit more difficult for her to walk/run.

She likes to chew on ice cubes, so it was not shocking that she decided to eat some snow along the way.

Then I took her down a little hill off the path to an area with trees and quite a bit of snow (I sunk up to my knee at one point). We let her off the leash and she got to run around a little bit.

The further up we walked, the more snow-covered the path got, until it was pretty much all snow. Once we were mostly by ourselves, we let her off the leash again and threw the ball down the path for her.

Last thing was to grab some pictures of the other mountains around ... again ... there was a lot less snow than I expected. Perhaps this really IS global warming! Also a picture of the ski station where we grabbed lunch before heading home.