Now for Your McMillan Week, 1 hotel visit, 2 parties, 3 races, loadsa people and finishing with great weather

Your McMillan Week

What a week it was, our 95th Anniversary Week a mass start Downhill race, a much missed intended parallel slalom and a great Giant Slalom. The poor weather of the first half of the week was instantly forgotten with the glorious weather of Thursday and Friday. Yet we still ski’d every day. The Ski Club of Great Britain helped out in the form of Genevieve James, she joined our Ski Leading crew and did some excellent entertaining on the slopes. Marguerite Nice already a much loved DHO Ski Leader also did some days leading – despite being on holiday, on her birthday week! Thank you ladies, much appreciated.

I had a lovely email from Martin, telling me he’d missed skiing with me or the other two during McMillan week but, with a group of 16 in the Hotel Baeren they would have rather swamped our groups. Thank you Martin, we did enjoy your evening shirts. Within that group a newly engaged couple, one of whom; not yet a skier! Oh the pressure. I’m delighted to tell you that Ben did magnificently.

Monday night we went to The Maya Caprice for drinks and a good blether, a massive thank you to Daniel, Andy and the team. We felt very welcome and well looked after – although there was rather a lot of us. Which always causes difficulties at a bar. If you’ve not been up to the Caprice this winter, they have this excellent craft beer from the Old School brewery.

Tuesday following  good hard ski in thoroughly hard conditions, running the parallel slalom would have been miserable. However we gathered in the Figeler Schneebar Tent from 6 till 7:30 pm and had another blast. Which included a Lawrance driven boat race: the youths idea, the youths energy but the over 50’s won again! A McMillan week boat race? could this be a thing?

Wednesday: significantly better weather a very soft piste and some serious racers. That evening we all gathered in our Club Room. did the 10chf party thing, signed up for the McMillan, recieved our briefings. Bought some more raffle tickets. More about the raffle at the end of the blog. What an evening 50+ folk in the Club Room. Good Craic all round.

Thursday. The McMillan downhill. Mass Start. Phenomenal. Sadly our usual piste, run 21 the Tschuggen was not available. However, SOS Scheidegg closed the Mettlen, Blue 22 to Brandegg for us. What a treat. Vivien did the final clearing run, Will the video run and our Fore-runner was Jordan Blaser. We had Catherine collecting bags and  Leslie, Helen, Susie, Lizzie, Rodney, Nova, Paul, Ben, Iona, Simon, Jenny, Tony and ………. doing the myriad of other tasks that make the race possible. So thank you everyone. We had 5 over 80 racing and the tightest finish we’ve seen in years.

McMillan Finish

Significant Drama! That was Harri Lawrance out front (Happy Birthday) and Rosie Lawrance (Fastest Lady)  the scream. The two on the floor were George and Will with third place going to Thomas Clayton and second going to Tim Blaser. Wonderfully exciting, almost too much for some! Well done everyone.

In the evening following the prize giving we went up to Hotel Regina and had a magnificent Gala Dinner in celebration of our 95th Anniversary. What a fabulous night. Trychler bells, great food one small speech plus a wee bonus one, dancing and music and lights and of course a fabulous cake.

Here’s the race results

The race was fun. The timing was all pretty neat, but worked. I was on the 08:24, skied the course. Set up the start and the finish and got back to Kleinescheidegg for 09:50. Despite delays for technical issues the support crew were all accounted for by 10:30 and everyone started heading to their positions.

The piste was closed at 11:15, Bib’s were all handed out by 11:20. The left leg was cleared and manned and ladied by 11:25 and the final check was on route. The video run set off just before 11:30 and the forerunner not long after 11:30. At the top we waited; bits were champed, heart rates fluttered and rev’d. the all clear was given at 11:36 and very shortly after that, they were off.

From all accounts they loved it. Actually too people felt it was so much less scary than the Tschuggen piste that they are considering sponsoring a new race on that piste!

Last Weeks Raffle

Did you know we had a raffle last week? If you weren’t here almost certainly not. If you were here, then I’m sorry you missed it. A general fund raiser supported by several local or simply amazing tourism suppliers. People bought their tickets hoping to win nights in 5* Accommodation, cinema tickets, trips to the Top of Europe or on a Jet Boat or even lunch in a revolving restaurant. And of course a pair of people won each prize. I’m looking forward to tales of wonder from Deborah, who of course won the nights in the Waldhaus!

So here are the things you could do on holiday here as well as ski:

https://waldhaus-sils.ch/en/

https://www.jetboat.ch/

https://schilthorn.ch/en/Welcome#

https://www.jungfrau.ch/en-gb/

http://kinowengen.ch

Check out the links above and consider……

Thank you for reading. See you next week.