Our annual ski trip for 2015 was at New Year, and we returned to Mayrhofen. There were days of heavy snowfall, which was great, and one of arctic wind, which wasn’t. Poor weather often means good snow, but combined with piste skiing is often poor for photography, so not much inspiring produced from the days out. However, one day was notable for a power outage over a big chunk of the mountain. Links being what they are, this produced a very large number of skiers at the end of the day at the bottom of slopes which would normally be uncrowded. The resort responded with a lot of extra buses, but with the crowds overflowing onto the roads, getting these turned round was an issue, and being at the very top of the valley, narrow roads were also slowing things down. This would no doubt all have been fine with a bit of marshalling and crowd cooperation, but people were clearly tired, irritable and bored. The number of people behaving in a completely counterproductive and frankly inconsiderate manner eventually got to me, and I just set off to walk, carrying skis, in ski boots, seven miles down the road. Since I use ski touring boots which are designed for a certain amount of walking and climbing, this was not quite as epic as it might sound, though it did take a bit longer than I’d hoped, and the traffic was a bit of a problem with no provision made for pedestrians on most of the road. The light faded, and one good result of all this was a bit of sunset photography. Here’s my favourite: