Wednesday, 5 March 2008

The Swiss Wall Revisited

We had some pretty extreme weather today with 45kph winds and a wind-chilled temperature at the top of -26C.  That's the way i like it and, even better, we had more totally awesome powder and happily, unlike yesterday, the Wall was open.  So we skied it.  Twice.
i can't understand the muggles yesterday skiing down it when it was closed because of avalanche risk.  It's not like there was any ambiguity about whether it was open or not:
The Swiss Wall - closed
Note the muggles in the background who had skied around the fence put there to stop you killing yourself. Even today, when we skied it we actually skied over the crack where the slab avalanche must have happened.
Anyway, we skied way over to the right of the wall to lay down fresh tracks.  These are my tracks, indicated by the arrow below, of which i am intensely proud.  That blue circle at the top just under the mountains surrounds a little speck which is my lovely wife.  The powder was mid-thigh deep on this slope.
The Swiss Wall - tracks
The second run was just as good and the Wall was definitely the place to go for good powder today.  We headed back on the Cubore off-piste which is rapidly becoming a favourite as it consists of undulating hills which are just fantastic in the powder.
This is Natalie at the top of the Wall.  It's actually a bit steep in places.
The Swiss Wall - Natalie on it
And this is Natalie skiing the fresh powder on the Wall making super-awesome turns all the way down.  Again, the heavy-breathing and poor commentary and worse camera-work should be excused.
The snow is just fabulous at the moment and it doesn't look like it's going away any time soon.  We've got snow every day for the next week and more than 20cm coming after the weekend.  This is as good as it gets.

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