10/11.3: Ski Test: Dynastar Sultan Legend 94

Day Three of our ski season coincided with the Avoriaz Ski Test. Nice of them to think of us. A Ski Test is where you can, in exchange for a blood sample, your family history to 6 generations, and you own head (on a plate), you can try out any skis you like. You get an hour and a half to go and do whatever you want.

The ski test stalls in Avoriaz

I have been itching to try out the Dynastar Sultan Legend 94s. I'm an intermediate skier and have been on Rossignol Bandit B78s for the last three years. Nothing wrong with the Bandits but I am beginning to think that their "all-mountainness" means that, yes, you can go anywhere and they can do anything, but also that that means that they don't do anything particularly well. They aren't good carvers, i find them wobbly on hardpack, and just average off-piste.

Specifically, i've found that i'm sinking in powder and I need to put a lot of energy into the turn to get it to happen. As I said, i'm only intermediate (and a very aggressive skier) so this is certainly down to bad technique but at the same time, i think a fatter ski is going to help.

For those still reading who don't have a clue what i'm on about the numbers in the ski name indicate how wide the ski is at the middle of the ski. My current Bandits are 78mm across the waist and the Sultan 94s are 94mm at the waist (the waist being the middle of the ski). Fatter ski equals more float in powder. More float in powder equals awesome skiing experience - like flying down a mountain just a few centimeters above the ground at 30kph.

So anyway, we eventually found the Dynastar stall and i asked about the 94s only to be told that they had four, but that they were all out on tests. Just before starting to weep, a man appeared next to me (clad in golden armour which shone with a light from within - Armor +6) and presented the lady at the stall with a pair of skis. Not just any skis but Sultans. Not just any Sultans but 94s and not just any 94s but 178cm (length) Sultans.

Incredible good luck as that is the perfect length for me. After getting my hire card (which actually was very straightforward: drivers license and credit card) i was clutching the 94s only moments later.

Eagerly clutching my Sultans

The label said "Come On Ski", so we did heading over to Fornet. The variable conditions we've had here over the past two weeks were actually great for my test. I found ice, steeps, some shallow powder, bumps, and nice groomed pistes as well. Each ski is only 16mm wider than my Bandits but the difference is incredible. Even on only a very light dusting of powder you're riding much higher. And even on crusty stuff i found that i was on the snow as opposed to in it like i am on the Bandits.

I have a lot to learn and clearly, this being the first fat ski i've skied, the skis are much better than me, but that's the point - to learn something new. I found that they are much more stable than my Bandits. They have wider sidecut of the Sultans at 18m vs the Bandits with 16m. Even though these are really off-piste powder skis, i found them much more fun to carve on the pistes. Bumps were more difficult and I couldn't really do my whippy turns that i can do on the Bandits on moguls.

Natalie off-piste on Fornet. I really like this part of the PdS.

The biggest test was going back to the Bandits after and hour and a half on the Sultans. My Bandits felt weak and whishy-washy after the power and stability of the Sultans. I think I adapted to the Sultans pretty quickly. I realised immediately that these were a totally different beast. On powder I found myself being super-aggressive as usual, but these didn't like that at all. I needed a much lighter touch to carve a turn on the powder. I can't wait to try them in proper deep stuff.

As Natalie said, the fact that I noticed the difference was a good sign. I'm not really good enough to ski these yet and I'll have to take it easy at the start, but I think they will be an excellent 2nd ski for me. Father Christmas, are you reading this?

PS. Avoriaz did a great job keeping the resort open on Saturday. Heavy rain has decimated the snow all over the Portes du Soleil but they managed to groom some great pistes and even build the Arare snowpark. The snow has started again today, so it's still looking like a very good start to the season.

Catered Chalets

This is going to be a weird post. With all the major humanitarian problems the world suffers with I can't see that there will be a lot of sympathy for my little rant here, but anyway, this has been bugging me so...

Chalet holidays are too cheap. Since moving out to France we've met a lot of chalet operators and not one of them can actually afford to live out here the whole year round purely on what their chalet generates in the Winter. And yet they all continue to make a loss and do oodles of other jobs to compensate and carry on living their Alpine lifestyles. I think this is madness. There are about 100 independent chalet operators in Morzine. They're all in close competition with one another and they all charge about the same amount.

Peak weeks are about 500 - 600 EUR and low weeks are about 400 - 500 EUR. For that you get 7 nights accommodation, breakfast and a 4-course evening meal. So that's an average of about 70 EUR per night per person. A four-course meal at a restaurant (and a lot of chalets serve very high quality food made by professional chefs) would set you back at least 30 EUR. And there's usually free wine. So let's say it's 50 EUR a night to stay and 20 for food. Most places now have en-suite bathrooms, saunas, and outdoor hot-tubs. All this for about 70 EUR a night.

So now, my question is, where can you stay, anywhere in the UK, for 60 GPB a night with breakfast and supper included? You can't even stay in a Travel Lodge off the M25 for that money. The last time i stayed at a Travel Lodge off the M25 (which was recently unfortunately) i don't recall seeing the hot-tub and sauna either.

Basically I just don't get it. Your lift pass is about as expensive as your accommodation. Why do chalet operators willingly make a loss and their lives so difficult? They could charge double and it would still be value for money: 140 EUR for 4 star accommodation with breakfast and supper? Last month we paid over 200 GBP for Natalie to stay in a random 4 star hotel in London for one night - no breakfast and no supper.

They are driving themselves out of business. It's not even cheaper to stay self-catered. We've tried both and there's really no super-cheap option. Possibly Caravaneige would be cheaper. Caravaneige is staying in a caravan in a campsite in the snow.

So... what am I saying? I think i've even confused myself here. What I'm saying to my non-chalet-operator readers is that you should stay in a (good) catered chalet or hotel because it's unbelievably cheap! Most chalet companies have a lifespan of about 5 years - and then the owners give up and run self-catered apartments or just pack up and leave. It's also really only the English that do catered chalet holidays. The French, Dutch, and Germans stay in small hotels or self-catered or in the aforementioned campsites. I suspect unless something changes (like the Euro plummeting) that the traditional English catered chalet holiday could be coming to an end.

As I said, not really earth-shattering. I don't expect this post to be on CNN or anything, I just think it's strange to willingly make a loss and work so hard just to be out in the Alps. When you read on the operator's website that they love the mountains, I can attest that, and this (sort of) proves that, they really do!

Slackcountry

I recently learned a great new phrase: "slackcountry". Slackcountry skiing is, as far as i can make out, lift-assisted backcountry skiing. Back-country skiing is skiing off-pistes where there are no chairlifts. So, for example, in the Portes du Soleil we have le Vallee de la Manche. This valley runs from the tops of the Fornet valley down to Morzine at the Nyon cable car. You can get a lift right to the top of Fornet and then climb over a little ridge and then get about 4km of unspoilt (i.e. no lift-pylons) off-piste skiing.

This run most definitely falls into the slackcountry category. I think other qualifying slackcountry skiing might be where you use a lift for a portion of the climb, and then skin up (walk up on skis) the rest of the way. And although it's not pure randonee, I think it's an excellent way for Alpine skiers to get into Randonee skiing by skiing close to the relative safety of the resort.

Having said that, all off-piste is dangerous and you should always hire a guide with transceivers. Especially down the Vallee de la Manche. This valley is notorious for avalanches and you should absolutely only ski it with a qualified guide. We skied it for the first (and so far only) time with a chalet "ski-host". He had no transceiver and was leading a group of poor skiers down it in unpleasant conditions. Not very smart but at the time we didn't know any better. Spend the money, get a guide.

Natalie and the Swiss Wall

This deserved a post all of it's own.

Again those pesky Dents du Midi ruining the shot. If it's not blatantly obvious by the title, this was taken at the top the Swiss Wall looking over into Switzerland.

The Swiss Wall: Summer Edition

Every ski resort seems to have at least one feature which makes it (in)famous. For the Portes du Soleil this has to be the Swiss Wall. The Swiss Wall is an itinerary route from France at the top of the Col de Chavanette which you access at the top of the Fornet valley down into Switzerland (although I think the top of the Col is actually technically in Switzerland as well) at the beginning of the classic blue cruiser: Ripailles. This links you up with the Les Crozets ski area.

It has a reputation for being dangerous and there are various rumours that several people a year kill themselves on it. As far as I can tell, this is total nonsense (although i do know of deaths on The Wall, but not in the "Lemming-like droves of people hurling themselves onto the rock-hard moguls" that the hype would have you believe). If the run was that dangerous the Pisteurs would simply close it down or mark is as out-of-bounds. I'm pretty sure though, given the extremely wide variation in skill level of people i've seen skiing it, that many people do hurt themselves on it - but this is true of any run if you're going too fast for the conditions or the slope is better than you.

Last year we witnessed an English mother and (we presume) her daughter who can't have been more than 10-years old. The mother was screaming at the child to make a turn and get down the mountain. This was at the very top, the most scary part where it's probably 45 degrees. There were huge moguls like normal. The mother was probably 25m further downslope from the child screaming (angry screaming) to get a move on. When the child finally made a turn, fell, and slid down face first probably 15m bouncing over the moguls, the mother simply said sarcastically: "Well that's one way to do it".

The person should have had her lift pass taken away. It's really quite unpleasant when you see parents yelling at their kids on a ski holiday (this was not the first time). The worst part was that when the mother herself made her next turn it was clear that she had no idea how to ski herself. Neither of them should have been on that slope. I heartily recommend that you ski it the first time with someone who has done it before and can show you the way. I also recommend that you don't take young children down it. You do ski children skiing it, but generally you can tell that these children live here and probably first donned a pair of skis aged 2. i.e. better skiers aged 7 that I will ever be.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be about the Wall itself, not crazy people skiing it.

Natalie at the top of the Swiss Wall showing off the Dents du Midi

This summer Natalie and I walked up the Col de Chavanette to take a look at it without snow. I thought my keen and massive audience would like to see how it looks in the summer. While out walking in the summer i often ponder various slopes, mentally rating them from "totally skiable" (meaning i probably couldn't ski it) to "definitely skiable" (meaning i would try to ski it and fail miserably).

This is the very edge of the precipice, looking down on what would normally be huge moguls.

So what is The Wall like in the summer? It is very steep - you can't walk straight down it , but I think it would distress people dreaming of one day saying, as I proudly did several years ago, that they finally skied the Swiss Wall, that in the summer cows graze on it and that our dogs ran up and down it like it was any other playing field. Worse, there's a track you could probably drive up on in a Fiat Panda - ok maybe a quad-bike.

Looking back up to the top from skier's right. In the second shot (which you can click on) you can see me dangling my pole to give you an idea of the steepness. I bet some very clever person can determine from the aspect and resolution the inclination of the slope... and post it as a comment! I tried it with an on-screen protractor and got about 42 degrees. i.e. Steep.

I tried to take photos to allow me to actually measure the angle, but i think the ground inclination is definitely 40 - 45 degrees at the top, as previously stated. 50 - 55 may be pushing it. However, in the Winter it is covered in huge moguls which definitely change your skiing inclination. There are also massive boulders and the jeep-track i mentioned earlier cuts deeply into the hillside making 2-3m vertical drop-offs in some places.

Here i've lined the base of the camera up with the slope to try and convey the steepness (i think we need a word like stepth in the english language).

We scrambled all over the top of the wall looking for good photo opportunities. This one is taken from slightly further over to skier's left and i'm wandering down to take a closer look at the jeep tracks.

This next photo is taken from the edge of the lip at the top. This is the part where people normally chicken out. Ok, that's not very nice and not at all in line with my rant about unsuitable skiers skiing it. 

*Ahem*, this then, is where sensible people who know their own ability make the decision to go or not to go. The nasty thing about the wall is that you can't see it until you're on it. The crazy-bad-skier-mother who was screaming at her child told the child that she was "just" afraid and that she could ski it. Fear and confidence are the only things holding people back with their sking. This moron-bad-mother-skier didn't seem to get the fact that the fear was the problem, and that she wasn't doing much to help her daughter not be afraid.





And since the dogs did not stay still long enough for me to prove that they were bounding all over the Swiss Wall like it was a flat meadow, here they are:





Scarlett on the left, Runa on skiers right. Dents du Midi wouldn't get out the shot.


And finally. This is the last sign you'll see in France before attempting The Wall.





See you on it this season!

10/11.2

Day Two of the 2010/2011 ski season! This time we headed out with Craig, our friend and neighbour who is a BASI 4 ski instructor who's passed all the crazy French tests to be able to teach here. For example, one of the tests involves you being critiqued on your technique by a team of extremely exacting instructors by video. In another test you have to beat (or come very close to) a high-ranked FIS champion skier down a slalom course. In a nutshell, he's an amazingly good skier! We also skied with his Dad, Arnott, and two other friends: Beverley and Alison who are respectively massage therapists and run their own transfer company.

It was an incredibly advanced group of skiers. Everything happened twice as fast as normal. We skied entire pistes without stopping once. It was amazingly good fun. I learnt a lot too, just by skiing behind Craig and watching his carving technique and the way he bounced down the moguls. Hopefully his wife Dani, who is also a ski instructor and former #1 British ski champion, will be able to join us next time. It's quite cool being way out of my depth!

10/11.1

Saturday was Day One of the 2010-2011 ski-season! Natalie and I went out and bought our season passes: EUR 1224 (ouch, plus insurance at EUR 112). We get the Saison Indigene pass which is quite a bit cheaper because we live in one of the communes connected with the Portes du Soleil (St Jean d'Aulps). Considering one week's skiing is EUR 232, 600 for the whole season isn't bad at all.

Then we headed up to Les Prodains (the only lower-level lift that was running) and took the chair lift up over the Arete des Intrets. It took us 30 minutes to find parking because everyone in France, remembering the last two weeks of constant snow-fall and perfect clear blue skies on Saturday, had the same idea to go skiing at Avoriaz. All three carparks at Les Prodains were full.

Natalie on the famous Bleu de Lac blue piste with Avoriaz in the background.

We nevertheless managed to find freshish powder that had been quite well tracked out but still fun on the Arete. We had a quick burn down to Lindarets. I was slightly disappointed with the quality of the piste bashing. It always seems to get so badly churned up in Avoriaz for some reason, turning normal blue runs into mogul fields. Other resorts seem to manage to keep their pistes perfectly smooth all day so i don't know why Avoriaz often has gnarled up pistes.

Me in the powder on the Arete des Intrets which was unpisted but which is normally a black run.

Anyway, after taking out a second mortgage on a chocolat chaud and a coke in Avoriaz (EUR 6), we headed home down the deserted pistes of Le Crot. All in all it was a brilliant first day.

Runa

I'm not the only one that likes snow...

Lunch

What did you do during your lunch break?

That's the Roc d'Enfer in the background. Plenty of snow at Grand Terche.

20cm

We've had 20cm of snow overnight at 984m and it's still snowing. It's -1C outside and the snow is light and fluffy. If anyone has a Portes du Soleil ski trip planned for late November, you'll probably get the best powder of your life. Pity the resort doesn't open for 3 weeks!

Last night I skied my back garden. This is the start of the famous Le Penotet ski run - just through the gate. I got attacked by a thorn bush on the way down but it was every bit as fantastic as I thought it would be! The lift service back to the top wasn't very good though, but at least the pass was cheap. This photo is at 1000m - can you imagine what it's like at 2400m? Tomorrow I plan to find out!

Chez Nous

I've always* wanted to have my house on a ski map and now it is! For those brave souls contemplating coming out to visit us, this is where we are on the Portes-du-Soleil piste map.

The above map I am showing without anyone's permission, so I hope that's ok. If not, you know now where to send the summons.

This weekend Natalie and I walked up from the red dot to the west up the Col de l'Ecuelle. From the Col we finally satisfied ourselves that our chalet is definitely "Ski-In". Ski-In/Ski-Out is a popular marketing phrase which indicates to skiers that their chosen chalet/hotel is on or very near to a piste. That you can literally ski from the door to the lift and ski back to your door from a higher lift. Clearly many operators use this definition very loosely. For example, there are almost no true ski-in/ski-out chalets in Morzine, yet there seem to be many chalets offering this!

Our chalet/farm (haven't quite decided what to call it yet) is most certainly "Ski-In". In fact, it's Ski-In/Skin-out. Using Alpine Touring gear you can hike on skins (and you almost could today there was so much snow) up to the top of the Col de l'Ecuelle and then ski down into Abondance (another Portes du Soleil resort). Once you've enjoyed the delights of the Abondance valley and ski domaine you can take lifts all the way back to the top of the Col and then ski back to our place! This is probably only possible from December to February but I cannot wait to give it a try!

*always being from about 2005.

0.000000445

We now own 0.000000445% of France! At our current rate of accrual, it will only take us another 7,640,449,438 years to buy the rest of it. This is where the evil Scientist would cackle insanely as the screen faded to black. Our move went amazingly well. We had a brief moment of panic when it seemed that the sellers didn't have all their paperwork in order (and indeed, they did not) but the document they did not have (attestation d'assurance) wasn't critically important and they have promised to send it to us forthwith!

There was another panic attack when it appeared that the Notaires had got the price wrong, but after a furiously fast exchange of French numbers apparently we'd paid enough. So, with our French empire steadily growing, if anyone would fancy a French Alpine holiday... you're more than welcome!

All in all, I have to say that the process of buying a house in France is really good and much better than the UK. Once the seller has verbally accepted the offer, everyone agrees the minutiae up front and no one is allowed to back out - even if they die! The only downside of buying in France is the obscene amount of money given to the French government (9%) as part of the transaction. Whoever you are, please do enjoy my hard-earned cash - i don't begrudge giving it to you at all.

Oh, and despite all the mean things people have said about Orange France, and the mean things I was saying about them this morning when they were deserving all the mean things people usually say about them, they have come through and delivered our broadband only one day late. Hello Internet!

Snow Watch! (aka Panda Watch!)

More snow! Today it's down at around 1100m in the Morzine/Montriond area. It's now 3C outside at 961m. The big question is, do I try going up to Avoriaz again with my skins? There's more snow forecast for this weekend (Sunday). Today apparently they had 4cm and there's another 6 coming on Sunday morning... Should I leave it until Sunday? You decide!

Also, SNOW! Yay!

Panda Watch! (aka Snow Watch)

The snow has arrived! The day after I noticed that the pistes on Mont Chery had been mowed, the snow came! They mow the slopes so that the grass is short and spiky and therefore makes a rougher surface for the snow to lie on - which makes it last longer - very clever.

Anyway, on Saturday we drove over to Samoens via the Route d'Ete over the Col du Joux Plane. The snow line was at about 1200m in Morzine and i'd estimate around 5cm has fallen and was still falling while we were driving over.

On Sunday I (stupidly) tried to go for the first ski of the season butthe snow just wasn't thick enough - about 10cm had fallen in Avoriaz. The snow line in the Avoriaz area was at about 1500m. Today the outside temperature is 4C at 1000m and it's supposed to get down to 2C later in the week.

Currency

Can someone explain to me why free-market currency trading is a good thing? I don't get it. I'm just a normal guy trying to convert a large sum of Currency A into Currency B to make a normal transaction. Why should I be at the mercy of uber-wealthy hedge-fund speculators and micro-traders? The British pound has dropped from 1.22 to 1.14 to the Euro in 3 weeks. This drop can be attributed to two things, one of them real: house prices have dropped in a UK (a bit - not much). The second "factor" is the belief that maybe, possibly, the UK might think about doing some "quantitive easing" (i.e. creating money out of thin air).

However, nothing fundamental has changed between the EU and the UK in the last 6 months - everything's around about the same. In fact, today the UK voted NOT to increase QE. Why hasn't the price miraculously jumped back to 1.22 as it was before all these QE rumours started? Why has the currency been allowed to bop up and down between 1.14 and 1.23 over the last six months? This makes absolutely no sense to me and is one hundred percent down to script-kiddie machine auto-buying and selling faster than you can think and random wealthy organisations and people using the worlds economy as their own private casino.

Surely Mr Posen and Mr Sentance would know what effect their comments would have? Why are the minutes of these BoE minutes made public - I don't care what they discussed, i just want to know what the outcome of the vote was - all this information leads to speculation which means that the currency moves on hot-air - literally.

Governments should fix their currency value against a standard (some rare heavy metal whose street price has been pretty constant because there's not much of it around) for a defined period of time (1 year). When there are so many other ways for people to gamble their money away, why do they need currencies, which deeply affect normal people (like me), as well? What's wrong with this idea?

Rant over.

Nantaux: The Result

échec /eʃɛk/
(masculine noun)
1. failure;

Not a bad view from half way up though. This is on Nantaux looking towards Mont Chery with Morzine and L'Encrenaz on the lower slopes.

I was suppose to do 1km in one hour. Instead i did 500m in 40 minutes. Terrible. Terrible, terrible.

Comment Moderation

Hello fans. I know I have so many readers that I must be the second highest trafficked site on the web after Google but I think that some of you must find it annoying that you can't leave comments that show up immediately. Put another way, i would like more comments. Therefore I have (and i'm sure to regret this) disabled comment moderation. So comment away! Just be nice. Please.

Nantaux

1000m vertical over 2000m distance. Nantaux is in my immediate future starting in 22 minutes.

The route goes up the center and you can just make out the faint outline of the path to the top. Apparently the fastest time is 34 minutes - should be no problem...

Really first snow

Yip it really is snowing. I ran up to 1500m today from Lac de Montriond and encountered snow at 1541m. Big flakes too. Whenever I ran in London i wondered about whether I should be wearing my cycling mask and invariably chose not too because it was too hot. Well when you run in a much cleaner atmosphere and the air temperature is about 4C, you can really taste car exhaust fumes.

Whenever a car drove past me, which wasn't very often, i could literally taste the exhaust. And not just as they went past either, it stayed with me for about 100m afterwards. So if you live in London, you can't smell that smell because your senses are tuning it out. Wear your mask.

I'm really trying to get fit for the randonee season which i hope is going to start next month. Today was 500m vertical. In two or three days I'm hoping to run 1000m vertical. The route from Montriond to Les Lindarets is very tough for me - 500m up over 6km. From Lindarets to Avoriaz it's much easier: 300m over another 5km. We also saw the progress on the new Ardent bubble-lift today. It's looking pretty cool - fewer pylons and bigger cars (not that I've seen the cars yet). i can't wait to ride it in December. Why has no one booked their ski holiday with us yet? Time's a wasting!

First snow

It is the 26th of September and we have had our first snow of the winter. It's down at around 1500m and I am going to be running up to it later today. It might even be deep enough to be skiable at the top, or, put another way, i might not be able to complete my run! Even better news is that Tignes is already open for winter and Glacier 3000 is opening on the 15th of October.

Goat Jam

What do you do when you're on a narrow path and you're with two hunting dogs and friends with their border collie. Between them they couldn't decide whether to herd up the goats, or eat them. The cool dude on my right is Craig, who's a ski instructor for BASS in Morzine with his dog Less. The goats were sneaking in from Switzerland, but on seeing us heading that way, they about-faced and headed back out of the EU. Given the currency situation at the moment, i don't blame them.

On the way up the Col de Coux where we met the goats, we had to squeeze past a 2CV rally. I so want one of these!

Photoshop

This photo has not been photo-shopped. I promise.

You know, it's really quite pretty here. This also, was not photo-shopped:

But taking photos at night is hard. This is moonrise over the Col du Let Gets, as seen from our balcony.

Le Tour de France

Yes yes, i know it's September, but clearly i just uploaded a whole bunch of photos. This is about 500m from the finish of the Morzine-Avoriaz arrival stage.

Panorama

Once a hard-hitting UK television investo-journalistic-thingy. Now an awesome photo.

The peaks from left to right. Angolon, Les Hauts Forts, Dents du Midi, Tete de Bostan, Dents Blanche, (peaks whose names i do not know), Mont Blanc, some clouds, Chamossiere.

Mont Blanc

So i realise that photos have been lacking recently. This is an attempt to improve that. If you don't think Mont Blanc is a pretty mountain. You are wrong.

This is the view from the southern shoulder of le Point Angolon above Morzine. In the Winter there is lift access to the top of the Chamossiere to get this view. This shot was taken with a 300mm zoom lens at almost full zoom.

You an say either "Awwww", or "Ahhhh" now. It is appropriate.

Ski Tips for Beginners

It's the end of the Summer and if you're not already thinking about your 2011 ski holiday; you should be. I only starting skiing quite late on (28) and, like many others, i found the prospect of my first trip rather daunting. And with good reason: I had never seen big mountains before, I had never seen snow deeper than a few millimeters before, I had never experienced temperatures lower than about -5C, and I had never been more than about 1000m above sea level.

Clearly, given the nature of this blog, and the fact that we have changed our lives to that we can be closer to skiing, we rather enjoyed that first week, and all the subsequent weeks. Therefore I am amazed to find that some people don't enjoy it, end up in tears, or try it once and don't bother coming back. One couple that joined us for a ski week said "we liked it, but maybe we'll only come every second year or so". This boggled my mind. Then it occurred to me that not every one has the same brilliant introduction to skiing that we did. In our first week we made firm friends with "The Phils" who are excellent skiers, excellent teachers, extremely selfless in their skiing (unlike me), and above all, patient. This meant that we effectively had 2 hours of ski lessons each day with a school (which weren't very good), and then another 6 hours with The Phils - which was free!

Now obviously The Phils can't join everyone on their first ski holiday, although I'm sure they'd enjoy that and so would you, but I thought I'd put together a list of ingredients for making sure you have an excellent first week's skiing.

Ski at the end of the season

The first thing ski beginners want to know, before they come out on their first holiday, is "will there be any snow?" and "how good is the snow?". This is primarily because the media, particularly in the UK, would have us believe that the world has become a toxic desert wasteland over the last 5 years and that nowadays you only get snow a couple of days a year in Antarctica, if it's particularly cold. I live in what is considered a low-altitude resort (1000m- 2400m) by Alpine standards. I've skied here every year at varying times of the season for the last 6 years. Two of those years (2008 and 2010) we've lived here for the entire ski season. And I have never been without snow. This year we skied after the resort had officially closed as late as May. Just over a month ago we skied in Tignes at the end of August after what has been a hot summer.

There is plenty of snow. Above 1000m in Alps in the Winter you will get snow. Don't worry about it.

The next question I find ski-beginners asking is how good the snow is. This is the key to this tip. As a beginner you actually want terrible snow. This may be confusing, but let's consider what good snow really is. "Good" snow to a downhill ski champion is extremely icy, slippery, hard-(as nails)-packed, "snow" that is more like a vertical ice-rink. "Good" snow to an extreme skier is huge dumps of fresh, powdery, untracked, steep snow that no one else knows how to find.

Beginner skiers really struggle on icy snow because it's difficult to get your edges in and you feel out of control. When you make a turn, you will pick up a huge amount of speed over a very short distance. Powder is almost impossible to ski on for beginners - and is only found off-piste anyway. If there's a huge dump of powder during the day on the piste, you will spend the day fighting with your misted up goggles, not being able to see your skis in the powder and getting very wet and very cold.

This is why I say go skiing at the end of the season. Sometime near Easter is a good bet - although Easter itself can be very busy. At the end of the season there's a greater chance it will be sunny and you can actually enjoy the mountains rather than being terrified of being blown away in a blizzard. The snow will be warmer and slushier and therefore much slower because the base of the ski will stick to the snow more. This makes making a turn much easier because you will be doing it in slow motion compared to your beginner ski friends who went out in January for the first time. Quite simply, you don't pick up as much speed and therefore you have enough time to think about what you are doing and get the technique right. In your second week, go in March, your technique will be good and so you won't have to worry so much about picking up speed.

The other good thing about going at the end of the season is you get to check out the snow-report well in advance of your trip. When I've had trips planned for early January to get the good cold snow, I was always worried that it might be still raining rather than snowing. You can wait until February to book your Easter-time trip so you can be sure that the snow actually fell in your resort, without being swayed by the media. Of course, don't leave it too late to book and start checking on availability now and asking your potential hosts what the bookings are looking like for Easter-time. The week just before Easter is usually quiet.

Ski in a well-known resort

Our first ski trip was to Scotland. There was snow, the lifts were running and they were taking people up, but apparently because it was cold and windy, they weren't taking beginners up the mountain. Hmmm, whoever heard of a cold, windy, Scottish mountain in the Winter? In France, they will welcome you onto the cable car no matter the weather or your skills, as long as the lifts are running. The theory being that you can always take the car down again if you're not up to it. The moral of the story is: don't waste your time with small resorts. If you go to the major resorts, you will almost certainly get to ski, unless the weather is really too bad, but you shouldn't have that problem because you are skiing in April, remember.

I'm sure resorts in Slovenia, Scotland, and Poland are just, like, totally awesome dude, but you can always go and explore them once you are a veteran. A friend of mine went skiing in Poland to a resort that had two pistes for 5 days. I cannot imagine the intense boredom of being on the same two slopes for 5 days. You may say that two pistes is enough for a beginner, but, no matter how green you are, you will certainly want to see some different scenery each day.

Don't waste your money, it's a false economy to spend £600 in total going to a small, obscure resort which might not have all the facilities you need when you can pay £800 and go to a well-established resort where you know that they will have enough instructors, enough hirable ski-gear, and enough lifts open for you to enjoy yourself.

Therefore, for you first trip, ski the French, Austrian, or Swiss Alps. Le Portes du Soleil (where we live!) is a good resort for beginners. And no, I'm not affiliated with any tourist campaign for this area, I just like it a lot and it's where I learned to ski. Read other reviews and you will see it's generally well-regarded as a good beginner and family ski area. We've skied Sankt Anton, Val d'Isere, and Chamonix and they're great resorts (read my reviews) but I don't think any of them are well set up for beginners. Another good beginner area is Samoёns.

Buy a walking jacket

Lately I've been getting a few queries on what kind of ski jacket to buy. My advice is not to buy one at all. Rather buy a good walking jacket. Ski jackets are different to normal jackets mostly by virtue of the fact that they have snug snow-skirts in them to prevent snow getting up inside them when you fall in deep powder. I have a simple walking jacket with no snow skirt and have fallen in lots of powder. Occasionally that snow has found its way inside the outer jacket but i've always easily been able to shake it out and only got slightly damp. Use a normal jacket, save your money, and only buy what is strictly necessary, such as salopettes (waterproof ski trousers), a good beanie, waterproof gloves, and a thermal underlayer.

Pick the right ski school

The first set of ski lessons you take and the instructor you get will impact how much you enjoy skiing, how much you learn, and could dictate how you feel about the whole week. We've had a wide variety of lessons varying from disorganised weirdos who made us feel stupid to excellent, amazing skiers and teachers that really inspired us to do better.

It's really hard to pick the right school for you, so here are some facts and i'll leave the actual decision up to you. The British and Other ski schools in France generally tend to be more expensive than their French counterparts. The French ESF schools, although cheaper, tend to have larger groups, and although your instructor will speak to you in English, the skill with the English language varies massively. I remember being told that I had to "declenche" my turn. I had no idea what this meant. I found out later that déclencher means "to cause" and is used when talking about avalanches.

Group size is an important factor. I remember my early group lessons. The instructor, at best, gives you 1/n of the group's time and if one of the n people dominates the discussion, you only get 1/((n-1) + n * i), where i is how irritating the loud-mouth is. Having said that, definitely take group lessons. In your first week's skiing you need to ski with a guide/instructor who will show you where you can safely go on the mountain and you will meet other beginners. Skiing in a group when you're starting out is essential. It's a lot less scary in your first blizzard when there are other, equally scared, people around.

If you're going skiing in a busy week I would go with a school with smaller numbers, if you're going in a very quiet week (early January, late March), then a larger, cheaper school might actually have smaller groups - but there's no way of knowing this in advance.

As for the instructors themselves. They are awesome. No matter which school you go to, to be an instructor in France takes a lot of time and effort. It takes longer to become a ski instructor in France than it does to get a university degree. And in order to pass the final test you have to be seriously good. One good, but more expensive option, rather than being with the same instructor all week is to take group lessons for the first part of the week and then one or two private lessons in the latter part of the week. It's more expensive but you'll learn more.

Go skiing because you want to

So many couples end up on ski holidays because one of the pair really wants to ski. The other party varies from not caring to really not wanting to go. A skiing holiday can be daunting and is extremely tiring if you're out all day. If you're not good with heights, skiing even beginner slopes can be fairly terrifying. Being in a blizzard at -25C at 2000m where you can't see more than 5m in front of you can be quite trying on your relationship! You should always try and go out with someone who is at the same skill level as you. If you're partner is already a good skier, go out in a foursome where at least one other person is a beginner. It's not fun learning on your own and feeling you're keeping everyone else back. Alternately, if you're the good skier with your beginner partner, you need to be prepared for a "boring" week on green runs and pack loads of patience if you want to go on more holidays with your partner.

Having said that, the only reason you should spend all that money and go on a skiing holiday, is because you want to. If you just want to try it, go for a long weekend initially rather than committing a full week.

Take an afternoon off

If you've never skied before, it is a unique sport. The only way to get truly ski-fit is to go skiing. A lot. In your first week your main technique is the snow-plough, or pizza shape if you're under 10. This is extremely hard work on your quads, knees, and calves. You're also at 2000m where you will notice the change if you live at or close to sea-level. In a nutshell, you're going to get very tired. And when you're tired, you can't really make a nice snow-plough, and then you can't really stop, and then you fall and it's just generally unpleasant.

I would recommend coming out on a Saturday (night) to Saturday holiday for your first week because the ski-schools, and consequently your lessons, are set up to have you go out on your first lesson on the Sunday morning after getting your gear on Saturday late afternoon/early evening. By about the Wednesday you are basically toast. Take the Wednesday afternoon off. See the sights, go ice-skating, get out on raquettes which are really cheap to rent for the day. Sleep! You will enjoy the Thursday to final last-minute ski on Saturday morning much more as a result of this.

You'll probably have the dreaded skiers-throat by Wednesday anyway. You're not exactly sick, but you don't feel good, your throat hurts and generally, you'd rather be in bed. I don't know what causes skiers-throat, but it's a combination of cold weather, lots of exercise, and spending a week with a bunch of strangers in a house where the windows are permanently sealed closed.

Go to an indoor slope

If you live in a country where they have indoor, artificial snow, ski slopes, you would be mad not to go to one of these places before coming out on your first real-mountain skiing adventure. You only need a two hour group lesson. They will teach you basics like "putting on your skis", "standing up after a fall", "riding a drag-lift", and your first snow-plough. This will give you a huge advantage over the other beginner skiers and you'll probably impress the instructor so much that you'll get bumped to the next class up and your ski career will get off to a much faster start.

Mostly though, it'll just help you feel much less overwhelmed by all the new gear that you will have and all the new information you have to take in.

Get fit

This is the most important one. That's why i saved it until the last, assuming you're still reading. My sister-in-law, Sam, was able to ski the ladies downhill world cup black run four days after donning skies for the first time. She didn't just "get down" it, she skied it, getting almost parallel on each turn.

She was able to do this because of having the right mental attitude to skiing (realising that you're not going to die, or even hurt yourself), but mainly because she was fit. You need two types of fitness. You need good cardiovascular fitness: so go running, biking, walking, hiking. And you need quads of steel. Do lots of squats. Then do some more, and when you've done over a thousand squats, do some more.

You will enjoy your week out in the mountains so much more if you're fit. Skiing gorgeous pristine mountains is like nothing you're ever done before and i'm certain that you will love it, but not if you're in so much pain you can't face making another turn.

I hope that's useful to someone. See you somewhere in the Portes du Soleil in 2011. Bon ski!

Mushrooming

It is mushrooming season here in the gorgeous French Alps. In this part of the Alps the common varieties seem to be chanterelles and morilles - my preference being the latter. There are two many deadly mushrooms that look just like the chanterelle and the morille soaks up the flavour of whatever sauce it is in very nicely.

Anyway, what amazes me is that people actually have the time to go and look for mushrooms themselves. I barely have enough time to race down to Carrefour and get annoyed if they don't have the pre-washed pre-sliced and pre-weighed champignons ready to go.

While I was on my way down there tonight I passed a lady in the woods out looking for mushrooms. I now aspire to having enough free time to actually gather my own food from the wild. But that's ridiculous really because if I had that much free time I'd probably spend it playing GTA4.

Hey

Not many Alpine adventures listed here recently. I'm in lovely Stockholm again. Everyone here just says "Hey" all the time. It means hello, goodbye, etc. I don't know what you say if someone cuts in front of you in a line.

You may wonder what we've been doing all Summer. Well Summers here are absolutely outstanding. Being very poor following our house purchase things like mountain bikes, parapentes, and actually bringing our furniture over have slipped into next years budget.

The brilliant thing about the Alps is that all the truly awesome activities are completely free. We've been doing a lot of walking and hiking and, of course, swimming in the lake.

I am extremely excited about winter as you can probably tell. Apparently you can get skiable snow as early as October. If I wrote "come on Winter, come on, come on" would any of my South African audience remember what i'm talking about?

l'Hiver

Yesterday morning. For the first time in five months. I caught the faintest glimmer of the scent of something. It was just before dawn. It was fresh. It was invigorating. And that something, Chers Lecteurs, was.

Winter!

May the days quickly darken and the snow come thick and fast!

Red Pill

Reading this inspired me to re-watch The Matrix again for the first time in a few years. It is a truly awesome movie - even at 12 years old. Anyway, just to be annoying, i had a thought which has probably been had by many, but since it's now so old, this thought might even be considered retroactively fresh...

Anyway, the thought. Why don't the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar, when hacking into The Matrix, just carry along a red-pill with them? The red-pill "disrupts the IO carrier signal" allowing Morpheus to find Neo in the physical battery-cell matrix. But, much more importantly, it allows him to physically wake up -- without taking an exit.

So, surely, if they just took a red-pill when, say, fleeing Agents, they would just wake up. No exhausting running about trying to find an exit - they can just wake up whenever they want to. Anyway, does anyone even know what i'm on about? I should really be working anyway...

Le Penotet

Ok. I think we're far enough down the line now to make this public. I hope. Buying a house in France has been the single most difficult thing we've ever done. But it was definitely definitely absolutely worth it. As of November, this will be ours:

If you're in the Chablais Alps around mid-November, you're invited to the house-warming.

Politeness

The French are so polite. Here's how a letter from HSBC in France finishes off: Nous vous prions de croire, cher Client, a l'assurance de notre consideration distinguee. As far as i can figure out, this means: We beg you to believe, dear Client, in the assurance of our distinguished esteem.

And you know what. Being polite really isn't so bad.

Fraud

I have just experienced the worst customer service imaginable. Last year I set up my own domain with SiteGround and thought it was weird that they sent me my password to my account in clear text via email. Anyway, since this password was not used for anything else, I didn't really think much of it.

Very silly of me because two weeks ago someone in South Africa managed to hack my site and send out phishing emails to hundreds of people in South Africa claiming to be Standard Bank. I was notified after about two hours by Standard Bank and immediately shut the site down - or at least I tried to. Then it seems the hackers managed to get the site reactivated by pretending to be me and sending spoofed emails (obviously not from my account) to SiteGround, so opened the site again and allowed the attackers to resume their scam.

After being notified again and sending more CAPS-locked text to SiteGround the site is now permanently dead. However, i neglected to realise that when i set up the email for my domain, that i linked the email address for my new domain to my GMail account and so today i was notified that these scumbag hackers managed to get into my GMail account too.

Now i've changed my passwords so many times, had all my cards cancelled, and spent the last day or so trying to reboot my identity. The worst part is that when i gave Vodacom the IP addresses (the attacks came from the Vodacom ISP) they just didn't care. They told me i would have to complain to SiteGround. SiteGround are the biggest bunch of utter morons to have ever walked the earth and choose to do absolutely nothing to try and trace the originating IP address and customer. They STILL don't think it's a problem to send passwords in the clear. It took be nearly a month to convince them to refund my subscription money.

Anyway, it's deeply disturbing to think that criminals have hacked your email and brings into sharp relief just how much data about YOU is online. In the past two years I've had to fend off attempted hacks against my PayPal account (now closed), by Ebay account (now closed), my GoDaddy account (now closed), and now SiteGround (now closed). I'm now in the process of downloading all my email and removing anything stored on internet servers. This is a huge pain but until ISPs and retailers start to take security seriously, i just cannot trust doing anything on the internet.

Some conclusions: choose your hosts carefully; only shop at reputable retailers; only ever shop with your credit card; don't buy anything expensive; change your online email passwords every 2 months; and don't store any personal information (Address, DOB, Full Name, etc) whatsoever online. Basically, go over to the wall and pull the telephone cable out of your broadband router and go back to that huge dusty Yellow-Pages they keep insisting on delivering.

Mon Premier Blog en Francais

Chers Lecteurs, j'ai pense c'etait le temps que j'ecrive un blog-post en Francais. Je vous demande pardon si ma grammaire ou mon vocabulaire n'est pas bon ou agreeable a lire. C'est tres difficile emmenager a un nouveau pays ou on peu pas parler le langue du pays. J'ai pris un cours de francais, je parle le francais quand j'ai l'opportunite, et je lis les livres francais tout les jours. C'est encore plus difficile quand on habite une endroit ou le plupart de gens sont anglaise. En ce cas, je peu parler francais seulement avec les proprietaires du restaurants ou les cassiers du magasin ou on n'a pas besoin d'un grand vocabulaire.

C'est assez pour mon premier tente. Si vous etes francais ou parle bien le francais, je vous prie de laisser un comment (remarque? annotation?) avec votre critique si vous voulez.

Si cet blog s'agit faire du ski, c'est impossible a faire un poste sans au moins une photo de ski. C'est ici!

A prochainement.

Summer Skiing

This weekend Natalie and i, suffering from withdrawal having not skied since May, took ourselves off to Tignes to ski, according to them, the World Capital of Summer Skiing. Since there were only about 10 runs open and i don't actually know of that many other places where you can ski in the Summer i think this similar to the US having a World Series of Baseball.

That aside, i can happily report that it was totally awesome. All those nay-sayers claiming it wasn't worth it were completely wrong. It was absolutely brilliant being at 3500m with an air temperature of about 10 degrees in the brilliant hot sunshine on snow with hardly anyone else around. And the snow really wasn't that bad - I've had slushier, slower snow in the Porte du Soleil in April than we had in August in Tignes.

It took us 3 hours to get there from our front door via the Mont Blanc tunnel and La Thuile and San Bernard in Italy. The way back was via the Col du Cormet which was spectacular but extremely busy with traffic and of course packed with narrow "tornantes" (as hairpin bends are called in Italy) so the return trip took four hours.

You drive right up to the lake at Tignes and then buy your lift pass (35 Euros for the day) and then take the funicular inside the Grand Motte to 3032m where a cable car takes you the rest of the way to 3500m. It was a bit annoying to have to wait around for the funicular which only runs every 30 minutes considering it runs almost all the time in the winter. Anyway, once we got there all that was forgotten as we completed our first downhill pisted run since May. The snow was crispy, quite fast, perfectly pisted and excellent for carving. You can't ski off piste because your on a glacier and you might ski into a crevasse and die. This is a good reason not to bother with it. Other good reasons include really awful off piste snow. And "no", i didn't try it, i could see it was awful.

So it was a day of practicing carving and tight turns. The brilliant thing about Tignes Summer Skiing is that it is all above 3000m so it's always snowy. We considering skiing at Glacier 3000 (in Gstaad near Saas Fee) but i think it it closed. There was no snow at all below 3000m in Tignes so i can understand why Glacier 3000 might be closed.

Anyway so it was totally awesome and i would go again in a flash. I love living in France!

Sverige

I got sent to Sweden at the last second late last week so I'm now sitting in a traditional Swedish steakhouse called Texas Longhorn eating fajitas. The local food is really unique.

I don't know where they've taken all those nice artistic photos of Stockholm -- all I've seen are factories and super highways. Added to that I've seen an actual street fight between a gang of drunks and been briefly followed by a crazy old man who was laughing to himself. Awesome.

The best bit is that I get to come back next week. Can't wait! I don't think I'll be starting Ian and Natalie's Scandanavian adventures any time soon. This is the problem with living in the most amazing part of the world... Everywhere else, to put it in formal literary terms, is totally pants.

I miss my wife, my dogs, my lake, and my mountains!

I should start a travel book telling people what places are really like. Stockholm is easy. Stockholm is a city filled with buildings and people and cars. There's also some water. All the buildings looks pretty much the same as in every other city you've ever seen except very slightly different but only if you look carefully.




All the people look Scandanavian and speak Swedish unless you speak to them in English when universally they all magically switch to English too making me wonder why they bother having their own language. Either they are all naturally blonde or someone has put a lot of peroxide in the water.

The water is pretty too but there isn't enough to wash the city away which is my recommendation for all cities and also why I live at 1000m. I'm staying at a lovely hotel (the Clarion) where the TV and Wifi don't work, the room is so small I can be on both sides of it at the same time, and where the breakfast water (referred to locally as 'juice') emphasizes colour over taste. I'm havingva great time.

Waterfalls and Sandals

Here's that waterfall I was talking about. I think this further proves my theory about snow. Even once it's melted it's still the most awesome substance.

Telesiege

Now that the snow has gone it's possible to see the way that the ski industry has destroyed huge parts of what would have been pristine Alpine landscape. I realise that the world has bigger problems than a few filled in gorges and some denuded forests but this is my home now and I want the mountains back the way they were.

This picture is of the lower slopes of Mont Chery in the resort of Les Gets. It might be difficult to make out but the photo is of two concrete pipes that carry water under what is now a piste and over what used to be probably a beautiful ravine.


Here's an example of what that ravine might have looked like.


Beautiful huh? The ravine's quite attractive too. Instead it now looks like this:


Landfill rubble and some chairlifts. Awesome. So you may say that I only have this opinion because we now randonee ski and don't need chairlifts so rest assured I'm not proposing the wholesale removal of all chairlifts.

However you have to ask: Does the Portes du Soleil really need the 650km of pistes it is so proud of advertising? Would people really stop coming if they reduced it to 400 or even 300? How many kilometres does the average skier actually use while they're not drinking vin chaud or eating saucisse frites?

I propose that chairlifts are systematically removed in two ways. Firstly, there are many places where there are two and sometimes three lifts to the top of the same ridge or peak. Unless there's no other way, I think there should only be one lift.

Secondly I think that, where possible chairs should be replaced with drags. Lightweight, less concrete and less of an eyesore which could be removed in the summer. Probably cheaper to run and maintain too.

Generally, at least in France, I think that pisted ski domains should be reduced in size by about 50%. I don't think that anyone would come out of the bars long enough to notice the difference.

The lift companies could put the money they would save from having fewer pistes to bash into back country avalanche management and charge a fortune for personal guiding, which would in turn create more jobs and give people an even more amazing ski holiday!

Vote with your skis and go rando next winter and don't give them your lift pass money!

Prolays

I'm having difficulty deciding whether I love it here more in the Spring or the Winter. We've been out walking every day of every weekend and never walked the same path or even the same valley twice.

This last weekend, on a rainy Sunday, we headed up to Lindarets which surprisingly is now a goat village with actual goats in it rather than a ski village. After waiting for the goats to decide that they were smaller than the Touareg we parked near the top of the Ardent bubble (which is being dismantled and replaced this year) and walked up the path that you can see in the winter from the Lechere chairlift.

This is Prolays now.




After marvelling at the most impressively powerful display of melting snow and heavy rain down an amazing series of waterfalls we walked back down the famous Prolays blue run. There's still snow on it and I tried some sandal skiing which is great fun until you get ice between your bare foot and the base of the sandal after which point it becomes unbelievably painful and you have to hop around like an idiot trying to dislodge the ice while your wife laughs at you. Then again skiing wearing sandals might be considered idiotic by some in the first place.

Intrepid

This awesome photo was taken on my iPhone a couple of weeks ago. It features my beautiful wife looking intrepid and atmospheric on the Arete des Intrets.

Working in Geneva

Is really not so bad.




Some of the time, anyway... However, I don't remember being able to do this during my lunch break in London. My commute has come down to 1 hour 15 minutes now that all the skiers have gone home. It's a long way but it's definitely worth it to live where we do.

The dude in the photo is my work buddy Aurelien who gives up a lot of his lunch-break time to teach me French. Carrément!

Interestingly, the bike he's riding is freely handed out by the City of Geneva to get people active, encourage tourism, and also provide work to asylum seekers. What a brilliant scheme!

In other news I've discovered the best way to learn French is to read the original Tintin comics in the original French. Mille sabords! Did you know that Snowy is really Milou? And that Calculus is really Tournesol? Weirdly Captain Haddock's name stays the same - not very French.

Commuting to Geneva

Is pretty.




Actually this is the evening view leaving Geneva. It's very pretty but it's also very long and riddled with nutcase drivers of both cars and mopeds.

New lines

One of the many brilliant things about skiing is that the mountain is always different. Even if you ski the same route twice on the same day you will encounter different snow - maybe faster, icier, slushy, whatever.




The thing I love the most about skiing is exploring! The amazing thing about the Portes du Soleil is that even after 6 years skiing here we're still finding new lines.

We recently found a new line down to Lindarets which is particularly incroyable because we've skied past this route and never seen it at least a hundred times. And it is awesome!

It involves some ravine crossing, bumps, and finishes of with an awesome super-steep (well ok maybe 45 degrees but that's still steep for me) section.

Steep

Now not only the name of an awesome film but probably my favourite type of skiing. As Doug Coombs said "I like the gravitational pull". Physically this makes no sense because that pull is always there, but what he means is the sensation of falling and then slowly arresting that fall as you ski back up the moutain on each turn. You are literally flying just above the ground.

Once you're prepared to let yourself go steep skiing actually requires very little effort. You easily launch yourself off the mountain. Sail for as long as you dare (in my case probably only about 3m) and then turn in, compress, and repeat. Fabulous.

Yesterday I had my most epic ski ever. An untouched powder line on a curtain ridge about 200m long at about 45 degrees. I bounced through the turns, throwing myself down the slope, hitting the powder, compressing, and then shooting back up out of the snow, making a flying, banking turn before hitting the snow on the descent again.

The best bit was that Natalie was across a narrow gully from me and had front row seats to the best ski of my life. Awesome.

Snow!

New snow!


I'm going skiing right now!

Brompton Brakes

I love my Brompton but I must say the brakes are really not that good. I cycled to work in the wet this morning and unsurprisingly they were extremely flaky.

I'm going to be buying a velo route in the next few weeks so it'll be good to compare the standard bike brake with the Brompton.




This is an unsafe self-portrait of my cycle home.

Why am I buying a road bike? Because I'm doing the Thonon triathlon! Feel like joining me?

Thank you Doug Coombs

Admittedly I have spent rather a lot of my free time watching and re-watching the awesome ski-u-mentary Steep. If you haven't seen it you need to go and rent it immediately. I originally saw it at the Imax in London and now own a very well worn DVD which is just as amazing on my current tiny fishbowl TV screen.

Anyway the movie features Doug Coombs, an unbelievably good freeride ski mountaineer who tragically died trying to rescue a friend at La Grave in 2006 during the production of the movie. One of his more awesome scenes is of him tree-skiing some great powder in the States.

At the beginning of his run he pushes himself up and back on his poles, lifts his uphill ski and pulls it right back and points it directly down the hill. Next he hops off the bottom ski and does a semi-jumping half turn and begins his run.

This all takes place in less than a second in one fluid motion. It is an awesome way of getting started on steep stuff because, from the outset, your skis are pointed down the hill and you can already start your first turn.

I've used this technique, obviously nowhere near as well or as quick or as fluid, but nevertheless to great effect on some steepish stuff over here. It really complements my somewhat overly aggressive style because I can really get into my ski position and therefore make an effective turn before I've even started moving. Awesome.

So thank you Doug Coombs. What an absolutely brilliant skier he was.

Accessories

Wow so this entry isn't about skiing! I just think it's quite amusing that when I plug my iPhone into my car in the morning so I can listen to free French educational podcasts on the way to work the iPhone says "Accessory Connected".

In this case the "accessory" happens to be a 3-ton V6 VW Touareg. I think this sums up Apple's probable view of the world. I wonder if they also refer to their users as accessories?

But actually Apple can refer to me however they want. I'm completely sold out. I love my iPhone. I even wrote this, and all my other posts on it.

Ski Review: Dynastar Altitrail Vertical Light

I skied on my brand new Dynastar Vertical Lights for the first time today. If you don't feel like reading the rest the summary is that they are amazing! Alpine Tourers say that the most important factor in ski selection is weight. Well I think this is just nonsense. The only reason you walk up all those thousands of metres for all those countless hours is to enjoy the few seconds of exhilarating descent. Therefore, the ski must be all about the downhill and weigh less than you do.

These skis cut through anything. I adapted to them after just one day of downhill skiing. By the end of the day I was bouncing down huge moguls and attempting the same steeps I would on my Rossignol Bandits. I think that says a lot for how natural these skis feel.

I was sorely tempted by the fat powder version of these skis but I have to say I'm not noticing any problems with float in the limited powder I've found so far. My plan is to keep these for a year and then move to the Altitrail Powder.


But nevertheless they have proved themselves to be excellent on crust, brilliant on ice, and amazingly good fun on bumps. They are so easy to turn in crusty wet off piste that's hardened and been rained on. Go Dynastar! So far I think these are an excellent way to get started with Randonee.

Davies' are Naturals

Nicola (aka Nikki (although her name really is Nicola, it says so on her passport)) came to visit us the weekend before last and went skiing for the first time ever.



She did brilliantly well skiing down Abricotine, a 3km intermediate blue run which decends from 2200m to 1400m, on her second day ever if skiing.

Her skiing prowess can be attributed somewhat to excellent fitness but mostly to being a Davies as we are naturally good at most things!

I'll be updating this post with videos in the next few days so stay tuned!

Parental Visitation

A couple of weekends ago the Parental Units came to visit us. They were delivering our car which I cleverly smashed to bits in December. I think they were quite impressed with the awesome French Alps. This makes sense because the French Alps are indeed awesome.



We didn't have oodles of time but we did manage to see Avoriaz, Morzine, and of course the Lac de Montriond.