Another dull morning

Another climb before work this morning followed by some lift-assistance (cheating) to get perfect powder on Col du Bassachaux.

This was the first proper powder test of my new Movement Ikis - i still need to learn to ski them but they are SO much better than my too-short and too-skinny Dynastar Altitrails.

The top of the Col was extremely wind-blown (and still blowing when we were there), but the snow of yesterday fell on top of the, now compacted, first fall of the previous week.  So now we have a base and powder.  Awesome.

This photo of Natalie with Lac de Montriond in the background is also awesome - even if it's skew - it was very cold and this was taken one-handed in an extremely strong wind.

Mont Chery

So last Friday, before work, Emma (ski-racer and telemark skier), Craig (ESF ski-instructor), and Dani (champion Alpine skier (yes, seriously)), Natalie (winner, best-ski-style-according-to-me 7 years continuously, and myself (enthusiastic-but-with-no-obvious-other-skills) went for a rando up Mont Chery.  Clearly i was well qualified to be on this expedition.

Anyway, it was a stupendously good morning and i took some photos.  This was the hike up, doggies (left-to-right: Runa, Less, and Maggie) making this 25-30 degree slope look too easy.

And this was de-skinning at the rather spectacular top, after our 400m climb.  That's Point d'Uble in the background, as if you needed me to tell you that.  Scarlett is hiding behind Natalie's legs and Craig is actually busy de-skinning while i goof around taking photos.

Craig, gentleman, and did i mention, ESF ski-instructor that he is, then went to assist the ski-racer and race-champion with their own de-skinning.  I'm still taking photos.

Left to right, we have Craig (still working for the ESF as a ski-instructor in this photo), Dani, Maggie, Less (the collies), and ski-racer and most-excellent-wearer-of-hats Emma.  If you're not finding this entry funny you're missing out on the inside jokes.  If you're in on the jokes and still not finding it funny... well i can't help you with that.

Finally, Natalie got bored of me taking photos - elle s'en va:

(And thus skied off).  See why i say she has the best style?  Anyway, so then we did some more photos:

May i present: Dani (did i mention also ESF ski-instructor?) and Craig).  The acute bout of grinning may have been brought about by the view of Monn Blonn in the background.  Either that or it was Emma yelling "reblochon" as loud as she could.

May i present Natalie, and myself.  That would be a snowy Les Gets in the background.  I haven't been up this early since 1999 - hence the leaning.  And, finally, but certainly not least, we have:

Ski-racer and frequent-shouter-of-reblochon Emma with Natalie.  Personally i think Emma's hat is the best hat i've ever seen.  Anywhere. Ever.

So when are we doing this again?

First snow

Ok, so this is a bit late, but this was the result of the first snow (lasting 4 days) that we had last week.  This shot was taken at 09:00 and that rather large mountain in the distance to the right, surrounded by storm clouds, is, of course, Mont Blanc.

Click on this photo to get the full effect

By the way, you pronounce Mont Blanc "Monn Blonn".  You do not pronouce the 'c'.  Obviously - get right people.  Sheesh.  Anyway, so this was taken from the top of Mont Chery and the snowy hills in the foreground is the resort of Les Gets - pistes bashed and ready to go for the season.

Extreme Lawn-mowing

The Portes du Soleil ski resort is set out over 650km of pistes and under the snow of most of those pistes is grass.  In other resorts, at higher altitudes, you find that the pistes are made out of rock.  Rock is bad because you need more snow to cover it.  With a grass slope you need 10cm of fresh or just 5cm of hard-pack to be able to ski it (although this would be the very end of the season).

The other cool thing about grass is that you can shape it to bind to the snow better.  So here, in November, they mow the pistes just before the first snow-fall.  This makes the grass blades stick up and hold the snow better - clever huh?

Anyway, so we have a skiable slope in our back garden and last year, when i tried to ski it, i kept getting down to the bare grass as the snow slipped off the horizontal grass - not cool.  So this year, i decided to learn from the pisteurs and also mow mine... Hence, extreme lawn-mowing:

Cool orange steel-reinforced boots - this season's must have extreme lawn-mowing accessory.

Now all i need is the snow to cover it (of which there's about 1cm right now).

The Gathering Storm

Well, at least i hope it's going to be a storm. Quite a lot of people are counting on these rather spectacular clouds actually baring snow. I can confirm that at 1000m, the first spots of rain fell at 14:30 this afternoon. This is the first precipitation in over a month. Come on snow!

Clouds gathering over le Roc d'Enfer

My French Education: Accent

French is hard.  It's hard to say, it's hard to hear, there are oodles of rules, and the fact that you can just run all the words together and put gaps pretty much where you like, means you need a multi-pass parser to read the previous sentence spoken to you into your head several times before you get what is being said.

Anyway, this weekend i hit a milestone.  Someone (a French someone) asked me where i was from because he couldn't place my accent.  That means i'm actually speaking fluently enough to actually have an accent.  I bet a South African accent sounds rather weird in French!

Anyway, hooray for me.  So far we've bought a TV, a car, and are now starting a business in French.  We spent the last Sunday morning entirely with French (non-English-speaking) friends.  I reckon another 20 - 30 years and i'll be fluent.

I must say i really like the language, despite its difficulties for an anglophone.  It's so polite, everything rhymes, and the guttural R is the coolest sound ever made by a human.  C'est vraiment genial!

Tignes in November

This weekend, thanks to the combined team effort of some of our awesome friends out here, Natalie and i managed to get away to Tignes for some pre-season skiing on the glacier.  It was an amazing weekend away, thanks to our excellent friends who gave us place to stay and looked after Scarlett and Runa for us.

Natalie at 3100m

The apartment we stayed in was the closest possible apartment to the funiculaire - literally 50m in a straight line.  The snow at the top was surprisingly good and i've become surprisingly unfit during the summer - my salopettes were too tight!

At about 3300m trying my best to carve

The common problem for the last year has been that my old Bandits are ruined and so i've been having to ski everywhere on my Sultan 94s.  They are way too big for skiing glacier ice and hard bumps, and quite tricky to carve - i have to get my new skis soon!  I'm thinking Scott Aztec, but the jury is out... you know how good i am at making fast purchasing decisions.

Natalie, carving :)

I can heartily recommend Tignes - we've skied there in January, August, and now November.  The snow is always good, the sun has always been out and we've always had an amazing time.

The downside is it is incredibly expensive.  We spent about €150 on food for the two of us for 2 lunches and a small evening meal... incroyable.

The other downside is that you do rather feel like a beginner with all the amazing race-skiers around.  The standard of skiing is extremely high.  Most people rate resorts in terms of steepness and number of correct coloured runs to establish the beginner-friendly-ness of a resort.  I think it's smarter to just look at the average skill level of the other skiers there.  The skill level at Tignes in November is unbelievably good.  It's worth going just to watch them ski and learn from their technique.

Having said all that the lady in the background of Natalie's photo above was a statistical outlying to the number of experts out there... i think i need to airbrush her out...

The Problem

This is the problem with the snow in the French Alps so far this season:

Taken on La Grande Motte at 3150m yesterday

Let's hope it doesn't continue...  What's happening now is what happened last February.  There's a high pressure stuck over the Alps keeping all the weather away.  Go away high-pressure i want some SNOW!

Tronçonneuse

I got to do "Mountain-Man" things this weekend.  Everyone should own a chainsaw - they are the most awesomest of awesome machines evA.

Doing stuff with wood and metal at 119 dB.  Awesome.

Interestingly, the chainsaw cost €500, but the protective gear (chainsaw-gloves, chainsaw-sleeves (which i now wear to bed - they are so comfy), chainsaw-boots, chainsaw-trousers, and face-protector) cost about €400.  Having said that, maybe it really isn't that interesting.  Supposedly the trousers can block the chainsaw blade - i wouldn't like to test it - the trousers aren't as solid as the wood the saw can cut though with very little effort.

Anyway, we now probably have enough wood to get us through to end-January - then we will just freeze for the rest of the winter because heating your house in the moutains is just too expensive.  Plus i'm a Mountain Man now so i don't get cold.

Passage de Savolaire

Last Sunday Natalie and i went our for a "short walk" above Essert la Pierre.  Just like in the Sound of Music, the mountain kept calling us higher and we ended up at the spectacular Passage de Savolaire, which at 1997m leads to a narrow-ish couloir down into the Vallée d'Abondance.

Passage de Savolaire, looking down to Abondance

We're definitely going to be checking this out on rando when Winter gets here.  It will have to be early in the season though as the climb is in full sun.  The couloir down into Abondance should be awesome, as, at 5pm, there was still frost on the ground on the north-facing slopes.

About half-way up we passed Brion, which consists of one farm - apart from the lack of electricity and phone, this would be an awesome place to live - in the Winter you get sun until 17:00 and a perfect view of Mont Blanc over the shoulder of Nantaux.

At Brion, looking towards the huge mass that is Nantaux

Finally, at the top, just above the Passage, there's the tiny peak called Pointe des Lanchettes where Scarlett and Runa figured it was time for a break and some sun-tanning.  We're definitely running into Winter now with it getting really cold in the shade.  We'll absolutely be back here when it's covered in snow, and, incidentally, if you're climbing it and planning to ski into Abondance, i'd say the couloir to the right of Pointe des Lanchettes as you ascend from Brion would be the easier ski in - the route to the left is narrower and looks a lot steeper.

At the top of Pointe des Lanchettes

Eleven eleven eleven

This is the real reason we moved to France and chose to live in the mountains - so we could do this:

Happy eleven-eleven-eleven, tout le monde.

Monza

Never been to a Grand Prix before, so i figured Monza, since it's only 4 hours away, wouldn't be a bad thing to spend a weekend doing.  This was the view from our seats at Alta Velocita C, right at the first chicane down from the start:

Schumacher and Hamilton battle for 3rd.  Note smoke from Hamilton and the fact that Schumacher is only on 2 wheels.

I don't think there could have been a better place to watch it from - the rest of the circuit is extremely fast and you wouldn't get the time to tell the difference between the cars.  That, and all the action happened here.  The crash at the start, the battle for 3rd between Schumacher and Hamilton, and Schumacher's spin during qualifying.

I'm not sure i'd go to Monza again.  The race organisation was extremely poor, although i've only ever been to this GP, i can't be sure they don't all have this problem.  We had to walk about 7km from where we parked to our seats and the bus service itself was pretty random - if you happened to be on the right line you got (slightly) closer to the track.  On the way out there was a dangerous crowd-crush where the marshals did nothing.  The signage telling you where to go and how to get there was almost non-existent.

I got the impression that if i'd arrived by helicopter i would have been more welcome than just a mere supporter paying a fortune for 20cm of steel bench on a grandstand that wobbled.

So the sport was amazing, the sound of the cars unbelievable, but the full spectator experience offered by Monza could have been a lot better.

Via Ferrata - Chapelle d'Abondance

There is an infinite* number of sports and activities to be done in the French Alps.  It doesn't really make much sense when i tell people i want to be an Alpinist and then have to admit to an over-developed fear of heights.  And there are a lot of heights to be found in the mountains.

Anyway so we recently took up Rock Climbing (Escalade).  We've previously climbed indoors so we have some basic knowledge and have been learning to lead climb at our nearest wall which is just down the road at Bas Thex.

But so far, because we are beginners, we've not got much more than 15 - 20m off the ground, and although this is clearly high enough to kill you as much as you can drown in 2 inches of water in the bath tub, we wanted to get out of the tub and get some real exposure.  Enter Via Ferrata - which is basically climbing a rock face which has been laced with steel cable and steel horse-shoe shaped rungs in the form of ladders.  You clip yourself onto the steel cable with a specialised karabiner and cowslip which has a shock-absorbing system built into it.

I actually didn't realise it would be so vertical, or over-hanging in a lot of places, and i certainly didn't realise that the exposure would be so huge, for the entire trip.  Anyway, it was definitely good for my heights fear - but as usual Natalie had no problem with it whatsoever and climbed it like she was climbing a flight of stairs!

* For large finite values of infinite.

Snowboard Shopping

This weekend Natalie and I went snowboard shopping. Yes yes, we've taken up the evil sport but ya know what? It's actually kinda fun. That must be why all these "moron boarders" do it! Anyway, shopping for the boards was equally fun. We could not, of course, make any decisions without our consultant snow-board gear experts, Runa and Scarlett:

And no... we did not get boards with any obscene graphics on them... Pah - snowboarders!

Learn to Ski

If you really want to learn how to ski, i recommend skiing with the 9-year-old son of a ski-instructor for an afternoon. My goodness me, i have never skied so fast or done such crazy things in my young life. We followed little Mick, age just-turned-9, and currently 4th fastest in his ski-club, down the stash in Avoriaz/Lindarets. It was the first time i'd attempted any features and i still got dirty looks for only doing the baby "table" (like a rail but wider).

Next we were blasting down very mogully runs in a whiteout skiing by feeling our way with our knees only and watching Mick take 2m of air at the side of the piste. After that we just had to bop down 45 degree mashed potato powder over rocks and roots. Exhausted, you get to the bottom, only to be greeted by Mick who got there several days ago wondering what took you so long.

Thanks for a brilliant afternoon Mick - sorry we were so slow!

I love France: Reason #1, Exhibit B

More Mont Blanc, this time from the top of the Aiguille du Midi at 3842m.

Note the teeny climber dude to the far right, about to casually climb a ladder onto the viewing platform with a 1000m drop to his right.

Reasons why I love France: #1

Mont Blanc

As seen from the top of "The Elephant". I continue to be amazed at the fact that the Vallee d'Aulps at St Jean d'Aulps probably has the best view of this magnificent mountain. The mountains part for a perfectly unspoilt view of it which is unbelievable considering how far away it is and how difficult it can be to get to see it from anywhere in the Chablais. This photo was taken on my iPhone just after sunset. This is about a 35 minute 300m vertical run from our house, which is down there in the clouds, just to the left of the shot.

Snowboarding

Despite many promises, my long awaited next post has just failed to materialize. There are many half-written entries begging for time to be finished but that time is as elusive as the snow has been in January. Anyway, just a quick one. We tried snowboarding for the first time today.

After years of dissing snowboarders, actually... I'm ashamed to say it was really fun! We were padded like American Football players with impact shorts, wrist, knee, and elbow guards. That didn't stop me mashing my shoulder, however. After 4 hours including a 2-hour private ESF lesson at La Grande Terche we were able to make linked turns on the nursery slopes at the top of the Terche. As with skiing, it's actually easier when it's a bit steeper.

I'm not entirely sure what my aspirations as a snowboarder are just yet, but we're definitely going again. I'd like to get to the point where the whole resort is open to us on boards so it's always an option if the skiing conditions aren't up to it. Mostly it's just good to be learning something new.

Catchup

Many of my readers (ok one reader) have been wondering if i've been buried in powder for the last 3 weeks. Sadly not as there IS no powder. We haven't had fresh snow since the- ... since i can't remember it's been so long! Like since forever man! Anyway, i did note down 12 titles on my iPhone so I can remember what I have done every day. I'm happy to report that our of my EUR 612 lift pass i've currently spent about EUR 450. Can't wait til it's all finished up so I can stop skiing the resort and get out into the Back Country! Anyway... in-order but very very late updates to follow shortly...