Wednesday, 7 December 2011

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).

1 comment:

Paul (G) said...

How on earth did you manage to push that lawn mower!? Your arms resemble those of a T-Rex!