Geneva Motor Show

The Geneva Motor Show, or Salon-Auto as it's known locally, is actually quite large.

Yesterday Natalie and i went to the 2008 Geneva Motor Show, held this year in Geneva.  Except at Tesco's carpark in the week before Christmas, and in the carpark outside the Show itself, i've never seen so many cars in one place.

Natalie test-sitting the BWM M3 Convertible.

There was one overriding theme at the Show: the motor industry seems to have "gone green", at least in their advertising.  We saw a hydrogen-powered BMW and a BYD that you plug into a standard plug socket at home so that you can burn the fuel to power it elsewhere than in the car itself.  Apparently this constitutes an improvement.

Me in my new car - look i'm so famous everyone's taking photos of me.

Highlights of the Show, obviously, was the new Kia C'eed (is that really the name of a car?) and, of course, the Fiat Punto Grande.  i was equally impressed with the new Ford Mondeo which comes with climate control in the Titanium edition.

This is the new Vauxhall Astra.  It comes standard with seats, wheels, and a Nitrogen-rich oxygen mix.

Oh yeah, there were also a couple of old Koenigseggs lying around, generally lowering the tone.  Someone brought a Bugatti Veyron to the show, but obviously, everyone was too busy queuing up to see the new Fiat 500 to notice.  Pagani brought their old banger, the Zonda, to the show.  Embarrassing really, i mean, who'd spend less than half a million pounds on a car?

Not sure why you'd want this, but this car is also a submarine.  It comes fitted with propellers, a full face mask and air tank.  And this time i'm not kidding.

Once i'd been resuscitated and Natalie had equipped me with a bib to stop the drool puddling in front of me, we could start really appreciating the absolutely gorgeous cars on show.

The Mazda Taiki.  We liked this.

The real highlights of the show were the new Mazda Taiki, the Nissan Pivo2 which will be like living in the Jetsons if it ever makes it into production.

It's deeply saddening to think that they trashed one (or more) of these for Casino Royale.  i hope they're ashamed of themselves.

The Paganis, Bugattis, Bentleys, Koenigseggs, Mazaratis, and Lamborghinis were all within a 10m radius of one another.  It was at this point in the show that i had to be fed some Valium and given a little lie-down as it all got a bit much for me.

The Nissan Pivo2 proving that you can easily parallel park this tiny car into a space any normal person could get any normal car into without funny spinny-round wheels.  Actually, this car is really cool - it even leans into corners for you.

i didn't even realise that Spyker did anything other than come last in Formula one races, but apparently they make rather awesome cars as well.  There were plenty of other manufacturers i'd never even heard of, like some company called Ow-dee, or something unpronounceable like that.

Hey Leena, look what Natalie got!

The car i'd actually buy, if i had the cash and the inclination, and i have neither, would probably be the Alfa Romeo Brera.  What a pretty car.  And if i really had the oodles of cash required, the Pagani Zonda, which looked good on Top Gear, but just stupendously awesome in real life.

Pagani Zonda.  Can you say: "wow"?

Ok, and now i've committed the cardinal sin of blogging.  i've run out of text for my pictures.  This is mostly a function of the fact that i wondered round the Show with my mouth open and an expression of mild stupor on my face.

Koenigsegg.  i've actually got one of these but i don't like the red interior so i tend not to drive it.

So instead i'll just rabbit on about the photos themselves.  You had to put on a really winning smile to get to sit in the Veyron.  They took one look at my drool-stained bib and i knew my chances were dashed.

Apparently this car won a few races.  Bet it couldn't win an under-10s sack-race could it?  What about an egg and spoon race?  Rubbish really.  Despite it's short-comings, Natalie took this rather good photo of it.

In summary, the Show was really cool.  Pity no normal people could actually afford any of the truly awesome cars on display.

Happy Birthday Paul

Have a cool day dude.  i'm looking forward to presenting this to you in person.

Savinelli Appia 104 (6mm).

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:

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 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.

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.

Every Skier's Dream

Every skier's dream conditions involve fresh powder and laying down new tracks in the form of perfect turns in pristine, untouched snow.

Natalie's tracks on the left, mine on the right.

And today, we pretty much got just that.  It's very late and my fingers are just about the only muscles in my body still operational, but here are the highlights.

Natalie on the Arete des Intrets with Avoriaz perched on the cliff behind her and Prodains in the valley below.

We skied for 5.5 hours non-stop and took in 19 runs, including: icy hard semi-powder bumps on the Arete des Intrets; the fresh powder in the Fornet Snowcross off-piste; the bumps on Cubore followed by the Abricotine off-piste; the off-piste on the other Cubore-chairlift side of the Fornet valley; the fresh powder on Les Tannes down in the trees near the Stash; and finally, we found a new way home down through the trees crossing Combe a Floret.

Natalie making perfect tracks on Fornet.

We also skied Sim's Gully, which, discovered by Sim when she was out here in January with Simon and Phil, is the first couloir just to the left of the Mossette chairlift if you look at it from the Swiss side.

Me skiing down the Fornet mountainside.  Note the knee-deep powder as promised and also the cool snow spray on my turns!  Please excuse the gratuitous use of the phrase "woo-hoo" in this video.

These names may mean nothing to you.  You could consult a piste-map if you were so inclined.  Or you could just take it from me that it was an absolutely epic day.  We were happy to find that, after a month without powder, we could still ski it.  In fact, we kind of think we graduated today.  We laid down some awesome turns in fresh powder which is certainly not something we've done so well before.

Natalie skiing down the bottom part of Sim's Gully.  That's the Mossette chairlift on the right and we're in Switzerland in this video.  This section of powder was much trickier than Fornet as it was very bumpy under the powder.  Please excuse the stalker-style heavy breathing from me at the beginning of this video and associated shaky-cam as i had just skied down myself and quickly had to whip out the camera to get Natalie coming down.  Oh, and the sit-down at the end is intentional!

There's nothing quite like skiing a section of untouched off piste, knee-deep in beautiful soft, fluffy powder, and then, from the bottom, looking up at your tracks and almost being able to get out a protractor and a ruler and checking that each turn was perfectly executed.  i say almost because, although we did make some rather good turns today, we don't usually take out a protractor as part of our standard ski equipment.

This is me skiing some off-piste powder on the Cubore side of Fornet.  Note the loud icy scratch as i set off - that's because until 2 days ago, there was nothing but grass and a bit of ice on this section of off-piste.  Again, the fall-down at the end is quite obviously intentional.

Fresh Powder

First big snow in 4 weeks and we're going right now!

The view of the elephant from our apartment window right now.

Avoriaz

We got a break in the clouds today and Natalie took this photo of Avoriaz.  Many people say that Avoriaz is an ugly town.  Sure, it was purpose-built as a ski resort, but it's been designed to fit into its surroundings.  i think it's quite a pretty town, and, even if you don't like, if you're a certain distance away, it completely blends into the cliff-side in which it nestles.

These are the peaks above Fornet.  Just over the ridge to the left is the start of the Vallee de la Manche back-country run.

i don't know what Snow-Forecast is up to these days but they seem to change the forecast every five minutes.  First we were going to have a 3rd of a meter of snow this week at 1700m, then it went up to half a meter, now it's dropped to about 20cm.  At least the temperature seems to be remaining constant.

Me, showing off the Dents du Midi.

The snow on Fornet was really good today, but we really need a good few more centimeters and a good freeze to lock it in place.  It's been, on average,  about +5C at Avoriaz for the last few days and the snow's been very slushy.  i think they've been running the snow cannons overnight, which they need to do, but it turns the slopes very sugary.  The good stuff is above 2000m but the freezing point, which today was apparently at 2800m, is dropping to 0m Tuesday night, which is more like it.  i'm hoping it gets and stays cold.

Natalie on the Canyon du Pschott.  This is where we found the best snow of the day.

Slow Snow

Yesterday we had more rain.  It has a very strange effect on the snow - it turns it very, err, slow.  So when you're skiing over it you lose about 30% of your speed and it's quite tricky to stay upright.  The rain also seems to dissolve moguls allowing them to keep their shape but they collapse under you, so when you plant your pole to turn round them, your pole just sinks, completely messing up your turn.

This is Natalie just above the Avoriaz chair-lifts in the gentle mist and rain.