The STW Ski and Snowboard thread – 2011/2 Edition

Scotsman – when were you in Stranda? What were conditions like? Always fancy a trip there so you’ve made me a touch jealous. 😉

Hope recovery is quick Scotsman.

Was at Stranda on the 6th 7th and 8th of Feb, conditions were great, 2 meters plus at the top and they had about 8 inches the day we arrived so off piste was superb, not much in the way of good piste skiing (advanced stuff), but the two highest lifts that take you to the top have an unpisted back country feel about them, great place for proper back country stuff, I had my AT stuff and skins with me and you dont have to venture far to feel like you are in the middle of nowhere and completely on your own, highly recommend it if you are into skinning up.
Not much in Stranda, we stayed in Alesund which is about 50 klicks away. I will definately be going back sometime but not this year (see previous post).
Was in to see the consultant this morning, he says shin bone is moving way to much in relation to thigh bone which means ACL damage, MRI on friday to confirm, so no second ski trip for me this year 😥

Aye, have some Norse friends who always try to get me over, and what you say sounds familiar from them (and their photos) – good biking in the summer too apparently. Certainly sounds my kind of place. Good luck with the recovery – hope you’re back up to speed soon.

I’m happy in 5″ of powder with my classic x-c skis (though the bindings clog up and break). 5″ with 64s is a joy, a foot or so still a delight. Wider skis just mean you float on top and lose the flouncy, bouncy powder ride you’re there for.

Today the conditions were grrrrrrreat and now I feel very tired. Night all.

Currently Sitting at Tamarack Lodge in Lake Tahoe Heavenly, and rode 3′ of untouched tree lined pow this morning…. Time for a couple of Shock Tops now methinks then a bit of piste bashing….

I HATE you.

😉

3′, now that’s what phatt skis are for, not our humid European stuff.

So, it looks like this will be my 8th boarding trip in 5 years without any serious fresh snow. This is starting to get annoying.

I wonder if there’s some kind of outdoorsy hobby I can do here in the UK.

I typically ski 50 days a year, get a couple of days of fraiche powder and four or five days when I can hunt some slightly transformed stuff out. The best powder days are also the high risk days when it’s better to stick to the areas made safe by gasex.

I typically ski 50 days a year

The stuff of dreams!

“Days” is perhaps misleading. It’s often just an hour and a half of X-C first thing in the morning or a trip up and down on rando skis – full days out are fewer. My aim was to say that 16stone’s “8th boarding trip in 5 years without any serious fresh snow” just reflects the small number of fresh powder days there are in European resorts.

I didn’t ski the best day this year; the lifts were shut and the risk high even if I’d found the energy to skin up through knee-deep snow. By the next day it was heavy and hard work, and the day after that rutted and frozen with a crust.

I’m not even talking about big powder days. The best I’ve had was one day of about 15cm of fresh stuff. Apart from that it’s been a complete drought.

That one day was enough to convince me that I love it though…

I’m in Val Thorens at the moment and we’ve had an amazing week.

Sunny days until Wednesday when it snowed all day, not too bad in the morning but we took the afternoon off as it was very heavy.
Yesterday was fantastic, lots of powder and all the runs were brilliant in the morning, today it’s going to be blue skies and with prepared pistes a real fun last day.

This is only my second time ever skiing and I can see why people get hooked, already planning next years visit back to do the exact same thing. I found myself saying yesterday that it was the best outdoor thing I’ve done, ever.

D

I found myself saying yesterday that it was the best outdoor thing I’ve done, ever.

😀

I agree. There’s something great about skiing that somehow goes beyond what’s great abuot bikes. Perhaps it’s because it’s not as regular, and is therefore more of an “event”, with all teh inherent build up and anticipation. Perhaps it’s just the locations, the weather, the food, the company and the fun, but either way, it’s ACE!

A powder day would be wasted on me. Just a veteran of 6 ski holidays so I’m still trying to master the art of piste skiing. I can ski most pistes safely, with varying degrees of style. . I can just about carve now, when the terrain/conditions are relatively straightforward.

I have played just off the piste and through the trees on occasions with an instructor, I wouldn’t know what’s safe otherwise.

No doubt as Jnr gets older we’ll be learning the art of off piste. The OH is a much better skier than both of us, she’s been skiing for years, but I doubt she’ll join us as she just likes pootling about.

Got myself some of these in the end from Kensington Snow + Rock. Very helpful they were too. Thanks for the heads up. Turned out these were the best fit for my wide feet.

Get to try them out next week. Can’t wait!

JAL, great news! I have the stiffer version of that boot (120 flex) and they are simply superb! Were you served by a Northerner, an American or a pretty girl? Popping in there tomorrow morning so might be able to pass on some thanks for you! 🙂

mmmm, it was a youngish lad, probably in his 20’s. I may have spoken to a the northern one when I popped in one evening but didn’t have time to go through a fitting then.

There was a pretty girl in there helping a snowboarder with some expanding airbag rucksack thing. Looked like some serious off piste kit.

I looked at those ‘all mountain’ boots but they felt so light and flexy I thought they would be too much of a comprise given I’m really a piste skier. Even though I’d like to have the time and skills to be otherwise it ain’t really me.

Airbags, for or against?

An Austrian client of mine was the first person to test an airbag in a deliberately set off, light-powder avalanche. He survived and was very enthusiastic about them. That was over ten years ago so why don’t I ski with one? Well I thought about the acquaintances that had died in avalanches and realised that the airbag would have been about as useful as wearing a cycle helmet when run over by a truck.

One was on a ridge when the snow he was on avalanched. A very small avalanche but a very long fall – a parachute might have helped but an airbag wouldn’t. Three others were in woods hit by an avalanche made up of ice, rocks, snow and trees. The cause of death was impact not burial.

So, an airbag wouldn’t have saved those but might encourage one to venture out on light powder days when it would be better to stay in the gasex area or watch TV. When I put my ARVA on I find myself thinking “if you need this then should you be going out?”

A powder day would be wasted on me. Just a veteran of 6 ski holidays so I’m still trying to master the art of piste skiing. I can ski most pistes safely, with varying degrees of style

We skied with friends on their 5th holiday who are self taught and are reasonable skiers.
First time we went (2 yrs ago) I had beginners lessons and could parallel ski by the end.

This year I took intermediate lessons and can now ski any piste at any speed with confidence. We did a few black runs that had light moguls but anything more will be done in advanced.

So I’m in favour of lessons – not cheap but I progressed so quickly I’m now way more confident and able than our self taught friends.

The powder was the first I’ve ever skied on but with an experienced instructor I got it quite quickly.

DR – I’ve had group lessons on 3 holidays, and a couple of hours private lessons on 2 holidays.

We did some off piste on my second lot of group lessons and managed fine. I still wouldn’t venture off piste without an instructor though as I don’t have the right equipment, and really wouldn’t know what danger signs to be looking out for. Thinking of doing an off piste course at some point, maybe next season.

I say trying to master piste skiing, as I can carve, but the conditions/slope have to be right or else I get lazy and skid about like 90% of other skiers you see!

I’m back from my week in Schladming (Austria) (11th-18th Feb)

Cracking holiday!

-17°C when we got there, so fairly cold for Austria in late winter / early spring. Warmed up a bit over the course of the week. Great snow with plenty of fresh stuff falling all the time we were there. One day of 55km/h blizzards when a lot of lifts shut, but generally excellent.

My backcountry day got cancelled in the end due to too much fresh snowfall and winds 🙁 but we did do some great slackcountry, including a decent hike to drop into a big bowl of freshies at the top of Reiteralm 😀 , a scenic ride across some fields, back gardens and a tarmac road ( 😯 my poor base!), and an incredibly knackering 40 minute battle struggling uphill through waist-deep powder after we got carried away and went a bit too far into the forest. 😳

Only got 3 days boarding, as the missus and I take turn about looking after the little ‘un. But I’ve still got 8 days in Slovakia to look forward to in 3 weeks time. 😀 🙂 😀

Just got back from a fabulous week in Courmayeur.
Best week of skiing ever – mainly because the kids are now at an age and ability where they are confident and able to keep up. Huge, huge fun!

For all the “skinny skis” naysayers ^, I took my 20yr old K2s with me, and have to say that they were a revelation 😀 .

Very nervous coming up to my first turn on them since 1994 – but they turned like a dream. Very responsive (much lighter than new skis), very quick edge to edge (obviously narrower) and very, very quick 8)

Also, as I suspected, but doubted on here and on snowheads, much quicker turning / shorter turning radius, despite having only 8.3mm off sidecut over a 204mm length. Why – you have to ski the ski, not ski the sidecut profile. The turning performance really does come from angulating AND loading / flexing the ski.

In the interests of balance, there were some downsides of skiing old skis – They did require far higher levels of concentration, and a whole new set of muscles were aching that night.

TBH a very good example of marketing BS gone mad (don’t suffer from that in mtb’ing do we 😉 )

rkk01: nice. We’re considering Courmayeur (and Italy in general) for next year’s holiday. How busy was it at half term?

We might stick the bambino in for a half-day creche / toddler ski school next year. Any experience of that there?

Courmayeur is one of my favourite resorts, so somewhat biased.

During the week the pistes are fairly quite, even though it is one of the resorts used by Interski for school trips. Lots of Italians come up the autostrada from Milan and Turin at weekends, so busier then. There were a few lift queues on Saturday.

Lots of good mountain restaurants. Prices vary, but a cappucino on the mountain was generally cheaper than UK Costa / Starbucks prrices 😉 Buy what the Italians are having and food / drink is really good value: as low as 1.5 – 2 euros for a coffee / hot chocolate etc in some places.

The mountain scenery is absolutely stunning. Objectively, perhaps not quite as good as Chamonix of Zermat, but not far off.

Many reviews complain that the skiing is limited, but it’s good if you like reds 😉 Quite a few of the steeper and narrower reds have been re-graded as black since I last went, and many of these don’t get pisted to add to the challenge. If you want a challenge then hire a guide. I believe that there is a lot of good off-piste, both from Cresta Arp and Punta Helbronner (Guide required to take skis on the cable car to these). Have done the run from Punta Helbronner to Cham a few times in the past. Very spectacular, but not especialy technical, and prob not so good for snowboards 🙁

Nothing wrong with skinny. One of my favourite skis on piste was the Atomic GS at about 67mm underfoot. Nearly bought a pair. Didn’t get on quite so well with the 196cm Elan something or other.
And the 80mm underfoot on my Rictors seems plenty, although fashion probably now calls them narrow.

Anyone know of any deals going around for 10th March as they seem to be few and far between at the moment?

Have tried the usual Crystal/Iglu/Inghams/Icelolly etc. but I appear to have boobed and the French schools are still on holiday (thought they finished the week before) and the better/higher resorts in Austria are now expensive again.

Should have booked that week in Zermatt on offer last month but didn’t and now panic is starting to creep in.

Any ideas welcome.

Airbags, for or against?

Friend of mine has just bought a Snowpulse, probably driven by the fact that we both got caught in a minor avalanche last year. There still seem to be some issues with taking them on planes, he’s had to get letters from the airline for a trip to Switzerland in a couple of weeks.

I’m still in 2 minds as to whether they’re a good thing – I recall that my main concern as my life flashed before me in the avalanche was being swept over a drop or into rocks, not keeping my head above the snow. On the other hand if you use them as a supplement to normal safety measures, rather than an excuse to go out when you really shouldn’t, and the extra weight isn’t an issue (not sure about that yet), and you pack them properly (so that your ice axe isn’t propelled through your head when you deploy it) then they’re probably a benefit.

The Thread of the Year just keeps on giving!

Just had a very important business review call with my boss. We spent about half of it discussing places we’ve been skiing and/or wnat to go skiing, and the merits of twin tip rocker v the more traditional flat tail. 🙂

@rkk01: cheers. I think we’ve been a bit spoilt for lift queues in the past few years. Schladming is pretty quiet with very modern lifts (fast 8-seater lifts with heated seats.. mmmmm… 🙂 ) so hardly every any queue.
Canada in the years before was even quieter – and it was common to not see anyone at all on a piste. So the prospect of going back to more “mainstream” busy Europe has me thinking.

Cheap food and coffee sounds good though 😀 As does the possibility of some guided off-piste.

@Woody: not seen any good deals, but will report here if I stumble onto anything.

Driving to La Tania on Friday. Conditions look great. Never driven before, so looking forward to that and last week purchased cheap new Raven snowboard from fleabay for £200 including bindings! Hope to prove the nah sayers wrong about you get what you pay for etc…

Cheers GrahamS

Trying to fly from Newcastle but even Manchester/Edinburgh seems very limited.

Yeah Newcastle is a bit limiting. Our Schladming flights were from Manchester and the Slovakia flights are out from Liverpool and back to Edinburgh.

Hmmm. Thought I’d found a good deal in Chamonix SC at £292 flying from Edinburgh but with only two of us going it ramps up to £523 each with ski carriage 😯

Going to be cheaper in a chalet or hotel 1/2 board I think.

Half the ski carriage by sticking both boards in one bag. Wear your boots on the plane if need be.
If you’re skiing then you could always borrow a board bag and chuck all your skis in there.

Yup. I normally do that. My bag has end compartments for the boots but I don’t think my board bag is long enough (I’m skiing this trip) as my skis are 185cm and the longest board I have is 167 and it was tight with that.

I think I might have a look at flying into Geneva or flight with a holiday charter and see how it pans out that way.

hammerite – Agree on the off-piste on your own. Not sure if I’d do it myself as I’m like you – I wouldn’t recognise where not to go.
In Val Thorens though it was easy to find stuff just off piste.

I’m apparently at a level where I could do an advanced course. I’m not sure mentally (or physically) if I want to do it. I think it just means I can come down reds and non-mogul blacks with confidence which is really all I want to do I think.
Similar to MTBing – I like to descend at a reasonable pace but have no desire to do proper downhill.

Anyone know of any deals going around for 10th March as they seem to be few and far between at the moment?

Try ski total, we were thinkni of them for that week – we say Saas Fee @ £449, looks really nice. Manchester flights though not newcastle

woop woop.

8 day road trip through central switzerland booked for the 3rd march
Engelberg, Andermatt and lots of secret powder spots here we come 😛