The STW Ski & Snowboard thread. The 2014-2015 season

I’m off to Tignes 14th Feb…..what’s the snow like there at the minute?

Off on the 17th Jan , its rubbish now btw . There is no point in asking whats it like now , when its 40 days till you go.
Bit like asking ‘Is the Dusk till Dawn course muddy?’ on 30th July

I know…..starting to slightly worry though haha!

Still 22 days to go.

But a rather manic bubble of excitement is starting to build. 8)

Just booked to go to the Lyngen Alps for a week. 1st holiday with Mrs Mugsy without the wee ones for 2 years. 🙂 😀 😆 😛

Jaffejoffer – Try the Surfanic outlet online?

Prices ain’t too bad. Sizes come up larger than expected (think Tesco kids clothes sizes)

Nice, mugsys_m8. When you going and are where are you staying?

I’ve just finished herding 9 cats into an airbnb place in Lyngseidet in the 1st week of March. flights, beds, cars all booked! Just got to sort my skin glue out now.

Dumping snow in Norway at the mo, Voss is having a fantastic season and Hemsedal and Trysil are getting loads now too

From April 12th for a week. Staying at Magicmountain Lodge for first 5 then will airbnb it in Tromso.

Dumping snow in Norway at the mo, Voss is having a fantastic season and Hemsedal and Trysil are getting loads now too

Handy, consider dieting where we’ve booked 😀

Dear autocorrect. Go **** yourself. 😀

Handy, considering where we’ve booked

Just got to sort my skin glue out now.

I have this very same task on my list – I’ve just taken delivery of a roll of brown paper to remove the old dirty glue and will be using the BD re-glue sheets – what method are you thinking of nedrapier?

Part of me thinks it would have been simpler to buy new skins …

Tube glue is easy as long as you keep it warm. I’ve never tried the ironing method, just pick the worst of the crap off and slap the new stuff on. Works fine.

I’ve been patching the skins with tube glue for the past couple of seasons so it’s now time for a proper re-glue I think – doing the whole skins with Tube Glue would be impractical, hence I thought I’d try the re-glue sheets

I found it quite straightforward doing the whole skin with tube glue but I haven’t tried other methods. I strapped the skins to a long baton and clamped that in the work bench. I kept the tube of glue in a glass of warm water and spread it on with a plastic spreader. It doesn’t look as neat as the factory applied glue but they’re still super sticky – good enough for wet Scottish conditions which we all know are the ultimate test of a skins adhesion!

Edit – the warm glue is essential, the first time I reglued I didn’t do this and it was like trying to work with snot from the worst cold of your life!

Cheers Spin! 🙂

… and back to the subject of avalanches, this incident from last week is worth checking out.

NOTE: video contains some swearing so possibly NSFW:

http://www.henrysavalanchetalk.com/avalanche-foglietta-north-january-5th-2015-ste-foy-tarentaise

NOt sure exactly where the ‘Island of safety ‘ is in that film. All 4 standing too close together almost directly below the slope the skier is going down.
The slightly higher area to the far left or far right would have been slightly better , although this slide is so wide I doubt even that would have been totally safe.

There is a good tranceiver practise area in St Anton. You can choose the number of ‘victims’ and the target time to find them all.
My skiing buddy and I spent around an hour practising a co-ordinated technique to use our equipment to its best capability. His receiver gets a ping approx 20m further away than mine , then mine gets down to 40cm , then 20cm easier . So whilst Im pinpointing the victim he can be putting our shovels together and the probes.
The pingers in St Anton are only shallow , less than 1m and are a biscuit tim sized box that switches off when struck.

I would feel confident in finding anyone with a beeper very quickly and if other people were around , in organising a team of diggers to extract them/ watch for secondary slides / sort helicopter landing area etc

The predicted snow fell as rain. skinned up over rocks twigs and branches then skied piste down yesterday. Junior went out this morning and came back soggy, I didn’t bother.

Tube glue on my skins, no problems.

Interesting vid, Digby. With the proviso “it’s easy to be wise after the event”: it’s clear they knew they were on a highly avalanche prone slope and then traversed it rather than skiing straight down it. Traversing is more likely to trigger an avalanche and repeatedly traversing creates a lot of break lines.

Lovely mugsysm8! MML is a great spot and Henrika and Patrick are brilliant people. We’ll be dropping in for sure when we’re there. Food’s usually pretty great too!

Digby – we’ve been going late season on wet snow and there’s a lot of water that’s got into the glue. The glue’s still plenty sticky, but it’s gone all gooey and comes off on your hands and on the base. Apparently that’s water that’s been worked into the glue. You can apparently drive out the moisture and smooth/redistribute the glue by ironing the glue with siliconised parchment paper over the top. I’ve heard several people say this, including this: http://www.larryscascaderesource.com/weird/weird_files/skins.html
and the backcountry ski tech guy at Costwolds in Betys y Coed who seemed to know his stuff.

Apparently the baking parchment has to be siliconised, otherwise it gets very messy indeed!

Some serious snow forecast for the West Highlands this week. Could be looking at some good touring conditions in Scotland come next weekend.

Well, it’s paid.

And our 4-inches-Friday-coming younger son did his first lesson of a nine week course at Xscape yesterday.
Grins all round.

More snow now please

Others might have seen this already, but here’s an avalanche taking out a few skiers in the alps recently.

Can’t see the video , comes up as ‘private’

Can’t see the video , comes up as ‘private’

It’s the same as the one in Digby’s comment above.

Alas both say Private

Which also comes up as private…

…beaten to it…

Maybe pulled by the owner after all the comment / flak?

I demand to see avalanches

I demand to see avalanches

Well it is a biking forum.

It’s gone private recently. Given it’s clear they made some really bad decisions I suspect someone fears ridicule or legal action. They made multiple traverses across a slope (thus creating multiple break lines) which their behaviour told you they had identified as avalanche prone, four of them stopped together in an unwise place.

Any vaguely reliable long term forecasts? I have the option of a trip to Morzine over the second weekend of Feb, whilst I’d love to get some snowboarding in, looking at the grass on the webcams it isn’t very tempting for the price of the trip. I’ve been spoilt by powder on my last two holidays and the thought of scraping down ice doesn’t have the same appeal as it used to!

I would just get it booked bigjim. Anything could happen in the next month.

I’m going to Morzine on Sunday and I’m not panicking… yet…

http://www.meteoexploration.com/forecasts/Morzine/

Bergfex is a little less optimistic though.

I’m optimistic about getting enough snow over the weekend to make skiing fun again.

yeah I should just book it really hey. There has to be some more snow in the next 3 weeks…

I’ve skied the Alps or Pyrenees almost every Winter for the last 27 years and can’t remember there not being enough snow to enjoy the February holidays. The Christmas period is always hit and miss, the new year a bit better and February reliable.

I know Morzine is popular with Brits being cheap and easier to get too, but I keep plugging the high resorts on this forum even if it means a few more hours drive and an extra couple of hundred euros.

Just got back from Morzine – Avoriaz is ok. Morzine/Les Gets is not great at the moment but some ok runs high up above Avoriaz.

Go on then Edukator, I’m interested.

We’ve been doing Les Gets for a few years because we found a company with excellent childcare, but this year our youngest will be in lessons (he’ll be 4).

Assuming he takes to it we won’t need the childcare so much next year, so given we’re tied to school holidays higher does sound good.

Recommend me a high resort or two for a confident skiing 9 year old, a 5 year old in his second year skiing and two snowboarder parents of decidedly mediocre talents.

I’ve done Val Thorens on my own and enjoyed it but it wasn’t really family orientated. La Plange was full of flat spots. Chourchevel was nice but highly expensive.

And just to make the task harder – catered chalets are nice and short transfers are preferred. Don’t mind making my own travel arrangements and Easter is probably best for us.

I can get by in French (ie I won’t starve) so it doesn’t have to be an English speaking resort.

Go for it.

PS I should say thanks too really shouldn’t I.

Wow I didn’t realise how low Morzine was, I’m more used to Paradiski