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

Last day in Les Deux Alpes today and it was the only one that wasn’t scorchio!
Predictably there is a 30cm dump predicted on Saturday and another 50cm on Sunday. Aargh! Oh well.

I saw a butterfly today.

I saw my first Selfie Drone being piloted by someone as he rode through a busy main slope. A taste of things to come 🙄

The skiers are still arguing about the best way to ski and they’ve had a lot longer to sort it out than we have…

True Dat!

Old Joke:

Q: How do you know when there is a Level 4 Ski instructor in the Bar?
A: Don’t worry – he’ll let you know!

Predictably there is a 30cm dump predicted on Saturday and another 50cm on Sunday. Aargh! Oh well.

Cool. I’m going home on Tuesday after 6 weeks work in Turkey.Looking very much forward to getting out in it 😆

Thanks for the replies guys.
Think I’ll book a few private lessons next time. I’m happy to ride anything including blacks, but always conscious that I could be better, especially in icy conditions and going full tilt.
Only managed to ride at a max of 52kph this holiday. Our 7yo daughter reached 57kph (on skis) in total control too when I stuck the phone in her pocket. It was her first week on snow.
Can’t have her beating Daddy next year!!

May have a look at boards and bindings before next time to replace my Northwave boots and K2 Nemesis from 2004-ish. 🙂

Yeah – Europe does have a big chunk of people who like ‘To be seen Skiing’.

WoW! Why would you do that?
For me skiing is wonderful, exciting, thrilling, even in testing conditions.

I once saw some women in ‘Vail’, who all got into a gondola (heavily made up and in all the latest gear). They managed to get themselves over to one of those very posh restaurants (where they take off your boots for you and give you slippers) without really skiing and then loudly announce to their waiting husbands ‘what a bore’ it all was 🙄

I saw my first Selfie Drone being piloted by someone as he rode through a busy main slope. A taste of things to come

Not sure if this is more annoying than twathats with “selfiesticks” styling it for teh sikk editz or not, but I would be sorely tempted to hook the little blighter out of the sky with a pole and smash it in to a thousand little pieces.

All the action-cam footage, it’s getting a bit like people doing a slide show of their photos way back when, isn’t it? No one else wants to look at it, and it will never look as good as;
A – You thought it would
B – Proper videos

Not sure if this is more annoying than twathats with “selfiesticks”

Waaaaaaay more annoying.

Picture a guy with a massive box backpack on, sliding blindly through a very busy connecting piste, staring at the screen and twiddling the controls on his chest-mounted remote, while a drone flies about ten metres ahead of him distracting everybody else.

Not cool. And I say that as a quadcopter fan that considered buying one with a camera for Canada. But just not like that!

* puts newly bought selfie stick back in box 👿

Selfie Stick = Stupid Stick

UNless you are filming for ski sunday , then its allowed .

Unless you are filming for ski sunday , then its allowed .

Well, quite! He’s WAAAAY better than all of us put together, and has some quality camera kit on there. And, what’s more, is on a closed racing piste, not on a busy one!

He’s also not doing that stupid duck faced pout so popular with narcissist selfiearsehats.

Male chicken.

Picture a guy with a massive box backpack on, sliding blindly through a very busy connecting piste, staring at the screen and twiddling the controls on his chest-mounted remote, while a drone flies about ten metres ahead of him distracting everybody else.

Words fail me.

Just relaxing in bed in a gasthoff on the outskirts of Bad Weissee on our way to Mayrhofen.

If anyone is thinking that the roadworks on the A8 between stutgart and Munich might have been finally finished after 5 years, think again. Took us the best part of 4 hours to get through today. Going the West the traffic jam extended from ausberg to about kircheim

Where was the drone being flown? I can’t think of anywhere that would be legal low over an open piste.

Words fail me.

Oh that it was true.

Where was the drone being flown? I can’t think of anywhere that would be legal low over an open piste.

The main run (Jandri) at Les Deux Alpes.

Not sure it would be illegal, but I doubt he asked permission of the resort either.
Looked like he had a hard backpack that he transported it in, so he probably just whipped it out when he got up there.

I expect this will be an increasing problem over the next decade or so. There are already several drones on the market that can automatically follow you and film you.

There are already several drones on the market that can automatically follow you and film you.

Am sure they’ll be all over BPW by the summer.

Any recommendations for one?

I really fancy the idea tbh.

Check out the Snowforcast for Zermatt over the next 48hrs , over 1m alledgedly.
Lucky for the few on half term able to go, its on my list but my god is it expensive.

Any recommendations for one

I believe AirDog are currently front runners for auto-follow drones.
You can expect to pay over a grand for one of those.

But a little manual quadcopter with a camera can be had for about £40.

Found him!

Look at the shot near the end – riding along whilst flying the drone. He must have edited out the bit where I indicated how impressed I was 😀

Yep. He’s a ****.

Oh, and looked like a cheeky Woodbine in there as well…..

He must have edited out the bit where I indicated how impressed I was

Skier in yellow trews near the end looked a lot like he was warming up to a pole-twatting of the drone!

Les Deux Alpes = France = Illegal.

Flying at less than 30m of a person is illegal for any weight size or type of drone.

Bloody hell that would very annoying. Flying it around the bar as well as what looked like awfully near head height on the piste. ****.

Pretty sure there are GPS tracker drones that link to your smart phone and follow your phones gps trace , so where you go, they follow.

Boy to geek to drone . The Corrigan way

I’m having an attack of the judgementalness

Annoying looking person

Doing something annoying

At best

A following drone or even selfie stick would just should how incompetent and timid I am on a board (as opposed to the riding God I think I am) – therefore I’m out.

Drone swatting as a “sport” though, that has potential…

Well, that wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. If one got in the way it would be swatted – most look like they’d snap at very little provocation.

OPERATIONS UPDATE:
Due to the very high winds at Car Park level we have closed the ski road. This is for safety reasons. It is difficult to stand and there is a lot of stones and debris blowing around. Ops 1

Maybe Glenshee tomorrow 😕

Which centre is that Geoff?

Ahh, that one.

Drones on pistes, nightmare. The resorts need to crack down on that

Yeah – Europe does have a big chunk of people who like ‘To be seen Skiing’.

WoW! Why would you do that?

… and looking at the video [cough] ‘edit’ that GrahamS posted from ‘Drone-Boy’, it would appear that there are a large number of people at the bar in the early clips who are dancing in ski boots! … either that or there’s been a large scale infestation of pubic lice or crabs judging by the erratic twitching …

Can’t say I’m overly found of euro-style apres ski nonsense with it’s face paint and oompah band techno bangin’ choons, but each to their own. However ski boots are hard enough to walk in … let alone dance or throw some shapes … 😆

I’m half way through a 2 week trip in Andorra.
Nearly everyone has a gopro on a stick or on their helmet regardless of their ability.
It seem that the worse you board/ski the more you want to record it?

“Nearly everyone”? I had a week in Austria last month and I’d say it was less than 10%.

Sorry, I’ll do a proper percentage analysis tomorrow.
Off to find a pen and paper in preparation.

That would be better.

I’d say it was around the 10% mark in Les Deux, more prominent in the young.

Personally I don’t have a problem with it. Seeing yourself on video can be a very useful learning tool. At least (most) GoPros don’t have screens so they are not riding along staring at them. (Though I say this as someone who did ride along filming my wife and daughter on a proper handheld camera with a screen 🙂 )

Gopro sightings where slim at la plagne this year. Snowboarders very much in the minority too. Fantastic too see so many disabled Skiers on the slopes this year with adapted kit/bikes

I hear Beretta make a usefull peice of kit for dealing with drones.

1 cartridge and the noisy , annoying things simply disappear.

If you are going to shoot £1000+ worth of drone out of the sky then you might want to save a second cartridge for the owner! 😀