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

Quite

Envious

Just done 2 days on cairngorm. Kids (10 & 8 ) gone from very slow pizza & chips to route 1 down the Ciste Fairway with mrsj unable to keep up 😆
Plenty of exuberents on t-trays keeping things interesting as I cajoled mini me 1 down the Gun Barrel and comedy falling in the fresh powder by one of the snow cannons before a bit of Après Ski in La Taverna. Marvellous. I may have to bore you with a video once I’ve pulled the clips together!

And Have a great trip CFH! +1

Mind if I leave this here?

About 5” or so fell overnight, and it was still snowing hard on the way up Bridger Canyon. Traffic was busy-ish, but pretty chilled pace.

Some pretty big queues, sorry “lines” forming up first thing! Was fairly quick to clear, thankfully.

 

Spent much of the morning cruising through glorious Cold Smoke in the treeline over on the Alpine Lift side of the hill. Had originally thought I’d just go and find some easy pistes to get my legs back together, but the treeline was just too appealing! Cold Smoke is the local name for their stunningly fluffy powder.

Then over towards the other side for a play on Pierre’s Knob (Stop that at the back! It’s the name of a lift you filthy depraved, etc)

Up at the top there is The Ridge. In bounds, extreme terrain. Some of the gullies, chutes and drops looked astonishing. Accessed by the Bridger Lift and then a bootpack up to the top. Off to the left of the photo were some ace blues (More like European reds, IMHO) that were fluffy, wind blown snow and great fun.

Nooskool skis on oldskool chairlift!

Salomon Q98 with Marker Griffons. Boots are model’s own 😉  Skis have stupidly light tips (You might even be able to make out the honeycomb in this pic) and fat enough for floatiness. There weren’t really any groomers to speak of, bar a few road-like sections, so not sure on that.

It was REALLY crowded in the afternoon.

Back to the hotel via Five Guys (Excellent fast food!)

And stopped off at the Bozeman Coop to pick up some recovery fluids.

See that boxed bottle of Guinness at the bottom there? $33. Yes, thirty three whole dollars! Or £21.50ish in real money. Needless to say, it stayed on the shelf! Sam Smiths seems very popular over here, which I suppose is a good thing!

Finally, in case you’re wondering what sort of town Bozeman is, not only do people have “Ted Nugent for President” bumper stickers, but there’s this;

 

And, I’m going back for more tomorrow! Which is nice.

 

 

https://vimeo.com/120260097

a little edit of a road trip I did at the end of January 😛

Nick – where was that then? Were you using a chest mount or head mount? I can’t decide which to use yet?

Nice, Nick! Although leaving the windlip unslashed at 1:40, how could you!? 🙂

Really like seeing where other people are going , good stuff all.

Also I’m liking those conditions Nick looks rad.

I’m sitting on a bus on my way to Norway for a week, just cruising past the old Saab Headquarters. Wet and grey here but soon should be up in the Scandinavian Alps 🙂

Have a good week @howsyourdad

Thanks @piemonster.

As @nedrapier said slash those windlips and enter The White Room!!

Good day today at Dienten-am-Hochkonig – not amazing viz higher up but great snow pretty much everywhere. No off-piste fun to be had just yet.

Lots of sun forecast for tomorrow so planning to do the ‘konigstour’ across the whole lift pass area.

Skiing is coming on pretty well – still have to remind myself that you can turn these skis with much less effort than the ones I learned to ski on!

What’s all this @bollocks?

enter The White Room!!

You called? 😉

Anyone get caught in the hellish traffic chaos around chambery yesterday?
Combination of French holidays starting, huge dump of snow, and several closed motorways between chambery and Lyon meant it took us 25 hours to drive back to Calais from val thorens. we were saying it needed a dump of snow but they could have waited until wed got out of the valley! 👿

Thanks Ned! not me in front, I was filming – also difficult to slash those things backside unless your Terje!

All done with a helmet mount.

My legs ache. Blistering sunshine all day. First lift to last call.
Those Salomons were rubbish on groomers. Changed for some Nordica Wildfires, which were much better.
I have pizza and beer.

La vie est belle.

Dear CaptainFlashHeart

Just sod off 😉

Kind Regards

Just back from Pas De La Casa, great snow and blue skies for most of the week

P1030451 by le_grande_momo[/url], on Flickr

funky, thanks for the suggestion the other day, though i didn’t take up on it. I’d been struggling since Wednesday with what turned out to be a blood splitting chest infection. We popped over to Verbier as well, that was terrible down below 1800 didn’t help that it felt like i had AMS.. Then proceeded to drive the wrong way back to Cham through 2 effing tunnels (idiot). The snow came down quite hard on Saturday, and i believe it’s not really stopped that much since so it should all be happy days in the 4 valleys!

Be careful though folks, a boarder fell through a Crevasse on the Valley Blanche on Tuesday and he was with a guide. He was OK, just a little shaken after having to be winched out!

Oh, i’ll also state, that although M+S tyres are proper good in ice – in 3 inches of snow and a steep hill, the [fully loaded] car would not climb! (it was fun trying)

Great day today doing the Königstour – 32km and 6700m of vertical. Blue skies, good snow, incredible views, big wide pistes and no queues. Perfect.

Skied the fastest I’ve ever been down a black run before – slightly scared myself but great fun.

Now hopefully this dump will materialise tonight/tomorrow/wednesday and I’ll get myself a snowboard! 🙂

Great day today doing the Königstour – 32km and 6700m of vertical. Blue skies, good snow, incredible views, big wide pistes and no queues. Perfect.

Pfft call yourself a photographer? Lets see some snaps then 😛

Was mostly too busy skiing for pics but if you insist…. 🙂

Cracking images as always grum.

Are you hauling about an SLR with you or something a bit smaller?
I tried riding with an SLR in a Slingshot bag for a couple of years, but it was a bit annoying.

Back from Engelberg last week. It was pricey, but as the title of a magazine article on the place “worth every Franc”. And you gets what you pays for.

Great off-piste, worth the £100 each per day guide (at least one of them was), still finding powder stashes 4 days later…

Cracking images as always grum.

+1

Cheers folks.

Graham I borrowed my brother’s LX7 today and just had it in my jacket pocket. I Normally take my GF1 with the 20mm pancake in a lens case attached to the chest strap on my rucksack but didn’t bother bringing it this time. The LX7 is a nice little camera.

I was also a bit too busy for a lot of photos yesterday.

I got back from a week in Tignes with UCPA on Sunday….awesome week! I rode hard and partied just as hard tbh…..I’ll sort some pics out when I’ve got rid of my hangover/slept for about a month!

Sooo tempted to just **** off and do a season next year.

This is making me want to book a weekend in March, I packed my gear away after Val Tho at the start of Feb, but I’m itching for more! Currently sat in San Francisco though, blazing sun and yesterday was warm, but today isn’t so much, still no sign of snow in SoCal!

Graham I borrowed my brother’s LX7 today and just had it in my jacket pocket. I Normally take my GF1 with the 20mm pancake…

Cheers! I know “it’s not the equipment” by the way 😉 but I’m coming round to the idea that nice though my old Nikon D80 is to use, it is a pain in the Harris to carry about (not just on snow but generally and more so with kids in tow) so I might be better with something smaller that I can carry more.

Sooo tempted to just **** off and do a season next year.

If you can then I say do it. Otherwise you’ll be a few years down the line wishing you’d done it when you had the chance (I speak from experience!)

You’ve probably seen me bang on about them before but a Micro Four Thirds or other CSC is a great compromise camera IMO. DSLRs are too big unless you’re going out specially to do photography. Plus I feel a bit of a nob using one sometimes – and I’m a photographer!

There’s some cool compact zoom lenses for M4/3 now too that give you flexibility without being bulky.

PS – it’s snowing! Get in. 🙂

Hey Grum,

Just got back last night from Maria Alm.
Conditions were fantastic hey?
If it dumps enough snow, do the Griesbach Hutte run off Aberg and get some bacon & eggs in the Hutte, best around.

Sorry for this Facebook video but this is worth a watch.
Bloke attempting to ride one of the chutes in the freeride zones at Jasna:

Includes the Slovak for “I’m not quite dead yet!” 😀

Hi colp – yeah it’s been great. Lovely area too.

I learned to ski here when I was 3 and now my brother’s kids are in the ski school here at a similar age!

Some nice fresh stuff today (maybe 10-15cm) but I don’t think the big dump is going to materialise sadly. Might check out that skiroute anyway – could be more snow up there.

Graham – 😀

Skiing again on Thursday. Snow is forecast all day on Wednesday.

Woop woop woop!

I splashed out on the live viewfinder for my LX7 – really handy for skiing in very bright light – if you can’t see the screen properly you sometimes don’t have an option but point and hope, spray and pray.

And I’ve found it can help you concentrate a bit more on composition, too, even when you don’t need it to see what you’re shooting. You’re more involved in the shot, blocking out the scene except for the shot in the viewfinder, rather than taking photo’s at arms’ length, literally and metaphorically!

And well done CFH. delighted for you! Where are you off to this time?

Thanks, Ned! It has been great so far. Felt a little odd starting this thread the last couple of years, as I’ve not got away due to my lovely children!

Next trip is still TBC, but definitely on Thursday. We’re monitoring the snow forecasts between Bridger and Big Sky. The former is looking like getting some fresh all day Wednesday and through the night though, so might be back in those glorious tree lines on the cold smoke!

I’ll do a fuller write up once I’m home, but it looks to me that you could make an epic ski/board road trip over here!

Grum, don’t know how I missed it before, but that black and white landscape is a stunner!

Just booked a cheeky weekend in Sauze D’Oulx.

Any must do runs, off piste areas (snow dependent) or places to eat recommendations?

Thanks

Any good sales on yet?

I see Snow+Rock have an “up to 50%” clothing sale on.
And there is a bunch of new Westbeach stuff on SportPursuit.

I see Snow+Rock have an “up to 50%” clothing sale on.

😆

Yeah, only looking at around £250 for a jacket then.

I bought all my stuff for this year’s holiday in the Westbeach sale last year as discussed on this thread by bravohotel8er. Slacks, jacket and a bunch of socks for £150. I’ll be a bit last season and all that, but if I can handle my 7 year old boots, I can handle that. 🙂