I’m in the market for a basic Avalanche kit

I’d advise a bit of caution with old transceivers – there’s been a fair amount of discussion recently about issues with old kit. e.g drifting off 457Mhz; damaged antenna; incompatibility issues with newer digital models.

I’m not saying don’t buy it (the Barryvox 3000 was a well reviewed model) – but it might be worth having the unit checked over

I’ve heard of at least one in bounds avalanche on open terrain a few years ago

Yeah – apparently there was one in Lizard Bowl – Fernie (about 10 years ago I think) that started outbounds and came inbounds and caught a group of skiers.

I’m not saying they don’t happen – but like you say they are rare and the Patrollers are even more cautious since.

they won’t open the Symphony lift without it being good to go

I remember the long hike out of Flute Bowl! :D

Avalanche in Verbier with sadly two fatalities. :-(

Of note (in light of recent discussions on here) is that they were skiing in the trees:

http://www.planetski.eu/news/7605

Why does the BA checkin in Geneva not know what an avalanche rescue pack is – they must see hundreds every day?

Flying with an ABS or similar still seems to be a minefield … I know people who’ve: had the canisters confiscated at Schipol; have a nightmare at check-in (despite having all the relevant paperwork – as the final decision is the pilots) and some people who now just put the canister in their ski/board bag to avoid the hassle (so it’s probably only a matter of time before their luggage fails to join them at their destination).

The situation seems to be getting worse as security is heightened. However the new ‘fan/battery’ systems supposedly avoid some of grief as you aren’t flying with compressed gas (just lithium batteries)

+1 for Wildcat. Always been a real pleasure to deal with and kit has lasted well.

I can’t think of many that you could get to during ‘fresh tracks’ time that would be likely to slide.

I’m also intrigued by where this happened… if a slide (i.e. not ‘slough’) occurred inbounds [under a lift!] then that means the Ski Patrol hadn’t done their job right. And having done ‘Fresh Tracks’ at Whistler I’d be most surprised as they make you wait and wait until they are 100% happy before they lift the rope.

Even Flute bowl is considered ‘inbounds’ (there used to be an ‘Avalanche gate’ there years ago – dunno if it’s still there)

Having spent a fair amount of time with ‘Pro Patrollers’ I know they take their job and the safety of resort guests incredibly seriously – especially in today’s litigious North America – did you report the slide?

With avalanche safety, there’s no feedback at all unless it goes horribly wrong. No way of telling whether you’re still alive due to spectacular luck, or good decisions.

Very good point Ned … and rather sobering …

Tis not about safe/unsafe – it’s about high risk/low risk. Low risks sometimes kill – just not as often.

From my perspective it’s all about managing risk – having the requisite kit/knowledge/guide, does not make it ‘safer’. If that were the case then there wouldn’t be the number of highly experienced individuals (including guides) who sadly lose their live in avalanches.

Having a guide does improve you chance of survival if you do get buried though as they are more likely to be able to dig you out in under 15 minutes …

I’ve cunningly avoided that by simply not videoing myself any more

Yeah … but I keep being caught on film by other people! :oops:

It’s always amusing looking back at videos and thinking “crikey – was I really that bad? Thank goodness I’ve improved in the past few years!”

… and then you see a more recent video and realise that the improvements have been at best, marginal! :-)

…still … it’s just about the best fun there is trying! :-)

haha @ baw-deep! Looks like fun GrahamS! :-)

A point perhaps worth emphasising:

North America – ‘tree runs’/glades etc within the ski area boundary will have been assessed by Ski Patrol

Europe – any non-pisted area with trees will most definitely be ‘off-piste’ therefore you should only be skiing/riding there if you know what you are doing and/or are riding with people who do e.g. appropriately qualified instructor/guide

re you generally (promise not to sue if I die from duff advice here), generally safe around / amongst trees (woods that is, not a lonesome pine)?

Skiing/Riding in the trees can be marginally safer than open areas, but apparently the trees actually need to be pretty close for it to be ‘safe’ – as they are a potential ‘terrain trap’ and a slide in the trees is more likely to cause injury or death from trauma

Oh dear … it’s not looking good in L2A. :-(

crikey Mr Woppit … that’s just made my eyes prickle again … :oops:

As used at the start of the film ‘The Breakfast Club’ if I remember correctly?

I think the social media out-pouring of sadness & grief etc is the modern equivalent of shared loss. The online version of flowers against the gates and lit candles

It feels like an epoch in rock n roll is drawing to a close …

True – we may never met these people, but their impact on our lives, especially during formative teenage years can never be under estimated. They spoke to us in our bedrooms through crappy cassette players, mono turntables and catalogue ‘hi-fi’ systems … and we listened! :-(

Ha Ha! GrahamS! Very good! I like that! :-)

Sobering news coming in from the Alps … :-(

http://www.planetski.eu/news/7573

Be safe out there folks!

would you say you could using it for prolonged digging in the ground, or just for small jobs?

Small-ish jobs. Drainage, patching & repairs etc are fine – I wouldn’t want to be doing major earthworks with it as the ‘shovel’ doesn’t hold much and it’s fairly short in length so is pretty ‘back-breaking’ after a while.

Also – The Amazon link seems pricey – I bought mine for £50 [army surplus] 6 years ago. I’d be very surprised if they’d gone up in price that much …

I’ve got the Gerber one. It’s lasted well, convenient for small repairs and doesn’t weigh too much. I wouldn’t want anything lighter or flimsier though to be honest – be wary of cheap imitations!

Unsurprisingly, there appears to be heated debate on the issue!

Yes – I’ve observed an increasing trend towards using the term to describe a day dominated by blue sky, but without any recent storms. I guess if it gets used enough, that will eventually become the meaning …

rather like the term ‘boarding’ … :oops:

twelve more sleeps til two weeks in chamonix

Well Winter has seemingly returned to the valley, so hopefully you should have some pretty decent conditions.

Have you got any particular objectives to tick off?

but I’ve not started running from zero baseline fitness

baseline fitness will have little to do with it – it’s seemingly all about specific adaptation.

Last winter I ramped up my pre-snow season training to include 2 or 3 10k runs (as well as bike rides, squats & lunges etc), and despite having been running for years the physio reckoned I ramped up too much exacerbating a muscle weakness on the inside of my right knee (possibly stemming from a torn MCL some years ago).

This was causing my knee to no longer ‘track’ and the sudden increase in use caused the Patellar Tendonitis to flair up (exacerbated by snowboard landings/heelside turns in choppy snow).

Since tendons and ligaments don’t ‘adapt’ as well/quickly as muscles to increases in activity [especially as we get older] ramping up the activities too quickly can exacerbate any underlying issues/weaknesses

Good luck with the rehab.

Are you sure it’s your ACL?

Might be worth getting a good sports physio to check it out.
It could be your ACL, but it could also be Patellar Tendonitis – 5/10k 4 or 5 times a week is a fair amount of running (i.e. 30-50km per week??) if you’ve only been running 3 or 4 months)

General rule of thumb is to ramp up no more than say 5% per week, so it’s possible that your knee pain is an overuse injury

either way a good sports physio should be able to diagnose and recommend appropriate recovery/strengthening exercises

as others have said, controlling your speed is key.

Start with foot braking, carving and then learn to slide.

Checkout Lush Longboards as well as Arbor, Sector 9 and Never Summer

A vert skater once told me that Longboards are for folks who can’t skate anymore and there’s probably an element of truth in it. If I ride a shorter board they feel really nervous and twitchy. But longboards are great for getting your ‘carve on’!

Key for me was finding somewhere safe-ish to ride and practice – ideally you want nice traffic-free smooth, flat (i.e. no camber) stretch of tarmac gently sloping downhill with a good ‘run out’

Since the best places are often public roads a helmet, gloves and pads are recommended. Tarmac really does hurt/rip your skin off.

no worries!

Full Duplex/wired/structured cabling will pretty much beat any WiFi offering due to the absence of a collision domain but this may well be ‘Overkill’ for most home implementations. Powerline is a good compromise but like most things it depends what your requirements are:

If you just need to check your email / browse the t’interweb then a WiFi repeater @ <£30 might be a reasonable solution. The limiting factor may well still be your internet connection.
If you need to do bandwidth intensive data/exhange activities within your home ‘LAN’ then it may be worth looking at a more scalable solution

I can certainly recommend the NETGEAR WN3000RP

Throughput isn’t amazing but perfectly acceptable for SMART TV and BBC iPlayer etc using the handy RJ45

Easy to DIY?

Very easy indeed … as long as you’ve got the kit. (loads of HOWTOs on the YouTube)

The Dakine ‘Super Tune’ (i.e. the one with the iron) or similar is a good starter kit.

Some form of purchased or home made stand is also necessary (the ones like ‘g-clamps’ that clamp on a worksurface are good)

Question is whether it’s worth it … if you are only servicing one board for one week a year then it’s probably just easier to take it to a shop in resort. If you’ve got a quiver and are riding multiple weeks/trips then it’s worth the investment I reckon!

never wanted to ski and have no intention of doing so

Fair enough … we must all walk to the beat of our own drummer.

After years of just snowboarding, I had ski lessons to help with my splitboarding. Sometimes to progress in your chosen path you have to take a step back and approach it from a slightly different angle ..

But I think it’s a matter of experience. The more you have the slacker you can ride.

Clearly I’ll have to get some more experience! :oops:

But what is this ‘shoulder rotation’ of which you speak? :roll:

When I think of the concept of ‘lazy riding’ I think of the folk who just try and ‘whip’ the back end round (counter-rotating) rather than carving and finishing the turn.

I’d say that it’s much easier to be lazy on a board than Skis

Really? Quite the opposite in my experience, but then I’m a lousy skier!

For me, lazy / sloppy snowboarding = catching an edge and either ‘knee dancing’ or bruising one’s coccyx! :oops:

Skiing has it’s merits but there’s still not really much better in life than snowboarding in deep powder.

I would concur completely with above sentiments, but I do wish that I had the time and opportunity to be a better skier – just for those icy days when you fancy a change of pace.

In terms of the thorny age-old skiing vs snowboarding debate, I think all other things being equal they are probably similarly ‘hard’ when progressing through the novice/beginner/intermediate phases – the major difference being at which point the steep learning curve commences:

For snowboarding I think this occurs early on as you spend so much time in the first few days on your knees & bum not really covering much ground – whereas with skiing, once you can master your ‘french fries’ and you ‘pizza’ you can cover some mileage on mellow terrain quite quickly – it’s just that the next phases required to parallel ski and ski in powder where the learning curve steepens.

Either way whichever you start with there’s some ‘transfer of technology’ these days with the concepts of edges, side-cut and carving etc being applicable to both ‘disciplines’

and of course the earlier you start the better …

+1 for Stuart Maconie – have a look at his book ‘The People’s Songs’

Also (depending on her indie demographic) consider Louise Wener’s (from Sleeper) “Different for Girls” autobiography (aka Just For One Day: Adventures in Britpop)

If you are after a bit of snowboarding history then have a look at “let it Ride: The Craig Kelly Story”

But yeah – the Absinthe & Jeremy Jones films are always worth a watch and Absinthe films in particular have resulted in some obscure/random iTunes ‘tuneage’ being purchased! 8)

Hey Stevomcd

We rented fatbikes in Fernie last season as it was fun alternative to avoid the ski hill at the weekend. But we were there for 3 weeks and the off-piste/backcountry was shocking due to the appalling warm wet weather … :cry:

The locals had ‘groomed’ some of the summer MTB trails specially for fatbikes as businesses were desperate to try and encourage folks to stay.

Ordinarily cycling probably isn’t something I’d consider unless I was in resort for a lengthy period and looking for something other than running or sitting in a hot-tub for an ‘off day’ activity …

Late season /summer season (on a glacier) might be viable as an afternoon activity when everything is bit slushy, but:

1. Not many viable glacier resorts left
2. If I’m on a snowboard trip I like to get as much time on the board as possible

I’m liking that very much howsyourdad1 ! cheers :-)

(btw – just delete the ‘s’ in https and hey presto!)

:-( nedrapier.

Well done him for taking part in the film though. If his story helps others think twice then it will have been worthwhile!

Don’t think we’ve done this yet have we?

Outer cap removal :

Park Pedal Vice (e.g. AV5) popped in a vice.

Gently nip up the end cap in a suitable slot and then rotate pulling hub/wheel in upward direction

“3 was enough for Burton” strategy…

Tru dat! … or just one big one! :-)

I probably won’t and it’ll do another couple of holidays this season

… well, you could always use this as an excuse to tinker with your stance and go wider! (and use another set of holes) :-)