I have done a bit of research and the weights seem similar. The Rebas are RLT Dual Air with Maxle and Pushlock for €499, the SIDS have the Maxle and DNA RTC3 damping but no Pushlock for €549. Unless I find some good reviews of the RTC3 I will probably just go for the Rebas.

Looking at the geometry on this, its basically within a millimetre or two of the 2012 Niner EMD in every measurement.

Mine is about a year old or something and is still in good nick. There are two types of blue ones, softer ones are about £10-15 and the firmer ones are more like £25-30 for a metre length.

You can get extra firm ones which won’t warp, they are more expensive though.

Once that gets comfortable you can move onto a PVC pipe if you really like pain.

Tignes, Meribel, Les Arcs, La Plagne, Flaine

These are near the top of my list for places for beginners to avoid Sorry to be controversial!

Why? They’re all snow-sure, good lift systems, loads of wide-open pistes, good kids facilities and ski-schools, plenty of ski-in-ski-out accommodation.

If nightlife is a factor then probably Meribel or Tignes. Deux Alpes isn’t quite as good a beginners resort but does have good nightlife. Val has good nightlife but the beginner-friendly skiing is slightly less accessible to beginners than Tignes.

nbt look at the OP, already doing lessons and looking to go in late March/early April. It is understandable to reccommend a big snowsure area with a good lift system. In my experience beginners who are interested in other sports tend to progress quite quickly and enjoy being able to take big motorway pistes around the larger areas – skiing over to another village etc. Yes there are lots of nice smaller areas around but there is a reason the big ones are popular – they are good.

I’ve been using a set of Barons on a mix of muddy trails and roads/tow paths, due to only having one bike working. They aren’t wearing quickly. Its somewhere between the Maxxis 42 and 60 in terms of grip, rolling resistance and wear.

Tignes, Meribel, Les Arcs, La Plagne, Flaine, would spring to mind.

You might want to invest in a cryocuff – they are expensive but they’re really good for icing the knee after the operation and during rehab.

Have a search and post back if you are looking for any specific, you will see from the other threads that there are loads of things to consider – for instance if you’re willing to “guide” yourselves then the July/August ban isn’t really a factor. If you have a vehicle you are under an hour from Verbier and not much further from Aosta for day trips.

I have never seen a decent snowboarder using Flows, unless they were being paid. Straps take a couple of seconds to do up and are infinitely adjustable.

One thing to consider is the shape/brand of the boot and binding. For instance Drakes seem comfiest with Salomon boots, and if you have Burton boots you know Burton bindings are more likely to be comfortable.

There are loads of threads on here if you do an advanced search over the last year.

Guiding will depend on time of year, guiding is frowned upon in July and August.

The infinite nature of the trails will depend on your attitude to pushing your bike. The more you are prepared to do a bit of climbing away from the lifts, the more options you have.

Eventually, a bit of both is the best way to keep the knee strong.

On clips the danger is not being able to get out of them in time, or damaging yourself getting out. The advantage is that pedalling smoothly on clips will activate all the muscles in your legs, and help work out any flat spots or imbalances in your pedal stroke.

Flats are the other side of the coin, you can get a foot out whenever you need to but you will inevitably develop some imbalance. I prefer flats for most of the mountain biking I do. I had my op 3 or 4 years ago and I’m in the gym twice a week doing specific training. I will still notice an imbalance working itself out if I go back to clips after a couple of weeks only riding flats.

Why do folk who’ve never ridden DH (or a DH bike for that matter) over here think they “neeed” a DH bike for riding in the Alps?

you’ll ride exactly the same way over there so if you’re not a DHer here you still won’t be there even if you spend a fortune trying to “look” the part

I would expect they want a DH bike because they don’t habitually ride 10,000m of vertical descent every day for a week when they are in the UK, and they want a bigger bike to cope with the demands of so much descending.

Most of them probably aren’t as bothered as you are about “being a DHer” or “looking the part”, they just want to enjoy their holiday as much as possible.

I have had my Dixon since the Spring. I kind-of ended up with it by accident after I warrantied a Spitfire. I sold my SX Trail and took the Dixon to the Alps and didn’t really miss the SX Trail. I’m just breaking down a Blue Pig because the Dixon is nearly the same weight and pedals really well too. Its the best design and build quality I’ve had in a bike and Freeborn are good at sorting out a specific build at a good prince.

They are relying on the fact that people have got into the habit of ordering from them.

Thanks for that, great deal. Any pointers for cheap maps for Ireland and the Alps?

Just be realistic about how many hours a week you can manage right now without knackering yourself.

Take that base and aim to improve on it steadily. You can increase duration or intensity, but both at the same time will start to wear you out. If you do start feeling tired, throw in a bit more rest and an easy-paced session.

The balance that the Friel book always goes back to is fatigue versus form. You need to fatigue yourself to get fitter. You need to rest to recover, or regain form. That is what you are trying to balance out over a season so that you are “in form” and rested when you want to be fastest.

I think its on Sky Sports 1 as part of their Super Six deal.

What way is the bottom of the BB set up for routing – if you drill the rest of the guides are you going to be left with something scrappy under the BB?

The US site product description also says it has continuous cable routing, it must be an old description.

I’m not talking about importing one, more pointing out that they’re prepared to sell them cheaper in the States.

Does that include tax? If so they’re just the £50 cheaper in the States…

I don’t think you need to get obsessed with grinding out an hour and a half at maximum resistance.

If you’re not looking to set any records you just need to be able to put in a consistent effort over an hour or two. You will still be able to spin most road bikes fairly easily up a 7 or 8 % climb, if you’re on a MTB cassette then that increases even more.

The climbs in the Alps only get really nasty when they get towards 10%, other than that its just a war of attrition. Take enough food & water, make allowances for the heat and sunburn, and don’t go out too fast at the start.

There are a lot of profiles of the major cols on the net, so you can see where the steepest bits are in advance. For instance the Col de Colombiere gave me an absolute kicking this Summer, I thought I was going really well and didn’t leave a lot in reserve for the final kilometre or two, which is the steepest, hottest section of the climb.

You can ski Savoy, Planards, Brevent & Flegere within a 5 minute walk of the centre of town. If you’ve kids that are old enough to manage their own stuff its perfectly easy to have a good family holiday in Chamonix.

The biggest reason it gets a bad rep is tour ops continually mis-selling packages. So, you get a chalet on a back street halfway to Les Houches, then you have to walk into town to the bus. The kids are meant to be in lessons at Le Tour, whilst you’re meant to be in lessons at Grands Montets. If you know a bit about the place and get the right accommodation all that goes out the window.

Chamonix is shit!

Eh, no.

There is a reason people come to Chamonix from all over the world – it has some of the best skiing and scenery in Europe.

Fair enough, if you are after your standard ski-in-ski-out holiday with 300km of motorway pistes, Chamonix is not for you.

One of the things I really like about Chamonix is that its a proper wee town with a lot of character in the village. I think you lose a lot of that staying away from town, but you’re still travelling to ski anyway. As Edukator says all the buses run from the centre of town and Brevent is basically in town.

For doorstep skiing Tignes is very hard to beat, there is so much good skiing in Espace Killy.

http://www.chamchalet.co.uk/

On the Savoy piste, opposite the Brevent lift station. When you get knackered you can sit in the hot tub and watch your daughter going up and down the piste.

The colour is a bit cheap looking. There are loads of strong colours that suit that kind of bike without going bright orange. All the existing Singluar range are really nice classy colours.

Which allowed the schemes to try and squeeze an extra couple of hundred quid out of all of their users with threats of repossessing the bike.

…who enter into an undefined agreement of their own choosing, they are not being screwed

The ones who had their agreements changed halfway through by the Revenue ruling have been comprehensively screwed. Anybody who goes into a third-party scheme these days needs their head examined.

As I said, its unfortunate that employees of companies who run their own schemes are several hundred quid better off than employees who go through a third party.

TJ you said

it was a rental otherwise it would be a benefit in kind and taxable

The entire point of the legislation is that the use of the bike is a tax-free benefit. You can call it a loan or a rental or whatever makes you feel better but the scheme was specifically designed to exempt the use of bicycles from the BIK laws. That is still the case until the bike changes ownership.

The salary-sacrifice scheme was laid out purely to compensate the employer for their outlay. This is why the salary sacrifice payments are equal to the total outlay made by the employer. The schemes have taken advantage of this and turned it into an uncompetitive rental rate with a balloon payment on the end.

The people who are getting screwed out of this are employees of large organisations, particularly in the public sector. These employers won’t commit big capital outlays to running their own schemes. They have to get the third-party providers involved, who then screw the employees.

In the meantime any employers who can commit the capital for a year are free to run the scheme, and allow their employees to continue to use the bike for as long as they like – no administration fee and no inflated payment on the end of the scheme.

shandy – it was always the case it was a rental otherwise it would be a benfit in kind and taxable

Nope.

This is the opening sentence from the Department of Transport guidelines for implementing the scheme.

To promote healthier journeys to work and to reduce environmental pollution, the 1999 Finance Act introduced an annual tax exemption, which allows employers to loan cycles and cyclists’ safety equipment to employees as a tax-free benefit.

The whole intention of the scheme was to make the benefit tax free. The BIK rules only apply to a transfer of ownership of the bike as an asset.

There is another thread that you can search for where brant gave the dimensions for seatposts etc.

Perhaps the scheme providers haven’t explained themselves properly – the deal always was that your payments were rental, not installments. That was made very clear in the legislation.

No, it wasn’t. There is a difference between “legislation” and the scheme conditions. Legislation was created by the government to initiate the scheme. Terms & conditions laid down by the schemes are not government policy.

The scheme providers are deliberately muddying the waters on this. Hardly anybody I speak to understands the difference between the government legislation and the conditions added in by the schemes. The schemes themselves have even set up a lobbying group to pressure HMRC for more leverage in order to screw the last penny out of the ruling.

The salary sacrifice scheme was included to help employers recover the cost of their outlay to run the scheme. It wasn’t intended as “rental”, it was intended to help employers recoup costs and encourage them to participate. Under this situation the employee had the use of a bike for a reduced outlay, the employer provided a benefit for their staff, and the government made a magnanimous gesture in order to encourage healthier living and sustainable transport.

The scheme providers got involved to run the scheme for large organisations, and charged a fee to do so. Fair enough. The schemes were paid their fees, the companies recovered their costs, the employees had access to their bikes. When the inland revenue made their judgement on fair value it was intended to tidy up a loophole on transferring ownership (in keeping with the tight BIK laws we have in the UK), to ensure that assets weren’t being transferred below market value.

In a company-run scheme this isn’t much of a problem. The company owns the bike and has recouped all of their outlay, the employee continues to use the bike, everybody is happy. No further money changes hands.

Where the schemes are involved they are exploiting the fact that they own the bike on paper (despite being in receipt of full payment plus an administration fee) and issuing ultimatums like the one in the OP.

There is no option to keep the bike, despite it being paid for in full. Instead they will take it back and sell it, force the employee to pay £315 for it, or in a magnanimous gesture they will allow him to rent a bike he has already paid for, for £105 over 3 years. They have just discovered a great way to screw people out of more money whilst threatening them with Inland Revenue rulings.

Would it kill them to be honest about the dates, name one that they know they can meet and get on with it?!

I’d be interested in hearing why this Zone 2 stuff is a waste of time. I don’t really do it myself because I find it too boring and time-consuming.

I’d also like to know why “lactate threshold” is a load of nonsense.

The “cheap access” bit was meant to be facilitated by government tax breaks for employers and employees. These third party scheme providers have come in and expolited the legislation to try and extort money out of the employees.

We had people paying their income tax, buying a bike and paying VAT on it.

Then

People saving income tax (nice gesture by the government), buying a bike and saving VAT on it (another nice gesture by the government).

Now

People saving income tax (nice gesture by the government), buying a bike and saving VAT on it (another nice gesture by the government), then a third-party company exploiting the legislation to squeeze a couple of hundred quid out of people at the end of the scheme.

All the scheme has achieved is that cyclists are now paying the scheme providers a couple of hundred quid that would otherwise have gone to the tax man. In a lot of cases people weren’t even aware of this when they signed up. The scheme providers have just squeezed themselves into the value chain and ripped off a load of people.

Its a disgrace that these companies are coming after people to rob them.

The scheme was intended to give people cheap access to bikes and promote a healthier lifestyle. These businesses are setting out to acquire a paper debt that none of the employers care about so that they can systematically extort money out of the employees.

I hate you too.

You’ve done that winter skills course, if that didn’t include much on avalanche safety you could do a course on that. Other than that, match the weight of your kit to your fitness and the likely pace of your group – no point being left behind, but no point packing really light when everyone else is bringing the kitchen sink. The best single thing for ski touring is a pair of salopettes with full leg zips for skinning without boiling yourself.