For a while I've been meaning to record an entire lift run at a ski resort.
On a trip to Sierra Nevada last March, Jane decided to make the recording -- presumably because she was bored of me mentioning it and forgetting to
do it.
Unfortunately she picked the longest lift run at the resort. The original video
sequence was a finger chilling 10min 11sec, but you'll be glad to know it's been sped up here to just 2:10. There's no sound on this clip, in case you were wondering if your sound was turned all the way down.
The only feature of interest here is that there's a radio telescope
at the top of a hill. When riding with that in the background, you half
expect James Bond bad guys with automatic weapons to start chasing you on skidoos. Well, I do.
As we have done in recent years, we headed of for some snowboarding over New Year. Our destination this year was Serre Chevalier, mainly chosen due to a) it being a couple of hours drive from Turin and Grenoble, b) having hotels willing to have guests for a few days rather than a full week and c) World Snowboard Guide giving it a 10/10 rating.
We stayed in Monetier les Bains, also referred to as Serre Chevalier 1500, the highest of the villages, in the Hotel Le Rif Blanc. The hotel was on a half board basis with a continental buffet style breakfast and a 3 or 4 course dinner. Our room was small, (for only 4 nights this didn't bother us) but clean and warm. Monetier was a lovely village, and wasn't built up and as touristy as other resorts we've been to over the past few years. It had a supermarket, butchers, bakers, several bars and restaurants as well as ski and snowboard rental places.
Serre Chevalier as a resort is pretty large, with access along the valley floor by bus to different starting off points, and along the slopes via a series of interconnecting lifts and pistes. There are a lot of drag lifts around Serre Chevalier, but we managed 3.5 days on the slopes without having to go near one without compromising on our coverage of the mountain. The pistes are well marked, like the marker Richard is standing next to in the picture, with a count down from the top of the run to the bottom, and coloured according to the colour of the run - this is the same as the system used in Avoriaz and the Portes Du Soleil.
We'll probably return to Serre Chevalier sometime, and will again try and base ourselves at Monetier.
At the Snowboard show we attended a talk on photography by Russ Shea before having our first ever rails lesson with Hamish McNight and Stu Edwards. We caught up with Ash and collected a couple of demo boards he'd brought down for Richard to try, whilst I made the most of the exhibitors and took a Salomon Ivy and a Burton Feelgood out for a spin. The Ivy was much twitchier than I'm used to and is a lot more of a handful than the one I tried in Breckenridge a few years ago, but that could be because it has become more of a freestyle board in the intervening seasons. The Feelgood was lovely, a really enjoyable ride.
The Sno!Show seemed busier, and had taken over a lot of the snow area of Xscape catering to both skiers and snowboarders. Again I took out a couple of different boards, firstly the omaticsuper by Tara Dakides and then the Head Fountain. I didn't find the omatic board very interesting and defnitely not as much fun as my Ride Kashmir. The Head Fountain however I loved - it was really responsive and I spent most of the time riding this with a great big smile on my face.
When I bought my Ride Kashmir 18 months ago I bought it because it was the best board of the 2 I'd been able to hire whilst in Breckenridge. These demo days make so much sense as I'm a firm believer that, at least for me, it isn't the graphics that matter, it's the ride style. I tried 2 boards that I wouldn't have ever dreamt of trying, and one, the Head Fountain, turned out to be a really fun board to ride and one that I'm looking for a good reason to buy to add to the collection . I'm sure I'll be making the effort to attend this kind of day again to try out more new shiny things...
Further to my blog after our Performance course, I've since learnt about The Snowboard Show being held at the Tamworth snowdome in September. Amongst the demos and talks there are also some free coaching sessions, 2 of which are Freeride technique with the instructor from the Performance course, Ash Newnes. All you have to do to get on one of the sessions is to register by sending an email to the address at the bottom of this page. We've booked on to the Rail Technique session to see what we can learn.
In other news we're looking at places to go for snowboarding over New Year. In recent years we've been to Avoriaz, Meribel and Utah. Ideally we want somewhere reasonably high up to make sure that there is some chance of snow, somewhere an hour or two from the airport, and most importantly somewhere that hasn't got a minimum stay of less than 4 nights. Any suggestions? Or do you know of someone with an appartment to rent? Leave us a comment
We've also started planning our big trip for next year - a month long snowboarding adventure. At the moment it is looking like being based around Montana, Idaho and Portland, and making use of the Alaska Airlines schedule to get around, but all that could change. I'm hoping that the Off the Beaten PathUSA trip report will offer some more insights as the guy who wrote that had some good suggestions for our Utah trip. Again, any suggestions? leave us a comment.
Month long holiday!?! Pah! I'm jealous.
Posted by Rosie Sherry on 2007-08-21 22:25:12
August 13, 2007
Performance Snowboard course
We spent the weekend taking the excellent SnowboardCoach.co.uk 2 day Performance Course at Xscape in Milton Keynes. We were a group of 8, and Ash managed to keep an eye on all of us giving feedback and advice - my main area to keep an eye on is not to use my upper body/shoulders to initiate turns. We did lots of drills, some designed to get us to understand the physics behind snowboarding, others to emphasise a point. An excellent course, which has really given me a desire to head off back to Milton Keynes soon and continue my practice.
Looks painful.
I've been thin king about getting a tboard http://www.tierneyrides.com/ after seeing a guy at work on one. I'm not a particularly accomplished snowboarder though (and I can't skateboard). I can't afford to break my wrist as that will put the mockers on the climbing.
Posted by Ben Sales on 2007-03-24 13:01:20
Our climbing exploits have obviously been curtailed by Jim's injury - I need to find something new to have fun doing...
Posted by Jane on 2007-03-24 14:13:35
We spent a very pleasant long weekend in Spain, managing 2 happy days snowboarding at the Sierra Nevada. A lack of snow lower down the mountain, but good fun none the less. The Sierra Nevada resort is excellent for beginners and intermediates, but lacks (at least at this time of the year) any really challenging terrain for us.
And whilst on the subject of snowboarding, this is an excellent video clip on how to ride a chair lift.
Mack Dawg Productions film Follow me around arrived in the post yesterday, and its beautiful. Not only has it some great riding, but it also has some amazing filming.
I've spent the morning producing the albums for our recent Utah snowboarding trip. I've split it into two sections, on the snow and off the snow. Mainly because this year I bought a new small Olympus FE-130 which is small, compact and cheap enough to not cause too much stress when boarding, there are a lot more on-slope photos than in recentyears.
We spent this afternoon at the London Metro Ski and Snowboard Show 2006 at Kensington Olympia. We didn't have much to do today, so thought we'd go and take a look at the show. Overall, I'm glad we did. At £14 per adult, it wasn't the cheapest day out, especially when you add the £12 parking, but we got some great ideas for trips for our next few years. We found out more about snowboarding in Japan (apparently February is the best time to go as it is the time of the snow festival, and there are lots of ice sculptures and ice caves created), and also another company (dreamski) offering guided trips to Chile and another company offering ski weekends.
The Skill Slope did great business today, lots of skiers - no snowboarding today though
Skiers and snowboarders performing on the Quarter Pipe
We also found the SportsDo gps system, making use of a java enabled or windows mobile phone using a bluetooth connection to an external gps unit to record journeys of all kind - drive, walk, run, ski, cycle etc. Sounds like a great idea, now to see if it works!
We joined ski safari at Alfresco's last night for their start of Season party. We've been on two excellent trips with them, to BC, Canada and to Colorado over the past couple of years, and so it was good to go and meet the people behind the trips. The evening was sponsored by Vail Resorts, and so I've brought my Vail Resorts pen and Vail Resorts post-its into the office, and we managed to have some tasty canapes and beer too. We discussed our next snowboarding trip ideas with them, and also learnt more about their new offerings - weekends in Switzerland! At one point Richard was getting advice (and olympic anecdotes) about Utah from Graham Bell (former British Olympic Skier) which was kind of fun (especially as Richard didn't realise who he was and wondered why he was so obsessed with the olympics).
After the excitement of looking at ski brochures, trail maps and talking to people about alternative snow trips - like Chile in summer, we headed off to the Black Horse Inn to meet up with the Sussex Geek Dinner. We missed Tristan's talk about plone, but did get to meet some interesting people. Nice organisation Simon!.
. I'm sure I'll be making the effort to attend this kind of day again to try out more new shiny things...
(apparently a 
