Many a trip to 3 vallees ( a mate is now having a 51st birthday weekend there next year ).
Hope you get away
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My most skied destinations would be the Cairngorms, Val dâIsere and Andermatt. Havenât been to Andermatt for a few years- I hear is is getting more developed.
In the news:
200 Britons âflee Swiss ski resort under cover of nightâ after being told to quarantine
It follows a ruling from Swiss authorities that anyone who arrived from Britain since 14 December had to isolate for 10 days.
Hundreds of British tourists forced into quarantine at an upmarket ski resort due to fears about the new, more contagious variant of COVID-19 have fled under the cover of darkness, according to a report.
Around 200 out of an estimated 420 affected UK holidaymakers who were in isolation in Verbier, Switzerland, are thought to have left in the night, rather than remain indoors for more than a week and see their plans to hit the slopes massively disrupted.
Canât make my mind up about this one.
On the one hand, it doesnât really paint uk citizens in a great light with regard to âtrustâ etc. But Iâm saying that from the comfort of my home.
If I was pushed into a retrospective lock down , and stuck in a hotel room, the urge to flee would be pretty strong
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Typical image of a snowboarder: sitting down! But when it comes to boots they have it right⌠I tried it once, but decided I preferred legs free to move separately!
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Thatâs okay IB, if you just be careful and donât come too close i think we can peacefully coexist on this mountain.
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What irritated me was the âI wasnât being irresponsible and I didnât break any rulesâ nonsense.
They had taken the (packed) Eurostar train home, then quarantined when they got home. Well thatâs all right then, quarantine must also retrospectively protect the 1,000 other passengers.
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After many years skiing, thatâs actually one of the reasons I prefer a board these days. I donât want my legs free to twist and damage my knees.
HmmmâŚIâm tempted to add âespecially Alpine hotel roomsâ which are frankly ridiculously small pretty much everywhere you go and seem to be built for hobbits. However that would imply I condone the escape!
It is a thing though, I think I can only remember a couple of times in The Alps where I thought the room size was acceptable and one of those was in fact a chalet in Verbier and I wasnât paying for it!
One of the last skiing trips we took was to Tremblant and we stayed in this marvellous and enormous split level apartment. A short walk to the boot room led you to a commodious, warm and dry space where there was actually room for more than three people to put their boots on without getting their socks wet. That was very nice.
Mind, the nightlife was full of pissed up American youths rather than Brits, the skiing was fairly limited and windchill took the temperature down to -40. But the room was amazing.
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Skiing now on the cards in the Pecsaetan hills!
Ha. Yes. American skiing. Great accommodation, great slopes, and brilliant lift queue management. But theyâve not figured out apres ski ( or during ski !!).
For Xmas skiing, definitely prefer America as itâs more snow sure etc. For spring skiing, the ability for a long lunch on a sun drenched terrace in Europe is hard to beat.
Exchange rates an important consideration too. Once paid about ÂŁ850 for a 7 or 8 day pass in Breckenridge. Europe is catching up on prices though
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That I can recognise, my last skiing trip ending on a stretcher and leading to a knee operation!
One of my sons converted to boarding, the other prefers skis. I like the board boots infinitely more than ski boots, having awkwardly shaped feet. It does make me wonder whether to have another go with a board, but I no longer live near an artificial ski slope, and the expense of a ski holiday to learn rather than to get the exhilaration of the mountains doesnât appeal. (But if I do try again, I will stuff a cushion in my trousers, as I clearly donât have enough natural padding,)
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The trouble with snowboards is they are rubbish on the flat or going uphill. Never been tempted to try one as I have lots of fun on skis. Jean-Claude Killy (my hero) switched to boarding years ago IIRC.
I generally see snowboarders (amateur at least) being hauled off the mountain by ski patrol. It may be much easier to break a leg with skis, but with a board concussion seems to be the thing, which happened to a pal of mine when we went a couple of years ago. Itâs that backward and forward thing.
My wife harboured a desire to ski in Deer Valley (Utah) for years, with one of her reasons being that snowboarders were banned there. I couldnât possibly comment, though my daughters can and do - they have a fairly low opinion of boarders.
Whilst thinking of skiing, can we have some recommends of YouTube skiing videos? Spectacular stuff like Jeremie Heitzâs La Liste from a few years ago would be good, but anything that shows off the simple pleasure of mooching down a mountain in lovely weather would be fun, like this:
[btw, thereâs no way thatâs a black run, as the YouTube comments suggest!]
Mark
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According to the map it would be a black run, but itâs possible that only a small section of it is really challenging. This is the run where the video is filmed:
If you watch the video, can you suggest a section that would justify it being black? I couldnât see anything harder than what I would deem easy red, but I might have blinkedâŚ
Mark
No not really, but perhaps because part of the run is quite narrow, and maybe not prepared when there is active snowfall, they decided to mark it black. I do know that in France it is not always an indication of the difficulty, but also dependent on the amount of preparation etc they do on the slope. In the video the run looks well groomed thoughâŚ
Defo the narrow bit at the top with a drop on the side imo. Worries lots of people who then go quite slow, with wide turns and that has a knock on effect on other skiers.
Donât think I ever managed to hit 100 kph in my skiing days. Not deliberately anyway, Iâd be worried about proper hurts!
A friend of mine used to ski for the Dutch junior olympic team â now that doesnât say much because the Dutch are not really known for their skiing abilities, but nonetheless he was an excellent skier as a kid. Our families went on yearly trips together to Les Arcs when we were young.
Now there is this (in)famous speedrun in Les Arcs, and my friend in his youthful boldness decided that he wanted to go down, and so he did. It didnât end well⌠he dropped down on his regular slalom skis whereas real speed skiers use these very long skis for extra stability. I think he broke around 30 bones in his body, after one of his skis started to wobble half way the run and then broke loose.
Luckily recovering at his age went rather smoothly and i think he was back on skis about 8-9 months laterâŚ
Here is the run in question:
