SNOGS - Snow Blogs
Editors' Blog
 |  | |
Is this the best undiscovered skiing in Europe? - 21/1/2012 20:26by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Two of our editors are skiing a secret world class destination this week It's a white-out once against across the Alps this weekend with the now familiar story of roads closed and holidaymakers stranded in Austrian resorts because of 5/5 avalanche danger. But we've spent today in Rosa Khutor in glorious sunshine exploring long thigh-burning pistes as well as powering for 1100m vertical through a metre of fresh fluffy powder. Advertisement  Rosa Khutor? You're forgiven for never having heard of it because it only recently evolved - almost overnight - from a hamlet with half-a-dozen houses into a state-of-the-art ski resort. It comes complete with a three-stage access gondola and a technically demanding FIS downhill course that Bode & Co are going to race next month. Here's a couple of clues:
Piste security takes on a whole new meaning.
Back Home. In case you've forgotten where you are. Yes, we're up a mountain in Russia, one hour by road and 25 minutes by train (when they've built it) from the Black Sea summer destination of Sochi, venue for the next Winter Olympics in 2014. RK is the biggest of four new ski villages being built for games and gets the lions share of the events. Crystal is featuring it in their brochure this winter and hope to capture what could be a lucrative niche market here in years to come. So we thought that with 24 months to go to the Games, we'd best take a look at how the Russkies are getting on. The answer is very well indeed, thank you. They've have had to sense to call in international expertise of French Compagnie des Alpes to develop the lift system and other mountain infrastructure. What's emerging is a resort in the Caucasus that is strangely reminiscent of Les Arcs with a bit of Whistler and Tremblant thrown in for good measure.
RK1. Neo-Disney architecture somehow seems entirely natural. Frankly, we were expecting the limitations of other Eastern European resorts - if you like, a super Bansko or turbo-charged Borovets. Not a bit of it. The mountain here match the Alps for challenge and embryo RK can already compete on equal skiing terms with the very best of the West.
Serious terrain. Terrain to match a major Alpine resort. So far there's only eight lifts and 38km of piste, but RK hopes be linked by 2014 to at least two of the other three villages under development. Russian premier, Vladamir Putin, is the driving force behind the development of the ski area. He has a house down the road in the next ski village of Gazprom and security in the area - even when he's not around - is on a stratospheric scale. Right now he's In St Petersburg, but his neighbour, the president of Belarus is visiting this week and apparently making full use of Putin's 1000-strong arm of security men. You have to carry your passport on the slopes and nowhere else in the world have we ever been obliged to go through a metal detector before getting a lift.
Take off my belt and boots? You can't be serious! Security is not the only hazard. The standard of people's skiing - and particularly of snowboarding - is not as high as in a comparable western resort and you need to have eyes in the back of your head at all times. There's a strange custom of strapping on a cushion-like bum protector for skiers and snowboarders alike. We can only conclude that it's deemed necessary because of the number of wipe-outs.
Bum protection. It's been a cool -5 to -10C today but the Russians apparently consider that to be positively Mediterranean as this snowboarder demonstrated. Skiing in Russia is most definitely cool.
We stayed in The Park Inn at Rosa Khutor. Crystal organises ski holidays to Rosa Khutor/Sochi with flights on Turkish Airlines via Istanbul. Stop-overs in the city can be made on the way out to or home from resort. Then the sun came out - 23/12/2011 09:10by Peter Hardy, blogger at large One of our editors, Peter Hardy, is skiing The Three Valleys this week. Yesterday he skied Courchevel and Le Praz.
Advertisement And then the sun came out! Well, briefly. After a week of snowfall the skies started clear over the Trois Vallées to reveal some simply fabulous ski conditions. Pisteurs worked from long before dawn to open as many runs as possible. But they where at pains to point out to the gathering Christmas crowds that caution is necessary. The risk of avalanche dropped from 5/5 to 4/5 and should ease further today, but with a couple of metres of fresh snow on top of La Saulire the dangers in the deep stuff remain high. But that didn't stop us have a whale of a time on piste.
Weloveski's Max Hardy taking a breather. During what is being described here as the biggest December snowfall in living memory eating has been taking up much of my down time. Both in and above the different altitude villages that make up Courchevel there's never been a problem in doing this to your heart's content - but at a price. It therefore comes as a pleasant and continuing surprise to discover that this winter you can eat well in the Trois Vallées - sometimes quite remarkably so - for a reasonable price. Up on top of La Saulire, Le Panoramic is Courchevel's highest fine diner with some prices to match. But if a 30+ euros main course is out of your budget, you can still enjoy the sumptuous setting and eat sensibly in the snack bar.
Le Panoramic's outdoor snack bar. Further down the mountain Le Chalet de Pierres attracts a wealthy international clientele prepared to pay 190 euros for two for the magnificent seafood platter. A humble chicken dish costs 30 euros.
Comfort on a cold day in the Chalet de Pierres. But with the weather briefly closing in again it was time to return to the lower resorts. This week the tree-lined runs down to Le Praz and La Tania have provided the best skiing and both villages have some great restaurants at reasonable prices.
Snowbound little streets of Le Praz. Biggest surprise of all is Michelin-starred Azimut, tucked away in one of the narrow streets of rustic Le Praz. It's a three-minute walk from the bottom of the pistes in Courchevel's lowest farming village and you're unlikely to stumble upon it at lunchtime by chance. Too often French restaurants of such illustrious pedigree are both pretentious and over-priced. Azimut is the exact opposite on both counts.
Unpretentious Azimut Chef-owner François Moureaux and his wife Sandrine run the simplest establishment with the finest food at sensible prices that have remained unchanged despite the restaurant's rise to fame. A three-course lunch costs 28 euros prepared alone in the kitchen by François and served by just one waitress, Elsa. Sandrine comes in to help in the evenings. Needless to say it's not three courses, but six by the time the master chef has slipped in three amuse-bouches including a slither of poached foie gras. We make our way back up the hill and catch the last lift home.
Pudding to die for. Click on this link for more of Peter Hardy's features on the Three Valleys. Low down for low prices - 19/12/2011 23:15by Peter Hardy, blogger at large One of our editors, Peter Hardy, is skiing The Three Valleys this week. Yesterday he visited the bargain basement of Courchevel - La Tania.
Advertisement It's not often you share a gondola with a Christmas tree. It came ready decorated au naturel with fresh powder snow, and a very fine specimen it was too. His guardian, Francois, who works with the ski patrol, was taking it up from La Tania to the rescue centre on the Col de la Loze. "The tree blew done in the wind," said Francois, keeping a straight face, "So it seemed a pity not to rescue it for our cabin. We work seven days a week over Christmas, so a bit of festive cheer does not go amiss." La Tania can spare one tree. The resort is looking as currently looking just about as festive as it gets under a blanket of fresh snow with another 40cm promised tomorrow. The forest which surrounds it is almost as white as the pistes are.
When the weather in the Trois Vallées is bad the locals know that the most sheltered runs in the area lead down through the pine forest to little La Tania. The resort was originally built as a dormitory for the 1992 Albertville Olympics. In fact it remained virtually empty because spectators chose to stay at home and watch the events on TV. For while it looked like becoming a white elephant. But thanks in part to an Englishman it's developed over the years into a charming resort in its own right.
"It's not a part of Courchevel. La Tania is La Tania," says Tim Wall who came over from 19 years ago from Valmorel ((where he'd been working for Neilson) and never left. He began by running his ever-popular Pub Le Ski Lodge and now has the Lodge du Village and French restaurant La Taiga.
Amazingly La Tania has become a little corner of Britain in the Trois Vallées. According to tourist director Nicolas Danel an incredible 95% of visitors to its chalets, hotels, and apartments are British. The reason for or the consequence of this is that prices here are markedly lower than anywhere else in the region. The very French plat du jour of saucisse avec purée de pomme de terre (bangers and mash to you and me) cost 9.90 euros, or a burger and chips for 10 euros. It would be twice that in 1850. However it would be a mistake to think that French gourmet influence is absent. La Tania is home to Julien Machet's restaurant Le Farçon, which has a Michelin star. Machet was the youngest French chef ever to be awarded a Michelin star, but he's entered into the value-for-money spirit of La Tania by offering a 25 euro lunch menu - served within 25 minutes for skiers who are in a hurry. And who wouldn't be, with so much great skiing on the doorstep?
Michelin-starred chef, Julien Machet. Click on this link for more of Peter Hardy's features on the Three Valleys. World Cup in Courchevel - 19/12/2011 10:14by Peter Hardy, blogger at large One of our editors, Peter Hardy, is skiing The Three Valleys this week. Yesterday he watched the World Cup ski racing in Courchevel.
Winning a World Cup race or digging out your camper van, it's all about technique. Snowy! But in the end it was grand weekend in Courchevel with the World Cup being staged here for the first time in 32 years. France's premier resort did it in style. But they only just got away with the weather. After the biggest December snowfall that anyone can remember. They were forced to postpone the Women?s slalom on Saturday until Sunday, while the giant slalom was cancelled altogether. Advertisement
Brief window in the weather. But what a difference a day makes! Sunday morning brought a brief window in the weather - enough to run the race, partly in sunshine and partly with snow falling.
Spectators flew the flag for France and everyone of all ages was out to enjoy themselves. It was a great social occasion and real success for Courchevel as well as for Austria's Marlies Schild who dominated both legs of the race.
Results board. All in all it was a wonderful build up the Whitest Christmas in the Trois Vallées. However, not everyone managed to blag their way into the VIP tent.
Unwanted guest. Also see our related features Terrific Food at a Sensible Price and All Change in Courchevel. Too much snow for ski racing - 17/12/2011 15:14by Peter Hardy, blogger at large One of our editors, Peter Hardy, is skiing The Three Valleys this week. Today, he was due to watch the World Cup ski racing in Courchevel. But there was too much snow...
Watch the birdie Watch the birdie! Sadly that's about all there was to watch up on the mountain in Courchevel this morning. Some 200 ESF instructors worked throughout the night to clear the course for the Women's World Cup slalom. But in the end the visibility was just too poor. They're going to have another crack at it tomorrow...but don?t count on it, because it's STILL snowing.
Disappointed French fans. For a couple of hours we all stared at an immaculate, but empty course as the flakes kept falling. We had to accept the inevitable - this was as close to a slalom pole as anyone today was going to get.
As close to a slalom... There was a lot of hanging around in cheerful team clothing: but in the end, it all came to this...
Also see our related features Terrific Food at a Sensible Price and All Change in Courchevel. More snow than the whole of last season - 16/12/2011 21:00by Peter Hardy, blogger at large One of our editors, Peter Hardy, is skiing The Three Valleys this week. Today he is in Courchevel...
Pretty as a picture. So what do you do when the avalanche danger risk is 5/5, just a small handful of lifts are working and the snow storm of the century has just turned to rain at 1700m? Answer: you find a restaurant with a roaring log fire and go to lunch. I should have known it was not going to be my perfect skiing day when I emerged carrying my skies from the chalet in Courchevel 1650, where I'm staying, and waded in torrential rain through a metre of wet snow towards the lift station.
Icy reception chez Chanel. "Whatever are you doing?" said friend Olivier who was returning home from the boulangerie. "It's going to be horrible up there. But the rain is just what we need to pack down the base? . He was, of course, right on both counts. Mountain guides like him who ski in the Himalayas and in Greenland make their living out of getting it right. The skiing today was not much short of very miserable until I got 500m further up. Then it was just plain miserable. The rain gave way to a blizzard that's been dumping snow here at the unbelievable rate of 80cm per 12 hours.
Do you know where we are? Here's a statistic to warm the cockles of your heart (and in -10 C and a 70mph wind you need warmth). By Friday morning Courchevel had accumulated MORE SNOW THAN IN THE WHOLE OF LAST SEASON. Not bad for December 16...unless of course you are the guy in charge of organizing the Women's World Cup Slalom which takes place here on December 17. Some 200 ski instructors were spending their second night on the icy course trying to shovel off the snow as quickly as it fell. La Soucoupe is one of Courchevel's most famous mountain restaurants with the requisite roaring log fire for grilling giant steaks and a superlative wine list.
It's tough this mountain lunch business. The group of Belgian bankers at the next door table seemed to appreciate both in copious quantities. I'd hate to have paid their bill. Owner Marta has a bewitching smile. Give me another glass of that red wine the Belgians are drinking and I may never leave.
Marta, owner of the Soucoup. Advertisement But that would have been a mistake. Outside the window the storm has whipped itself up in the kind of fury you might expect more in Antarctica than in the 3V. It was hard just to stand up, let alone turn in the teeth of the wind. We made our exit in convoy style, counting companions down the mountain to safety. The 3V has its best start to the season in living memory. But boy, I'm glad I'm not racing tomorrow. Also see our related features Terrific Food at a Sensible Price and All Change in Courchevel. Too Much Snow in the Trois Vallees - 14/12/2011 20:48by Peter Hardy, blogger at large One of our editors, Peter Hardy, is skiing The Three Valleys this week. Today he was in Courchevel...
We weren't expecting so much snow Snow's a bit like London buses: you wait for ages for one to come along and then half dozen of them come along together. That's what's happened here in wonderfully white Courchevel and the rest of the Three Valleys. We are buried in what - against all odds after such a record dry and warm autumn - is now turning into the deepest, wickedest start to the season in a generation. Just a couple of weeks ago we were bemoaning the inescapable fact there was almost no snow and Christmas skiing was under threat- and now the 3V has just too much of the stuff! Hang on, especially after those doom-and-gloom pictures of brown slopes last week, how can you possibly have too much snow in the run-up to Christmas and New Year? Answer: if you've got two World Cup races to organize for this weekend and an expected 18,000 spectators trying to drive their cars up a winding mountain road. Advertisement It's 32 years since the World Cup last came to Courchevel, so faces around here were understandably long when lack of snow (as in total absence) threatened cancellation just a few days ago. Then along came enough natural powder to build the course - and very beautiful it looks, too, just as long as you don't try to stand up on what is in effect a giant sloping skating rink. They've been injecting water every few centimeters into the mountainside to create the perfect racing surface. Some 400 people have been adding the finishing touches today. But the trouble is that no one seems to have told The Man Upstairs.
Shovelling is a serious business in Courchevel According to our weather forecast MUCH MORE snow is on the way. The organizers are expecting another metre, maybe even a metre-and-a-half to drop out of the sky between now and when the first competitor in the Women's Giant Slalom powers out of the starting gate on Saturday morning. So tonight and tomorrow night 200 ski instructors will work under arc lights throughout the wee small hours shoveling the new stuff of the course just as soon as it touches the deck. Whether they will win this epic Sisyphean battle remains to be seen. Still, it's terrific news for the rest us mere mortal skiers. I'm finding it hard to absorb this myself, so let me just make it absolutely clear: if you, like me, you are going to be spending Christmas in the 3V you should right now be pumping the air like a lottery winner.
Cold comfort stop High westerly winds brought blizzard conditions to the summits today and the links to the rest of the 3V were closed and we had to cancel a trip over to higher Val Thorens where snow conditions are now nothing short of sensational. Instead, we had to content ourselves with some knee-deep powder skiing through the trees and on deserted pistes that have yet to be groomed. Poor visibility resulted in an early lunch...but that's another story.
Skiers in Courchevel 1850 Also see Caitlin Smith's blog from Courchevel. EPIC! - 14/12/2011 15:18by Sean Newsom , editor's Snog One of our editors, Sean Newsom, is skiing Breckenridge this week. Today he tested out a couple of new arrivals on the hill...
Advertisement This is ski instructor Shawna Mckeown, at the top of Peak 8 in Breckenridge: borne aloft by her new fan club - Michael Mallett, Roger Ainger, and me. Shawna's a great instructor: patient, fun-loving and mad about skiing. But she's not new this year in Breckenridge (this is her fourth season). What's new is the photo service that delivered this picture to me for free - and then allowed me to integrate it into a rather cool little collage commemorating my day. The photo service is called EpicMix Photo and is part of an online feature offered to all skiers and boarders in Breckenridge. Called EpicMix, it allows you to track your progress round the mountain, check how much vertical you've skied, upload your own photographs, and - as of yesterday - integrate it all, along with the professional on-mountain pix, into something called the Mountain Remix. Check out this screengrab of my first page, below.
I had cynical Grumpy Old Man thoughts when I first heard about this package: why would you want to fiddle about on your laptop on holiday - when there's so much else to do: like skiing for example? But now that I've tried it, I'm gripped with a child-like excitement. It's actually rather cool to be able to build a page like this. And you can do it for every day of your trip, for the entire holiday or even for the whole ski season. I imagine people will be wanting to print these things off as posters and hang them on their bedroom walls soon too. The only problem is that I now regret that we didn't ski harder yesterday and take more pictures: so that I could have built a more impressive ski page. I can see it turning into obsession. The service is free. You register at epicmix.com, using the Pass Number on your plastic lift ticket, and you're away. The stats start accumulating as soon as you ski (thanks to scanners on all the lifts), and you can start being photographed on your first day, too: the snappers scan your pass and you'll find the pix waiting for you once you've logged in. And now here's the other new(ish) thing I tested today. The Gold Runner coaster, which opened on the mountain last year... For more information about Breckenridge, check out our resort report. "A-frame? A-FRAME?? Whaddya mean I'm skiing with an A-frame? - 12/12/2011 14:42by Sean Newsom , editor's Snog One of our editors, Sean Newsom, is skiing Breckenridge this week. Today, he's had a carving masterclass...
Advertisement Yesterday, Breckenridge was buzzing. The slopes were awash with twentysomethings, out for a pre-Christmas blast on the slopes. This morning - Sunday - the trails were deserted until 11am. Clearly, everyone took their festive spirit down into town last night - and dunked it in Breckenridge's bars and clubs. An early start today clearly wasn't on their agenda. Which was perfect for me - because I had Breck's groomers to myself for a couple of hours, skiing them in the company of one of the resort's most highly-rated instructors, Dave Kamke. That's Dave below, pulling up after yet another series of perfect turns on the wide, gentle pistes of Peak 8.
As for my turns...well...I thought I was nailing them, but Dave had a few thoughts about my inside leg. Apparently, I'm still A-framing... In a word, argggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It's not as bad as in the shot, I took last year in Breck, of instructor Teague Holmes' legs - when we were working on "Four steps to better carving". But I insisted we spend the whole morning working on it as a result. The classic A-frame What's wrong with the A-frame? Well, apart from looking hideous, it means you won't be carving properly. You'll have too much weight on your outside foot, your inside ski will be skidding, and your turns will be less fluent. Any bumps in the snow are going to be harder to deal with, too. Anyway, we ended up shooting a short video on the subject. It's only a sketch - I've been editing it this evening, but it gets the point across! For more information about Breckenridge check out our resort report. Bluebird days in Breckenridge - 10/12/2011 23:33by Sean Newsom , editor's Snog One of our editors, Sean Newsom, is skiing Breckenridge this week. We hope he's packed his sunblock. December 10, 2011.
What a day! Brilliant sunshine, a cloudless sky, a sense of absolute clarity about the light: it looked more like March than the middle of December today in Breckenridge, and I wasn't the only one to notice. The weekenders have been out in force to enjoy the weather - with big groups of college students much in evidence, as well as Mums and Dads taking their kids for an early-season spin. Together, the sunshine and the Saturday spirit generated quite an atmosphere, which is bound to spill over into Breck's many bars and clubs tonight.
Advertisement It's a pity the white stuff hasn't quite been able to match the festive mood. Snow-wise, Breckenridge has had a steady but not an exceptional start to the season, and almost all the skiing is on-piste. I did notice a few determined souls picking their way over moguls to the side of the groomed trails here and there. But it didn't look like much fun. One of them had ended up hanging upside down in a tree - both skis above his head, caught in the branches. He was in full view of a six-man chairlift, too. The rest of us did the sensible thing and stuck to the trails - which were beautifully groomed as ever at the start of the day, but getting a little slick by late afternoon - thanks to all the Saturday traffic scraping away the soft snow. I was grateful for the race training I'd had with the ATC on the Hintertux glacier last week, which had sharpened up my technique - and had a blast, screaming down the wide, ego-boosting runs which litter the lower half of Peaks 7 and 8. But I couldn't help wishing for the snow I'd found here last December, when I lucked into one of the best early seasons anyone can remember. Virtually the whole mountain was open, top to bottom, and I skied nothing but powder and perfect corduroy for three days. It was midweek, so the slopes were pretty much deserted, too. It's not an experience I'll easily forget.
As well as serving up a oodles of powder, last year's visit reminded me just how varied Breck's terrain is. It's best know for its mighty terrain parks and super-smooth pistes. But there's a lot of fun to be had by off-pisters in the top half of the ski area when conditions are right. As with all North American resorts, the authorities protect the off-piste areas as well as the pistes against avalanches, so if you can see it, you can ski it: and up high you'll find a mouthwatering array of powder bowls, tree runs and little chutes and gullies to play around in. My favourites are the runs off the T-Bar beneath North Bowl on Peak 8 - short, sharp and with a few trees to add definition when it's snowing. They're a little harder to find than some, too, so midweek you can still ski soft snow in them a day or more after the latest dump. Check out the video I shoot up there last year, in a day of whoops...
Sadly, there's no sign of significant snowfall just yet in the local forecast. Guess I'll just have to soak up the sunshine and get up on my edge... For more information about Breckenridge check out our resort report. Winter to the right and autumn to the left - 26/11/2011 17:31by Peter Hardy, blogger at large
The Grande Motte glacier above Tignes today Peter Hardy reports on snow conditions in Val d'Isère and Tignes, November 26, 2011. Ok, so we have a crisis. There's no snow in Europe, and frankly nothing serious forecast. Well, that's not strictly true, I've just had two of the best November skiing days of my life - and wonderfully, there has been a glorious glut of them. On the Grande Motte glacier above Tignes was - on piste - just about as good as it gets. Underfoot there's a metre of natural snow at the top. Overhead there's perfect blue sky and a temperature of around zero degrees, and there's zero wind. Oh, and there's almost no one else here. Vertical? Well how about 1550 leg-burning metres with not a rock, not even a pebble in sight. Ok, so the last bit down to Val Claret is on artificial...but a metre of artificial. I can live with that
Teaching in Tignes
La Face downhill course in Val Advertisement But what scares me is the view. Stand at the top of the cable-car and look towards La Plagne, Courchevel, Meribel and all points towards Chamonix, Courmayeur, Verbier, and beyond and there is no snow. When I say 'no snow' I mean, like, not a single flake. The world, in that direction, is relentlessly and unredeemably brown. Browner indeed than Jackson my chocolate Labrador who at least has a white chin. But look right towards the wonderful but not so fashionable Mauriennne Valley and Italy beyond, and the mountains are white. I'd never seen anything like it and there was more to come. Val d'Isère bravely opened this weekend. Three weeks ago a local weather anomaly dumped 160cm of snow on Val but summer-like temperatures have since removed most it. However they managed somehow to open the top of Solaise as well as the upper half of Le Fornet including the glacier. Conditions are surprising good.
Sunbathing at 3032m To give you an idea of what's happening in the Alps right now, hear this. A new mountain restaurant has been built at the foot of the glacier run. On Saturday it had its 'soft' opening - a barbecue on the terrace. Nothing strange about that, you may say. But hang on...a barbecue on in warm sunshine on a glacier at 3000m...in November? Click on the link for our Val d'Isère resort report. This is skiing... - 6/7/2011 07:23by Sean Newsom , editor's Snog This is skiing.
And this...
And this...
And this...
And this...
How come? Because all of these guys are freestyle skiers, and they're practising their moves at one of several outdoor trampolining centres in Les Deux Alpes, France. These shots were taken yesterday afternoon. This morning, they'll be back on the resort's summer terrain park. It's up on the glacier, at an eye-watering altitude of 3421-3288m, and it's one of the biggest parks I've ever seen - summer or winter. It's certainly the widest, and holds so many lines of jumps, rails and boxes, at so many different levels of difficulty, that I still haven't managed to count them all properly. 10? 12? And that's not including the super pipe and the easier axe pipe below them.
As well as the terrain park, there's lane upon lane of gates for race training (booked solid by national ski teams and racing clubs), and a few pistes for purely recreational skiing, too. On an average day, 2,500 people are up there, and the place is buzzing.
The day kicks off at 7am when the racers pack the lift queue, ready to ride the gondola up to the top of the resort. They want rock-solid, icy snow, and first thing in the morning, the glacier in summer is perfect for that. Then around 8am the freestylers show up in their hundreds. There are lots of Brits, Italians and French - but these days you hear plenty of Russians too; not wearing fur, but drenched in acid colours with saggy-bottomed ski pants and handkerchiefs over their noses, just like all the other freestylers. The terrain-parkers like the snow a bit softer, and they'll stay up on the slopes until the last t-bar shuts at 1pm, and the surface of the glacier is virtually liquid. (The racers have mostly finished by noon.) Everyone's training, working on moves, polishing their technique: fired up and looking super-fit. Then, in the afternoon you'll find them trampolining, mountain-biking, racing round cones on in-line skates, running through the meadows, swimming. Frankly, I've never seen so many different kinds of physical activity in one place before. Is there room for the Average Joe, amongst all this cutting edge endeavour? You bet. You can book a race-training session with one of the ski schools, or maybe polish your basic freestyle technique - as I did with the amazing Marco Cecamore, an Italian who teaches with the European Ski & Snowboard School, and speaks almost fautless English. That's him, below, demonstrating the basic "pop" - the active take-off and landing you need when tackling a jump.
And this is him on the trampoline in the afternoon.
When the glacier closes, a wonderful, beautiful, fragrant, refreshing, invigorating, world of summer awaits you back in the resort. Biking, hiking, swimming, golf, archery, tennis, rafting, lazing about on sun-loungers, bouncy castles if you've got your family with you: on a blazing July day you're spoilt for choice.
The weather's not always this gorgeous, of course. Summer storms in the Alps can feel like the end of the world. And it can be pretty chilly too, from time to time. But when you luck into weather like this - you'll fall head over heels in love with the place. Just like I have... Click on this link to find out more about summer skiing in Les Deux Alpes. The only downside, by the way, is the queueing to get onto the gondola at the beginning and end of the session. If you time it wrong you'll spend at least half an hour waiting to get up the mountain in the morning, and waiting to get back down again at lunchtime. Steady on, mate... - 29/6/2011 19:21by Sean Newsom , editor's Snog
Did I get a bit carried away this morning? I'd just skied my first turns since early April when fellow ski writer Colin Nicholson took this picture - at the Snow Centre in Hemel Hempstead. Salomon had a press briefing there this morning, and were doling out the new Salomon BBRs to all-comers, and I clicked into a pair of the bigger, fatter 8.9s, 186cm long. On the second run I got my rhythm back. Yes, it was only for two turns. Literally, two turns. And yes, I was in a giant fridge in Hertfordshire, rather than an Alp or a Rocky Mountain. But all the same... WOOF WOOFThose two turns had me grinning like an idiot for two hours. Question is - was it the skis or the snow that my tail wagging? It's hard to say. This is the second time I've tried the BBRs - Salomon's new, radically-shaped skis, which are attempting to reinvent the all-mountain ski concept (the first time I tried them was at the the SIGB ski test in Bormio in March). And let's be honest, you're not going to learn too much about a ski from two runs on a indoor ski slope. But I did notice that this time I was much less unsettled by the shape, and would have pushed them much harder if I'd had a bit more mountain to ski on.
But then maybe I could have skied the rattiest pair of old rentals today with the same effect. The fact was, I was on snow again after three months and it felt fan-feckin-tastic. Clearly, I need to find more reasons to get the UK's indoor snow centres this summer... By the way, if you want more opinion on the BBRs, there's some interesting feedback to be found online. Bumps seem to be a weak spot (check out this detailed review from Taos, New Mexico for more). But on ski-review.com there's a mix of qualified approval and some real enthusiasm . Clearly, they're going to be a real talking point next winter, and the only way to join the debate is to try them youself - twice. The first time you're probably going to be a little freaked out by the shape. But you'll find second time around you'll be less bothered, and you can focus on the performance. Just make sure you've got more time than I had today to ski 'em!
Early-booking offers: are they worth it? - 23/5/2011 17:27by Sean Newsom , editor's Snog Not all of the current come-hither deals are worth having, says Sean Newsom. But those that are should be snapped up quickly.
Advertisement  Spring is traditionally the time when tour operators dangle early-booking offers in front of skiers. But if the experience of recent winters is anything to go by, the only discounts currently worth having are for the peak weeks of next season. Next winter, these will be New Year's Eve, February half term (w/c February 11 or 12) and Easter (w/c April 1 - although the Easter peak only really concerns holidays with English-speaking childcare in high-altitude, snowsure resorts). Annoyingly, these weeks are usually excluded from the come-hither deals. But there is one sure-fire way of saving money on them - by taking advantage of preview/earlybird brochure prices. The tour operators usually offer these prices until early or mid-summer, before raising them to coincide with the publication of their main brochure. Because the peak weeks are so popular it's unlikely these prices will drop again once the season gets underway - unless there's another economic meltdown. So now is the time to act. Among those tour operators offering earlybird/preview prices are: VIP - the upmarket chalet expects to end its earlybird pricing in June. Demand for half-term holidays is already strong: the company says its ever-popular La Plagne properties are already sold out for half-term. Le Ski - the chalet specialist in Courchevel, Val d'Isère and La Tania is expecting to publish its main brochure (and higher prices for peak weeks) on July 31. As well as higher chalet prices, group discounts will also be reduced on July 31. The Family Ski Company - the company expects to raise its prices "sometime in June". It too reports lots of interest in February half term, and has already sold out its Saas-Fee chalet-hotel. Inghams - the go-everywhere ski company is offering its lower Ski Preview prices until June - but it's not clear yet when exactly the main brochure comes out. YSE - Val d'Isère specialist YSE has sold about 75% of its holidays for February half term and says April 1 is also very popular. Its prices will also go up in June. Supertravel - the chalet specialist is discounting all nine of its St Anton chalets by £100pp for February half term week, if you book by October 31. For ski holidays in other weeks of the season it's almost always worth waiting until nearer the time. It's unlikely we'll see as much last-minute price-cutting as we did last season, when poor snow and the pre-Christmas economic slump combined to produce an avalanche of late-booking deals in January and March. But all the same, cuts of 25-30% won't be uncommon. The only exceptions to this wait-and-see rule for non-peak weeks are: 1. If you've got a big group who want to take over a whole chalet near the slopes in an A-list resort, in which case offers such as Le Ski's group discount, plus free lift pass offer in January, take on a special appeal. 2. You've got your heart set on a property that's likely to be busy all winter (such as Esprit's chalet-hotel Crystal 2000 in Courchevel, which was a big hit in 2010-11, and is only on the market for one more season). 3. You find a really big discount, for more than 25% - but it's unlikely... For more of what's out there in the world of discounts and offers, check out our Deals section.
What d'you mean, no snow? - 4/4/2011 12:38by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Don't believe everything you read, says welove2ski editor Peter Hardy.
Val d'Isere, April 3, 2011. Photo: John Yates-Smith/YSE Have you noticed that the whole business of skiing has been getting a right good kicking just lately? Just because it's not been a vintage season in Europe and we're all feeling financially challenged, there's no need for newspapers to put the Salomon boot in. Like James Blunt we're being duffed up for the sake of it, without any real justification. First off, let me get one thing straight: It's been a dry winter in the Alps, one of the driest in 40 years. But piste conditions in all major resorts - contrary to popular belief - have ranged from Acceptable to Very Good throughout the season. Right now most pistes are skiing at their spring best. Andorra's has some of the best conditions it has had for four years. Scandinavia's been great, and North America's vintage!
Åre in Sweden on March 30, 2011 But, ask any tour operator, the biggest single problem in selling ski holidays this year has been the public's perception of snow cover - not the snow cover itself. There's a month full of bargain holidays to be had, but it seems they just can't give them away. Back in February, tour operators like YSE and specialist ski travel agencies including igluski.com and Alpine Answers reported a massive blip in sales after The Times told everyone that conditions were terrible.
Above, how The Times saw the snow on "February 12, 2011". Make sure you read the real date at the top of the webcam image Below, what the snow was really like on February 12, 2011  'Resorts such as Val d'Isère have no more than a sprinkling of white among green pastures and grey escarpments,' The Times reported on February 12 in a doom-and-gloom article on prospects for families heading to the Alps for half-term. Huh? Conditions that week in Val were a little short of superb. How could such a mistake be made? It transpired that the story originated from an unchecked source on the internet. In this case it was based on a webcam that did indeed show Val in a green and grey light. But always read the small print - the picture wasn't live that February day. It had been taken in November 7, 2010, long before the season began!
The Ice Bar, Mayrhofen The Thunderer got it wrong - but the Daily Mail did too: 'Fatalities in Austria up from 14 to 28 already this season', it screamed on March 5. The article went on:'The number of deaths at ski resorts is on the rise across Europe, with overcrowding and a booze culture to blame, according to new research. This season may have not been a vintage year for snow, but skiers have been indulging in plenty of après-ski and that is the reason for the increase in fatalities, experts say. Researchers in Austria have determined that the number of deaths at ski resorts in their country is more than double last year's tally - and there are still two months of this season remaining.' It's a good story, and as a journalist I'm all for good stories. But the trouble is that this one is just not true. Not a word of it. The fact is that the overall number of ski deaths in Austria has actually nearly HALVED so far this season - 46 compared to 86. You can read the true figures here, which we published exclusively last week.
But basically the total of off-piste deaths is the lowest for decades because the snowpack has been remarkably stable. Let's be honest, the off-piste also been cr*p for much of the winter and personally I suspect that a lot of ski tourers have stayed indoors huddles around their ceramic stoves, when normally they'd be skinning up their local mountain. The number of deaths on piste in Austria is roughly about the same as usual - 43 at the moment, compared to 45 last year. I talked to the bloke at the source of these figures who's mystified by what's been buzzing around in cyberspace. It seems that the mistake came about when an Austrian online newspaper got the figures wrong. It failed to appreciate that the figures were divided into two sections - to get the total number of deaths you had to add the piste and off-piste together. Other newspapers just took this report as it was - ignoring the fact that 40% of the deaths were due to natural causes. I mean, you've got to die somewhere, haven't you? And what about the booze? Collisions, both with trees and other snow users are up. But is alcohol to blame?
Accidents involving collisions are up. Photo: Global X "Alcohol is obviously a likely influence in the deaths on piste, but there's no evidence at all to back this up,' says Hanno Bilek, who compiled these official figures and is the leading Austrian expert on Alpine safety. "In my mind lack of fitness, along with an over-estimation of technical skills and physical ability, are the main causes." So, another vodka-and-Red-Bull in the Mooserwirt won't affect my skiing, then? Yes, of course it will (especially if you've had a few already). Drink sensibly but, contrary to what the tabloids and the internet says, alcohol is not the reason for the increase in fatalities...er...because there isn't an increase, there's a massive drop. The moral of all this is that just because it's posted on the internet, it doesn't make it necessarily true. The next time someone says there's no snow in the Alps, or warns of carnage on the slopes, it might be worth checking it with welove2ski before you cancel your holiday.
The Trofana Alm apres-ski bar in Ischgl How much snow?? - 22/3/2011 14:44by Sean Newsom , editor's Snog One of our editors has stumbled into the back end of an epic season in California. Sorry - no time for a proper blog today - but I just wanted to share this picture with you from my first day in Northstar. This is a two-storey building. There's a kind of tunnel dug down to the first floor. The resort averages around 350 inches of snow a season. So far this winter they've had 564 inches - 14.32m...
Advertisement From spring to snow - 21/3/2011 14:07by Sean Newsom , editor's Snog One of our editors is having a dream start to his California trip. Yesterday, we went from this...
...to this...
...to this...
...and now this morning, at 7am, while I'm awaiting the 8.15 rendezvous at the rental shop, I'm looking at this...
As they say - it never rains in California...man, it pours - and the same goes for the snow. Last night on the I-80 highway the snow was covering the roadsigns and lining the road with 6ft walls of sheer white. Thank heavens we supersized our car hire and opted for a big, heavy, 4WD Suburban. Teams of workers were turning anyone back without chains of 4WD on the approaches to the pass last night, and some of the lighter SUVs were looking distinctly wobbly. I'm in Northstar, close to Lake Tahoe, now. There's less snow here than on the pass - but they're still reporting 132cm from the latest storm, and 30-45cm overnight. The last couple of weeks, I can't deny it, with the onset of spring back in London I've been feeling my hunger for the white stuff begin to fade. But not any more. Just look at it. Just look at it. WOOF WOOF.
ps - before the flight over, I got to see Virgin Atlantic's business-class lounge at Heathrow, Terminal 3. Extraordinary. I don't get to fly business class very often, but I've seen a few lounges in my day, and this one is in a league of its own. It's vast - airy, light, and a little bit sci-fi - and they'll cook you a fresh breakfast there if you want it, for free. They even do BLTs to order...
Advertisement Glass Kalashnikovs, giant moguls, and Mardi Gras in Verbier - 12/3/2011 14:51by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Editor, Peter Hardy, makes his annual visit to Verbier - March 11, 2011
Spring? Did I say spring? Verbier's just had (almost) 60 days of consecutive blue-sky days. As the season marches relentlessly onwards, the sun's getting some power in it, enough to make me reach for the Factor 30. You have to make that difficult choice between cruising what are still some pretty remarkable pistes - or lightly grilling yourself over a chilled bottle of local fendant on the terrace of a mountain restaurant. We did a lot of both.
Busy Mardi Gras piste After such a dry winter to date it's a credit to the grooming guys here that's there's not a rock in sight and most runs are remain grippy all the way down to town. The off-piste? Well, just about exhausted is the best way to put it. But if your are prepared to slide down and around some bumps the size of Bentleys, a good guide can usually find you something soft and deep. Good guides? We've got Guilia Monego, one of the all-time great freeride skiers who now works for Verbier guiding company, Powder Extreme, along with French freerider Sebastian Saule.
Warren Smith (right) with our friend, crime writer Peter James I tell you, it doesn't get any better than this, does it? So many world-class skiers and so little snow. Yes, it does. Our own Hertfordshire-born ski guru, Warren Smith, is also out there with us on the mountain, defying a back injury to have some fun in the sun.
Editor, Peter Hardy, on the piste Oh yeah, we've also got George and James along for the ride in Verbier in what, because of the lack of snow, has been a very strange Mardi Gras week even without the fancy dress. George? George Clooney's been staying in Chalet Kernow and popped out for a ski and a cup of coffee. James? James Blunt and his band brought their tour bus up here on Thursday for 12 hours between a gig in Amsterdam and another in Zurich on their 13-month world tour. He's a friend of mine so it was good to see him, and I spent a couple of years touring with him and his band for my book Different Country, Same State.
James Blunt (right) with bandmate, Johnny Garrison, in the Farinet Lounge Bar James himself was the only one in a party of dozen who actually made it up the mountain for a quick few turns on Thursday afternoon. Well, if you've got a lift named after you - and he's got a six-pack mid-mountain - I guess you've not got much choice but to take a girl for a ride. The rest of the band were all pretty wasted but, along with James, they all managed to show up for a late-night party at the Farinet Lounge Bar.
Mardi Gras evening at the Farinet Lounge Bar Owner Rob Sawyer, who was recently badly injured in a collision with a snowboarder, couldn't be there. But he did leave a kind of unusual gift for James (who saw service in Kosovo when he was a captain in the British army). It's a glass Russian Kalashnikov powered by vodka, with a handy glass grenade filled with whisky on the side. The tour bus then headed for Zurich and we headed back to our rather more comfortable billet this week. No. 14 Verbier is a truly smart new chalet from Verbier Exclusive that pushes accommodation in the resort up a notch. It's the brainchild of David Pearson, who founded Ski Verbier, and his business partner, Tom Avery, who is a celebrated Arctic explorer.
This gives a whole new meaning to 'shots' What they've come up with a sumptuous chalet that can be rented in its entirety by corporate groups or private individuals per week for a modest £36,400 to £91,000. When not booked it reverts to a boutique hotel with rooms from £560pp inclusive of all food and drink.
One of the bedrooms at No. 14 Designer Fiona Barrett, wife of footballer Sol Campbell, has done a grand job on the interior with superb living areas, pool and spa, along with comfortable bedrooms. Personally, I'd have given a little more thought to the bathrooms. There are a few teething problems but overall it works well, and the food is of exceptionally high quality. For further information, see our Verbier resort report. The Old Bill in Bulgaria - 1/3/2011 20:35by Peter Hardy, blogger at large "Bobbies on the bumps, three-legged dogs and Bulgarian tequila, where will it all end?" asks welove2ski editor Peter Hardy. "'Ello, 'ello, 'ello, what have we here?" Blimey, it's the Old Bill in Bulgaria! Pamporovo has just become the latest resort in the world to bring in piste Peelers to patrol their slopes.
"We're on the lookout for drunks, reckless skiers, and those who dodge under the ropes onto closed runs," these two told us, bending their knees in time-honoured style when we ran into them - fortunately not literally - just below the resort's iconic TV mast this morning. Well, I think that's what they said. To be honest, guv, there was a bit of a language problem, but then they were all smiles. Winning hearts and minds rather than wielding rubber poles is clearly the name of their game.
"Hopefully their presence acts as a deterrent," said our ski instructor guide, Kras. "They have the power to confiscate lift passes and to arrest people who don't behave properly on the mountain." With a tumbler of wine in a mountain restaurant costing just £1.60 and a giant shot of Bulgarian tequila the same (Bulgarian tequila, did I just drink that, let alone write that?) many people obviously don't behave as they necessarily should. Is it my imagination, or have I just seen a three-legged dog crossing the slope? The temptation to take too many holiday schnapps can clearly be a problem here.
The three-legged dog Actually the Brits, Greeks, Turks and Romanians who head the list of foreign visitors to Pampo all looked remarkably well behaved. Pamporovo is essentially a place for beginners and intermediates who take their first steps on skis in a truly delightful setting on wooded slopes with a wonderfully gentle gradient. Personally I should have thought that, if you're trying to wrestle with a snowplough, the last thing you want is a skinful of Bulgarian tequila slopping around your midriff reminding you that you've got the weight on your uphill ski. But there you go, there are worse jobs than being a piste cop. "They ski well," I mutter as the duo set off ahead of us.
"And they should do," says Kras, "I taught them." It's my first visit to Pamporovo, and I have to say that I'm pretty impressed. In recent years the introduction of a couple of six-packs has greatly improved the lift system. But, as in so many other resorts across the world from Risoul to Revelstoke, recession has taken a bitter bank-related toll. The 360-degree panoramic restaurant up the TV mast has remained closed this winter and the shells of partially-built, but now postponed or abandoned, apartment blocks scar the landscape.
Advertisement Think on the bright side. Snow's thin on the ground, but the slopes are beautifully groomed. The sun is shining and after recent visits to the French Alps and to Scandinavia the prices here are a dream. What's more, with half-a-dozen schools in competition with each other the level of instruction is high. Until now the problem has been that the quality of acceptable four-star accommodation has been generally low - and higher than that, non-existent. However, all that is beginning to change. The Rhodope mountains are a popular year-round holiday spot for wealthy Bulgarians, not only from Sofia but also from the second city of Plovdiv which is a 90-minute drive away. An increasing number of them are buying up old farmhouses and converting them into holiday homes. This week we're staying in much the smartest of these at Gela, a 20-minute drive from Pamporovo. Villa Gella - with the extra L - is, as far as I know, the first five-star rental retreat to be built in the mountains here. It's in an amazing position six miles as the crow flies from Pamporovo and 20 minutes drive. You can actually see the Pamporovo TV mast from the chalet terrace.
The enormous interior houses six bedrooms, all en suite and all with fireplaces. The star is the Oriental master bedroom with its two four-posters, a walk-in wardrobe/dressing room complete with desk, and en suite bathroom with corner whirlpool bath and separate shower. The living area is huge, with fireplace, vast sofas and dining area. Outside is an enticing terrace with yet another open fire. There's an indoor swimming-pool, Jacuzzi and steam room, a study with WiFi. Guests at the villa, which is available for rent all year round, need to work in at least one day for sightseeing to the World Heritage city of Plovdiv and a visit to the nearby caves. The villa's not totally finished yet - they're still sorting out a few minor teething problems. But what we particularly liked was the feeling of being in a real Bulgarian village where the food is not just what they like to call 'mainly locally sourced'. It's entirely so - right down to the cow, pig, the yoghurt, and the apple juice that comes from the trees in the garden along with the honey and wine. The Villa Gella website is coming soon to a computer near you soon. As I write, the weather's already changed and it's snowing cats and (three-legged) dogs in Pamporovo today. Candles, teepees - and sausages in your backpack - 7/2/2011 12:58by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Our roving editor, Peter Hardy, spends a final day in the Swedish resort of Åre - February 6, 2011
So now I understand why they keep the best skiing in Åre for February...because they don't have it - usually - in December and January. But, boy, did we get it this weekend! Before we got stuck into the powder the problem was the ice. And I'm talking about Ice with a capital 'i'. It's not the stuff you find in a gin-and-tonic, but what clings to the pylons, gondolas, cables and chairs on the upper half of the Åre ski area. The basic snow around here is sea snow that sweeps in predominantly from Norway and Iceland beyond. When the temperature is relatively warm, it's full of moisture and clings to the lifts. When it's cold, the snow falls as light, Arctic dust that produces phenomenal powder days.
But to open the top of the ski area you've first got to hack off the ice before you can fire up the lift system - and, as our pictures, show, that ain't easy. In the early hours of Saturday morning Carlsberg-fuelled rumours around town where rife. This was to be the day - and what's more, the ski opening hours were being extended from 9.30am to 4.30pm instead of the usual January 3pm. I didn't exactly go from club to gondola, but shall we say that the breakfast pause between the two wasn't nearly long enough. However, fresh powder at the top and a magnificent descent all to way to the main village quickly wiped away any cobwebs.
The more I see of this ski area, the more I am absolutely hooked. There's so much to do. The two 20-year-old Dutch pro-snowboarders, who've been my companions on- and off-piste for much of the week, describe the Åre snowpark as 'in the top three in the world.' Flachau in Austria was right up there, they said, but neither could agree about the third. Certainly skiing the black line was scary beyond belief - even if you avoid the actually kickers. We're talking 20m of air here. I mean, unless, you know what you're doing, it's insane! The red and blue lines make a lot more sense to most of us.
Park-age locals sensibly strap on spine protectors as a matter of course each morning as they climb out of bed. Safe skiing is like safe sex, it's what you do, dude... So finally, after three visits over 15 years, I now have a clear understanding of the ski area. The various Åre resorts are spread out along 15km of the shoreline of Lake Åre. While there is a regular free ski bus linking them all, it is essential to work out the basic geography before choosing your accommodation.
Åre By is the main and very attractive village in the centre with most of the hotels and the rental apartments. From here you can reach Åretopp Plata - the open skiing above the treeline - by cable-car or by an eight-person chair and subsequent gondola from the race arena on the eastern edge of Åre. Åre Björnen is the most popular base for families with small children. It's situated a five-minute drive away to the east of the centre. The rental accommodation is ski-in ski-out with ski school and other activities on your doorstep. From here a 2km road lined with multi-million quid chalets winds up to the five-star Copperhill Resort complex. In summer you can tell which of them are Norwegian owned - they have eco-friendly grass roofs.
The hotel has its own ski-lift. Björnen is linked to Åre By with a series of mainly easy, wooded runs. These are sheltered from the prevailing winds - and the snow falls vertically here rather than horizontally on the main mountain. It's a great place to ski when the weather closes in. Tegefjäll is a separate little village to the west that is linked to larger Are Duved, still further west in the direction of Norway. Few foreign visitors bother to catch the bus down here - and they don't know what they're missing! Tegefjäll is my favourite ski area in the region and reminds me strongly of Beaver Creek in Colorado. Just the pistes, mind. The village itself has one bar, one restaurant, one hotel, and some good apartments.
'Quiet' is an understatement, but the skiing is wonderfully varied with usually empty slopes and a huge variety of interesting terrain. One particular feature that I find immensely attractive are the wayside huts - with log fires lit by the ski patrol. Here you can picnic for free, grilling the steaks or sausages that you bring along in your backpack. Traditional huts have more recently been supplemented by North American-style teepees.
So when to go? March and April are the best months with the longest days and the most sunshine. Good snow-cover is pretty much guaranteed and the resort doesn't close until the beginning of May. This far north, December's pretty dark, although the ubiquitous candles inside and outside almost every building give the whole place an air of enchantment. January has longer days, but usually the harshest weather - the sun's still low on the horizon. They try to open the magical top of the ski area, but it may remain closed throughout the month. Advanced skiers could find this frustrating. However all but a handful of the 46 lifts will be open. February's good, but this is high season and the resort's at its best, but busiest.
Where to stay? Here's my personal choice: Björnen for families with children aged up to eight or nine years. Tegefjäll and Duved for families with older children under 13 years - accommodation costs are definitely lower here, making Tegefjäll in particular suitable for adults on a budget. Åre By for everyone else. If you do stay here, make the effort to get to Tegefjäll. The kids' trail, dotted with all sorts of 'talking' wooden characters and animals, is compelling for all ages.
I stayed with Neilson, which has the widest range of accommodation here. They fly a weekly charter from Heathrow to Östersund with a transfer time of one hour. Tiny airports like this really take the hassle of flying. We actually took off 10 minutes early and arrived the same. I'd entrusted my car to Airport Parking and Hotels who'd booked me in with MBW Valet Parking. I'd use them again...and yes, I'll be going back to Åre for a fourth time. Click on the link for our Åre resort report. Don't say "mush" - 4/2/2011 13:05by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Our roving editor, Peter Hardy, tries out his husky voice in the Swedish resort of Åre - February 4, 2011
Okay, I can tell you this much: it's definitely not 'mush!' if you're standing on the runners of dog sled trying to convince 10 Swedish-born Alaskan huskies to give it some paw power, please don't say 'mush!' Judging by the pained expression on the face of my right-hand 'wheeler' I've just said something that in canine lingo is offensively lavatorial. Mind you, it's not as lavatorial as what he's just done. "Framät," whispers my instructor Ricky, formerly a mechanic from Stockholm. Somewhere along the line Ricky swapped wheels for worming pills and answered, in real Jack London style, the Call of the Wild. I've set aside my skis for a morning to join him. "Say, 'framät!' he repeats. "Framät!" I yell. The response is roughly similar to what happens when Lewis Hamilton floors it on pole. Somehow I manage not to tumble off the back. This would have been unfortunate for me, but much more so for the Turkish mum and her two pre-teen children who are my sled passengers. They've foolishly entrusted me with their lives. "Don't worry," I tell her, "I've done this before." I fail to mention that last time in Lapland I turned the sledge over and smashed it.
The team surges forward at breakneck speed. I do try braking - pushing down on a bed of vicious spring-loaded spikes that dig into the snow. But the dogs are so fresh and strong it's like speed-ploughing a field. "Vänster (left)!" I shout at my lead dog, whose name I've already forgotten. He promptly leads everybody Höger. Yeah, that's right, you got it. I tell you, it's not easy - you've got to know the team and, more importantly, they've got to know you. Ricky and Michael from Åre Sleddog Adventures know all 62 dogs by name. They know what each of them likes for breakfast - and they love every single one of them. The reward is that they get absolute devotion right back. There's leaders who are wickedly smart - much smarter than you, or rather, me. Then there are swing dogs and point dogs and wheelers.
Wheelers are the rugby forwards of dog-sledding - they're the biggest guys in the pack and take the strain just in front of the sled. Also, of course, there are the inevitable smart alecs. You get them in every profession and dog sledding is no exception... "Let me see now. If I get up close and say something really, really rude to that blonde bitch in front of me, she's bound to muddle her traces and take a purler. Then we'll all get a break and maybe they'll kick that British blogger bloke off the runners and get us a real driver. Woof! Woof!"
In a two hour trip - tea break in a hut with an open fire included - the dogs run for 15km and we struggle to stay on the sledge as we bound along the frozen lake and through the surrounding woodland. It's a wonderful way to spend a couple of hours in Åre: good though the skiing is here, you'd be mad not to give it ago. By the time we get back to where we started every bone and muscle in my body aches. Ricky tells me that if the dogs don't work out every day, they get depressed and refuse to eat. I need to spend a little time thinking about that...
Click on the link for our Åre resort report. Reindeer Åre at full throttle - 3/2/2011 09:06by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Our roving editor, Peter Hardy, is in the Swedish resort of Åre this week - here's his report of February 3, 2011
Blogger, Helena, in action "Take it very easy here," said my guide, as we gazed down through the trees to the frozen expanse of Lake Åre far below. "It's steep and narrow and you need to keep in my tracks at all times." On skis those moments of advice are always scary and usually followed menacingly by: "Whatever you do, don't fall." On skis you've only got two legs to point in the right direction. But when you're at the controls of a 120kph 500cc snowmobile, it's a whole new ball game!If you spend a week skiing in what is rapidly becoming one of my top ten favourite winter destinations anywhere, taking time out for a snowmobile safari is an absolute must.
Call of the wild Anyone can do it. All you need is warm clothing (provided), nerves of steel, and a love of crazy, mind-boggling speed...ie the tools of the average committed skier. Oh, you do also need to bring along a valid driving licence and be fit to pass a breath test. Swedish cops apparently also ride snowmobiles. The reward for me was two hours of unequalled adrenalin and petrol-fueled action against a wild winter landscape that came complete - on cue - with a whole herd of reindeer. At one stage, when we cut fresh tracks across an exposed ridge, an 70mph tempest threatened to blast us off the mountain.
Clearly not that way... It all began calmly enough with five minutes of basic instruction on the edge of the lake at Camp Åre, which co-ordinates all the extra-curricular activities around here. These range from kite-boarding and ice-karting to zip wiring, winter fishing and dog-sledding. "If you want to right, lean right. If you want to go left, lean left," our guide explained. Sounds easy? It was - on the lake - but when you're slaloming downhill through the trees at 50 degrees it's definitely white knuckle time. Fortunately the handgrips are heated!
Reindeer grazing in this remote area To start with we roared across the lake at 60kph, getting a feel for how the machines handled. Then we headed up the mountainside and into the wild, stopping for a cup of coffee in a remote mountain hut. Going up from the lake was easy. Coming back down, I can tell you, called for the motorized equivalent of a snowplough - a heavy gloved hand on the brake.
Waterfall at dusk Too late to go skiing now - the lifts close early at 3pm at this time of year - and so it's time for a spot of sightseeing. Tännforsen is Northern Sweden's answer to the Niagara Falls - back in the 1950s a guy rode a bike across the waterfall on a tightrope. In winter it's half-frozen and the best time of day to visit is at dusk when the floodlights come on. Refracted light on the ice creates a glorious palette of colour.
Fancy a cold drink at the bar? But much the best bit is the adjoining igloo that's been built here each winter for the last 13 years. It lasts from November to May and has a cool-on-the-bum amphitheatre, bar area, bedrooms, and even a bathroom with basin and ice loo all carved out of ice. Click on the link for our Åre resort report. Getting into the spirit of Åre - 2/2/2011 14:12by Peter Hardy, blogger at large
Ok so yesterday wasn't the best day for showcasing the slopes in Scandinavia's best ski resort. So I got stuck into the spirit of the place instead. Up the mountain it was snowing hard, giant wet flakes and zero wind. "Just the stuff for establishing a really strong base layer," claimed Anders, my optimistic guide. "Mostly we get Arctic powder. That's great as a top layer, but when there's a wind it blows away like dust. This is just what we need."
Sure, I take the point. Up high it was just dandy. We couldn't see a sausage, but it felt just wonderful underfoot - 15cm of fresh snow, going towards 30cm. Unlike France, they've got lots of the stuff here. But much of the higher terrain was closed and down below on the home run...well, yeah, let's have a little honesty here...the precipitation was coming down in liquid form. It felt like skiing on a bed of sushi rice while standing in the shower. You know the going's tough around when they've got the piste lights on full beam at midday. With Stefan and Stefano, two 20-year-old Dutch boarders, and Helena, Welove2ski's sensational Swedish saisonnaire snogger, we blasted down the deserted slopes at a range of speeds - fast, or very fast - depending on the visibility. And then we did the only thing that rational human beings can do on a murky day such as this. We went to a distillery.
First and foremost, Buustamons is a remote gourmet restaurant with bedrooms attached. But it's also home to a rare private still. In winter you can get there on skis, but not by car...and given Sweden's strict drink/drive law that's unquestionably the way it should be. Owner Lotta Florin and her full time staff of just four make 1,000 bottles high quality hooch each year. That is, when they're not making beds or cooking and serving in the restaurant.
Alcohol is viciously taxed in Sweden with duty of £31 on a 75cl bottle as well 25% VAT. So Lotta's schnapps is liquid gold - but there's no shortage of takers. You can only take it home if you buy it in government off-licences, so the obvious course is to drink it on the premises. The vodka base is made from wheat, sugar, and water that's cooked and refined for a week until it's a brain-ticking 37.5% alcohol. Buustasup - their aquavit - has got tiny quantities of cumin, fennel, and Spey side whisky added to give it flavour. God knows what's in the sweeter Hojt that tastes a bit like Jägermeister: after the aquavit my memory started to resemble a slice of Emmental cheese.
The setting was rich in ambience, the fish stew delicious, but it was the home-grown liqueurs that took our breath and much of the rest of the day away...
Click on the link for our Åre resort report. Who says there isn't enough snow? - 31/1/2011 12:24by Peter Hardy, blogger at large
Who said there isn't enough snow? There's tons of the stuff here and it's been flaking it on and off all morning. Where? Sweden, of course, or - to be more precise - Åre. After all the talk of snow droughts and boilerplate pistes in the French Alps, it's been a big relief to set my edges to soft and grippy pistes in the frozen north. First I had to get myself here. Åre is in a remote spot in the snowy northern wastelands of Scandinavia. You can fly SAS via Stockholm. But - if you don't mind an early start - it's infinitely more convenient to choose the Neilson/BMI charter to little Ostersund airport, only an hour an hour away from the resort. "Early" means a 5.15am check-in at Heathrow and that for me meant leaving home at 4am. With skis and boots in tow a meet and greet service seemed essential. But the choice when you Google Heathrow parking is utterly bewildering. Airport Parking and Hotels holds the title of Best Airport Parking Company in the British Travel Awards 2010 so I thought I'd give them a whirl. They booked me in with MBW Valet Parking at a reasonable price. Outbound I couldn't fault the service. The guy was actually waiting for me on arrival and - even at 5.15am on a Sunday - he was cheerful! No problems with the Neilson flight either - apart from (as it turned out, thankfully) missing Murray v Djokovic.
If it's your first visit to Åre you're in for a cultural shock. This is not the Alps, not the Pyrenees, not Eastern Europe - it's an altogether different kind of resort and it takes a couple of hours to get into the mindset. It's in a stunningly beautiful setting along the shore of a king-sized frozen lake. Since my last visit seven years ago there's been considerable development, but I'm glad to see its charm and commercial understatement are both intact.
The centre's all pastel-painted wooden buildings discreetly lit to avoid any startling contrast with the wintry twilight outside, and ubiquitous candles both indoors and outside add a warm touch of welcome. A word of advice, though: you shouldn?t just come here to ski. You can, of course. Åre's got 46 lifts and unquestionably has the best - some would argue the only - world-class skiing in Scandinavia (it hosted the Alpine World Ski Championships in 2007 to prove it). The point is, you shouldn't get so distracted by the downhill that you miss other opportunities for wintry fun. These range from snowmobiling and dog-sledding to ice-fishing and reindeer sledding...and ice-karting. I'll let you know about that - whatever it is - later this week. This morning, though, I took a turn on the slopes. At 9.30 when the lifts opened the sun was still vainly struggling to make it above the horizon, giving the slopes a gentle golden morning glory. With 15cm of fresh snow underfoot it was pure magic. That is, until more snow began falling and the temperature starting dropping away as a reminder that it's still January here. Well, ok, I guess it's still January everywhere! But in these northern climes you need to wrap up well and catch the skiing early before the light fades.
The lifts close early at 3pm: which is the signal to head for all those other activities on offer. Apart from all the snowy stuff I alluded to above, there's the most important activity of all - party-ing. And as I discovered last night from the full-on rave being staged in my neighbouring apartment, Åre appears to be the Après Capital of the Earth. Click on the link for our Åre resort report. &%*7$££@!! - 28/1/2011 06:38by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog In the end, you just run out of words. All week I've been marvelling at the Dolomite scenery - in Buffaure, on the Passo San Pellegrino, and in Catinaccio. But they were just appetisers before the main course - served up yesterday, courtesy of slopes above the resort of Canazei. I mean, just look at this place...
These citadels of rock and snow sit at the north-eastern end of the Val di Fassa. Around them swirl a spaghetti-like tangle of lifts and pistes, and a United Nations of skiing - Danes, Norwegians, Dutch, Brits, Germans, Italians, Poles, Czechs, Russians, I even heard some French today. Compared to the other ski areas in the Val di Fassa it's a hectic, shiny, cosmopolitan world, and the pistes, while not exactly crowded, are much busier than I've seen so far this week. And yet, when you see it on a day like yesterday, you can't help but be smitten. There's only one other view in the ski world which holds my gaze so unswervingly, and that's north wall of the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau, seen from Mürren. And you don't get to ski around those in the way you can here, soaking up the constantly-changing perspective. Really, you have to see this place at least once in your skiing career. This is also the setting for the Sella Ronda, the famous circuit of lifts and pistes which girdles the Sella Massif, but rather than schlepping all the way round, Livio Gabrielli and I explored its southern half, and the runs that break away from it. I say "explored": but what I actually mean is that Livio scorched a burning path down every visible slope and I did my damnedest to keep up with him.
Mostly, the pistes here are reds and blues. But there is some variety on the north-facing blacks and steeper reds above the village of Arabba - and as followers of our ace blogger, Mad Hatter - who is based in Canazei - will know, there's plenty of off-piste skiing and riding on offer whenever there's powder. But it's been two weeks since the region had any significant falls of fresh snow and we stuck to the groomers. The Arabba blacks were surprisingly busy, and were icy by midday, but elsewhere there was plenty of soft, grippy snow. When the pistes are in good nick - which they mostly were yesterday - the valley run which zig-zags down to the resort of Canazei is a delight, too. Especially if you're following Livio. "I'll ski at medium speed, Sean," he told me, before we made our descent in failing light, "and you follow my tracks." It was a sinuous and sensational ten minutes.
We ate at the Rifugio Salei beneath the Col Rodello. I thought its prices would reflect the fact that it's right on the Sella Ronda, but they were no higher than in the rest of the Val di Fassa ski areas. A salad of warm Taleggio cheese was seven euros, and a delicious pan of medallions of pork and spätzle (a kind of mini-gnocchi), with a mix of mushrooms, which serves two, was 13.50 euros each. Tiramisu was four euros. And the view from the restaurant window, which frames the Sella Massif? Priceless...
The Rifugio has eight bedrooms, and you can book them in both summer and winter. Imagine staying up here after everyone has skied back down to their resorts, to watch the setting sun paint its rich colours across the cliffs and crags: and then, the following morning, waking up to the same view. While we were having lunch, Livio made the rather controversial claim that the rest of the Alps were "ugly". But I suppose, if you'd spent your life looking at these cliffs and crags, that's how they would seem. By the way, check out this episode of Salomon Freeski TV if you haven't seen it yet - the final section was filmed above Canazei, and includes some hair-raising footage of high-speed couloir skiing... Click on the link for our Moena resort report. A tough assignment - 27/1/2011 07:57by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog
Man alive. This is a tough assignment. Pictured above is Livio Gabrielli my guide, hard at work in the Baita Checco, in the small but stunning ski area of Catinaccio. I took the picture just as we were about to start the best lunch of the week so far: a slow and mouthwatering progress through some of finest ingredients the Val di Fassa has to offer. We ate cheese from Campitello, just down the road, salt beef made by the restaurant's owner (Pierre-Paolo Trottner), local venison salami, a sensational orzotto, which is like risotto but made from barley... ...polenta with sausage and porcini mushrooms... ...veal which had been slow-cooked in the oven for 48 hours... ...more venison... ...and then a trio of deserts... ...all washed down with a very agreeable red from just south of the town of Trento, and made from the local Teroldego grape.
Oh yes, and we finished with grappa, of course. We ate in a tiny wood-panelled room on the hut's upper floor, which was home to the bar, five tables, and an ever-changing cast of locals, ski instructors and grinning holidaymakers who couldn't believe their luck - having stumbled upon the kind of mountain restaurant you always dream of but never expect to find. Along the way, we marvelled at the prices. Venison tagliatelle costs 8 euros, spaghetti al ragu (spag bol) 6 euros, a hot chocolate 2 euros, and an espresso 1 euro. Our wine was 15 euros a bottle, and the most expensive item on the menu cost 17 euros.
We also met the chef, Matthias Trottner, who is the nephew of the owner He's only 22. "What's your secret, Matthias?" I asked. "Keeping it local," he replied. "I get as many of my ingredients as possible from the valley. That means I know the suppliers personally, and I always get fresh, high-quality produce." "Yes, but there must be a lot of hard work involved, too," I suggested. "It's not really work when you're enjoying yourself," he replied, and I was suddenly reminded of Boris Becker, winning his first ever Wimbledon back in 1985. Mattthias has something of that insouciance about him - as if it's still a game for him, and he's winning all the time.
We were the last to leave, but there was still time to take in a few more laps of the Catinaccio pistes before home time. Which also meant there was more time to stare open-mouthed at the scenery. Yesterday, I said that the view of the Gruppo delle Palle from the Passo San Pellegrino is one of the most striking in all of skiing - but the view north from Catinaccio knocks it for six: a great wall of raw Dolomite rock, fractured into a hundred towers and cliffs. I still can't quite believe I saw it. And I certainly can't believe that the whole of Pozza di Fassa's brass band climbed two of these towers to celebrate its 70th birthday, and sat on top, playing a brass-band tune. When I wasn't taking pictures, I was hurrying down the slopes in pursuit of Livio. If Elisabetta, my guide on Monday, skis at Mach2, Livio must ski at Mach4. He's a ski instructor who never had any lessons himself ("I learned by looking," he says), and is one of the most natural skiers I've seen. He barely seems to be skiing at all - a few graceful turns, and then suddenly he's at the bottom of a black piste travelling at a gazillion miles an hour. It's not just the control, or the speed, that's impressive - but the line he takes down each piste. He makes use of every bank and roller to make the descent more interesting. It's inspiring stuff. Of course, hardly anyone comes to Cantinaccio. Hardly anyone even knows it's here, apart from the locals. Which is probably just how it should be. That way you don't have to worry about other skiers as you hurtle down the steep and steady slope of the Tomba black, or wind through fast 90 degree turns down the area's two sinuous and deeply satisfying valley runs (one of which is about 6km long). You don't have pay inflated prices at Baita Checco, either. So forget I ever told you about it, will you?
Click on the link for our Moena resort report. If only all "selfs" were like this - 26/1/2011 06:45by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog
Here's how you do a self-service restaurant in the Alps. *First of all, you design the kitchen so that you can cook most of the menu to order - pizzas, pasta sauces, steaks, fish - while your customers are lined up in front of you. *Second of all, you get your pizza guy to make not just the pizza bases, but your bread as well, fresh each morning. *You also make your pasta yourself. Oh yes, and your cakes too - almond cake, chocolate cake, apple strudel... *And when it comes to wine, you offer a serious list, but not an expensive one. Do all of those things, and what do you get? Something like the Baita Paradiso, above the Passo San Pellegrino in the Italian Dolomites. It's almost the Platonic ideal of a "self" - cheap (home-made tagliatelle for 7.50 euros), fresh, and interesting. Even the two dining rooms are pretty: panelled with reclaimed and/or sand-blasted timber, they're more like something posh in Courchevel than your average, grab-a-tray gaff. The Baita is the brainchild of Gino Defrancesco, who gave it a top-to-bottom makeover four seasons ago. His philosophy is simple: "yes you have to be quick in a restaurant like this, but that doesn't mean you have to serve boring food". You don't have to serve boring wine, either. "I don't sell a lot of wine," says Gino, "But I do drink a lot of it, and I don't drink rubbish." His entire list comes from the Trentino and Südtirol regions of the Dolomites, and is backed with meaty reds, most of which cost between 12 and 26 euros a bottle.
I'm not the only person to notice the difference. It had been a less-than-vintage morning for skiing: the light so flat it was impossible to tell how a piste was going to unfurl beneath your skis. The slopes were almost completely deserted. And yet at lunchtime the Baita Paradiso was full - there was almost nowhere to sit. The other restauranteurs on the mountain must hate Gino. As for me - well, I just wish the owners of all those bright, shiny, soulless selfs I've eaten in around the Alps over the years would come to the Baita Paradiso and learn how it can be done, provided your priority is to serve good food, rather than to make the maximum profit in the shortest possible time.
Needless to say I emerged in a far better mood than I'd entered, and it soared still further when the sun came out. Much of the Passo San Pellegrino ski area is above the treeline and it comes into its own when the skies clear. On the north side of the road, it's all easy-skiing reds and blues, served by a mix of chairs and button lifts. On the south side a cable car whisks you up to a plateau which offers one of the most dramatic views I know in skiing: across to the Gruppo delle Pale. The pistes up here are wide and long, and are mostly easy too - with a couple of short sharp sections on the one that drops back to the cable car. There's more of the same a little further down the road at the Alpe Luisa ski area.
Last time I skied here, in March 2009, there had just been a little fresh snow, and the corduroy was absolutely perfect. This time round I didn't dare hope for the same. The last time it snowed here was January 11, and since then we've had both a sharp thaw and deep freeze. I was expecting rock-hard, icy pistes everywhere - just like the ones they've got in France. But I didn't see an icy patch all day, let alone ski one. Okay, so the snow wasn't quite as fast or as grippy as it was in 2009. But it was still a reassuring surface on which to set my edges. I've said it many times before, but the fact bears repetition. No-one knows how to look after their pistes like the Italians. Of course, most Brits have never heard of the Passo San Pellegrino, or the town of Moena beneath it. That's because this isn't a classic mountain resort of the kind you'll find in the French Alps - with ski-in, ski-out accommodation, and all slopes encompassed by a single lift system. You need a car to commute between the different ski areas here, and if that's going to bother you, give it a wide berth. If, however, you're an independent soul, and don't need a tour operator to book flights and accommodation for you; and if you long for a reasonably-priced ski holiday which allows you to stay in a hotel rather than an apartment and eat in restaurants rather than out of a rucksack - then put Moena on your hit list. Check out our full Moena resort report for more details.
Mountain hospitality to remember - 25/1/2011 08:34by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog You can't really teach anyone how to be a good host. It either comes naturally, or not at all. Stefano Zulian, owner of the Baita Cuz, is one of the naturals. The Baita Cuz is a mountain restaurant-with-rooms, in the small and underrated Buffaure ski area in the Italian Dolomites. Buffaure lies just across the Val di Fassa from the famous Sella Ronda circuit of pistes and lifts - and a large proportion of the canny skiers and boarders who go there seem to pass through Stefano's front door. After you've been welcomed in, it's not hard to see why.
We first dropped by at about 11am to book a table for lunch. "How about a bombardino to warm up?" suggested Stefano. A bombardino is the local pick-me-up in these parts - a mix of Vov (egg liqueur), whisky and rum, warmed up and topped off with cream "We were thinking of a coffee," said Elisabetta, my guide. "Then a calimero would be perfect," came the reply - and before we could think of reason why not we'd been presented with a drink in three layers: cream, espresso and bombardino. It's named after a cartoon character on Italian TV, and drinking it is a weird experience. First of all the coffee winds you up, then the alcohol relaxes you, and finally the bombardino gives you enough energy to ski for another three hours - enveloped by a warmish fug.
We skied fast. Elisabetta's accelerator is broken and essentially she only has two speeds - stationary and Mach2, a fact somewhat concealed by her elegant style. Buffaure was the perfect place for her today: it may be close to the Sella Ronda, but hardly anyone goes there, and the pistes were deserted all day. What's more, despite the thaw last week - followed by a deep freeze over the weekend - every piste we skied was soft and grippy: a testament both to the snow-making skills of the Dolomite resorts, and the northerly aspect of many of the slopes. We had a blast, and froze our faces in the cold north wind in the process.
Then it was time to go back to Stefano's. I thought a glass of water would be a good idea before lunch. Stefano poured us a spritz, instead: one part Aperol, one part Prosecco and one part soda water, finished with ice and slice of orange. Then he brought over a bottle of Trentino Merlot. They make proper wine in these parts - as anyone who's sampled Ferrari Metodo Classico will know - and this Grigoletti 2007, Antica Vigna, was a case in point: a massive mouthful of red which had both depth and subtlety. We drank it at a table groaning with food - local cheese, local salami, local pickles, and local rye bread, peppered with cumin seeds. Then we out-localised even that lot with a plate of ciasoncie: pasta stuffed with figs, flooded with butter, and topped off by a puree of apples and figs. And if that sounds like nothing you've ever eaten, that shouldn't be a surprise: it's a Ladin dish. The Val di Fassa is a stronghold of the ancient Ladin language and culture, which has survived in the high Dolomite valleys.
While we ate, a steady stream of skiers washed around us: local ski instructors, Danes, Germans, Italians, and even the ski-police who patrol the pistes. Then the lifts shut on the slopes outside and the late-afternoon sky flooded with colour. We left just as the ski-police came down to make sure everyone was going home What a day. We had some great skiing - but it's Stafano's welcome that I'll best remember. Check out this Youtube clip of the 70th anniversary of the Pozza di Fassa brass band - celebrated with a concert perched on the vertiginous Torri del Vajolet. Stefano organised the excursion... Click on the links to visit our Moena and Canazei resort reports - and on this link for our Canazei blogger, Mad Hatter. The coolest mountain hut in the Alps - 21/1/2011 10:42by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog It looks innocent enough: a cute little cabin just outside the Kristallhütte, in the Hochzillertal ski area of Austria. It's just by the place where you stop and click out of the skis, before piling into the warm interior of the main bar and restaurant.
But if you fancy adjusting your hair, or checking for signs of sunburn, think twice before you make use of the cabin's one-way mirror windows. Because right on the other side is Kristallhütte's very own mountain sauna. And you know what the Austrians are like about saunas. They don't muck about with towels or swimming trunks. You could be inches away from...Well, you get the picture.
But just imagine being on the inside. How cool! In a rather hot and sweaty way, of course. The instant I saw it, I wanted to get inside and give it a go. Not only because of the utter weirdness of sitting naked at 90C while outside, at -10C, my fellow skiers and boarders were kicking the snow off their boots: but also because the interior is one of the nicest I've seen in a sauna. There's a black-slate shower and a hip little relaxation room (which looks across the Zillertal, away from all the skier action). Outside the sauna itself, the wood panelling has been sand-blasted so that it has that wonderful ribbed, knotty texture you find in upmarket chalets these days. No expense has been spared. Sadly, it's not available to ski-in customers like me: you have to stay a night at the Kristallhütte to get the use of it - either in one of its capacious double rooms on the top floor, or in one of the igloo rooms next door. If you do, you'll be joining an august list of former guests, which includes former German President Horst Köhler, and the current Austrian President Heinz Fischer. Which makes you wonder if they had a sauna while they were staying there...
Make no mistake, this is a remarkable place. The sauna, the igloos, the presidential guests, are only the start of it too. Inside the main 'hut' there's also a big, open fireplace, served by a circular copper chimney, and a very good, reasonably-priced mountain restaurant. On the south-facing sundeck steamer chairs are draped with sheepskin rugs, and big-name DJs play mellow sets later in the season. (When the sun shines, the temperature can rocket. The mercury once read +44C here, on an April afternoon.) Better still, it's open to all. There's no snotty VIP policy. Provided you buy something, you can be part of the scene.
The hut is the brainchild of Stefan Eder, and it's been open since the 2004-5 season. And get this: he opened it when he was 25. Stefan doesn't own the building - he leases it from the owner. But the concept is all his. "For years, I dreamt of doing something like this," he tells me over lunch. "And I had a very clear vision of what was needed. So when I was 22 I wrote a business plan." It took him a couple of years to convince the owner he was right, and since then he hasn't looked back. He hasn't had time. "I work 16 hours a day, seven days a week during the ski season," says Stefan - and it's easy to see why. He's at that age when he wants the Kristallhütte to be cool, rather than something that makes him rich, and he pours body and soul into achieving that end.
It even goes as far as the hot chocolate. I tell him about the nastiest hot chocolate I ever drank on a mountain, in Val d'Isère, and he comments, "it was probably made with water. Most huts and restaurants do it that way, because it's quicker and cheaper. We make it with milk." I try one. It costs 3.50 euros, is topped with cream, and I drink it sitting in front of the fire on a sheepskin rug. It's one of the best mountain hot chocolates I've ever tasted.
Click on this link to visit the Kristallhütte's website. Click on this link for the Hochzillertal piste map. The Kristallhütte is on the left as you look at the map, near the summit of the Ofelerjoch. For more on the Hochzillertal ski area, click here. Check out Sean Newsom's other reports from the Zillertal here. Hochfügen - Snow Magnet - 20/1/2011 11:05by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog They call Hochfügen a schneeloch - a snowhole. Yesterday was the proof of it.
After four days of freakish thaw, with temperatures rising to double figures on the slopes, winter returned to the Alps yesterday. In the Zillertal in Austria, where I'm currently based, we got fresh snow, too. Across most of the valley, above 1200m, there was 5-10cm of light, fluffy powder. But when we transferred by chairlift from the slopes of the ski area Hochzillertal to its near-neighbour Hochfügen, we found more than double that. Ski guide Kevin Benk and I couldn't believe it. Up until that point we'd been fogbound, scooting about in pretty humdrum conditions. Suddenly, amongst the widely-spaced trees of Hochfügen, we stumbled on a powder day. Actually, it was really a powder afternoon. And as you'll hear from the short video clip I shot at the time, underneath the fresh snow there was plenty of crusty stuff left over from the thaw. But at least the firm underlayer added extra 'rebound' - so our powder turns were nice and easy. Given that I was on a skinny pair of Head TT80ti carvers, I was glad to have the help. The area we skied - nice rolling terrain, with short steep pitches amongst scattered trees - was perfect for a day of low cloud and heavy snow. But there's a lot more to Hochfügen than this when the skies clear. The area encompasses two mountain bowls and several areas of trees, as well as steep couloirs. The more westerly of the two bowls is home to the Ostwand (the East Wall) - a big, open slope which is the scene of a qualifying event for the Freeride world tour. Here's a promotional video - a tad OTT in style, but at least it gives you an idea of the terrain on offer here when the sun comes out. Needless to say, it was invisible to me! Until yesterday, I have to admit I'd never heard of the place. But I'd looooove to go back. Overall, the fantastic variety of terrain - trees, bowls, chutes, pistes - reminded me of Snowbird in Utah. There's a strong freeride culture here too: it's no accident that committed off-piste skiers like Kevin have congregated here, and they've been working hard in recent years to develop the level of information and support available to their kindred spirits. At the top of the main gondola there's a transceiver check point where you can check your avalanche beeper is both receiving and transmitting a signal. Meanwhile, dotted around the slopes there are info boards showing freeriders what kind of terrain lies ahead. I rather wish they'd now complete the picture and do what American resorts do - securing all terrain, not just the pistes - against avalanches. But even so, it's a compelling place for anyone with the right equipment and the appetite and energy for off-piste skiing or boarding.
Hochfügen: put it on your hitlist. It's a 40-minute drive from Mayrhofen, the main resort in the Zillertal. But you could also stay here - in a little outcrop of hotels at the bottom of the lifts. Bizarrely, for a freeriders' ski area, it's home to one of the best restaurants in the Alps - the "Alexander" in the Sporthotel Lamark. The Gault Millau guide gives it a stratospheric 18/20 points for its food, and in 2005 made its young chef, Alexander Fankauser, its chef of the year. In fact, even if you don't stay in the hotel, it is probably worth eating dinner there. A good day at Hochfügen deserves nothing less... Click on this link to visit Ski guide Kevin Benk's website. Austria's steepest piste. And one of its best terrain parks. - 18/1/2011 20:49by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog I thought today was going to be all about the Harikiri. It's the black run, below: the steepest piste in Austria.
At its steepest, its pitch is 78 degrees - steeper, in fact, than the ramp they use to get airborne in World Cup ski jumping - and it drops straight down the northern face of the 2000m Penken, above the resort town of Mayrhofen. It's so steep, in fact, that you can't really see its middle section when you stand on the roller at the top, and peer over the edge. As an example of the piste-builder's craft, it's a work of genius: because although it's steep, it's also very short. Yes, it'll provide a stern test of most people's skiing, but the crux of it is only three turns long. In soft, freshly-groomed snow, anyone who's comfortable and controlled on regular blacks should be able to handle it - and will probably wonder what all the fuss is about when they scoot away towards the bottom of the Penken's principal mountain bowl. When it's icy (which it must be a lot of the time), a few more minds, and legs, are going to turn freeze. But if you make sure your edges are fairly sharp, and take it slowly, you should be fine. And if you're not - well, at least the run-out is shallow. You won't slide far.
In other words, it's a great marketing tool and a very achievable goal for keen skiers. No wonder Mayrhofen makes a big deal of it in the German-speaking ski world. Thing is, when you get to this part of the Zillertal - known as the Action Mountain Penken - the Harikiri is not really what catches your eye. It's this.
And this.
And this.
And this. This is the Vans Penken Park, which sits on the opposite side of the Penken bowl from the Harikiri. The lift company spends a six-figure sum on it each winter (hiring in the specialist company QParks to run it), and in recent years it's grown into one of the most important parks in the Alps. Most days, you'll see some eye-popping tricks here - but today, the stuff going on in there was out of this world. Friday and Saturday sees the Rip Curl Sista Sessions here, a women-only Slopestyle competition, and clearly a lot of riders were already on the slopes to practice. There were plenty of men too, and the presence of both sexes, in quantity, seemed to firing everyone up. Great fashions, too...
You couldn't help but be inspired, watching them at it. Not to try your own tricks - which on ramps this big would probably kill you - but to go much harder at your own brand of skiing, whatever that may be. In the past, I've often wondered what relevance freestyle has to the average skier. It's so far above and beyond what most of us can achieve, it seems as though the industry has left its main customer base behind for good. But today I had my answer. Forget the detail of what they're doing - and embrace the spirit. This wasn't my first time on the Penken. Three years ago I came here to do an avalanche awareness course run by the SAAC. We had two powder days in a row - and on the first day in particular, on the short, tree-studded off-piste runs on either side of the Harikiri, the skiing and riding was superb. But it was today, when most of the snow was icy, sugary or slushy, that I saw its real strengths. This is a medium-sized ski area. It'll never match the natural assets of the likes of the Espace Killy or Three Valleys in France. But to compensate, it offers an awful lot of man-made attractions - and ones which don't require heavy falls of natural snow. There's the Harikiri. There's a "kids" terrain park near the Vans Penken Park where young and old can try out their first diddy jumps (perhaps after picking up some tips in our freestyle beginners feature). And there are two slalom courses. Mix some or all of these up with the fast, quiet pistes on the backside of the Horberg, or the steep ones at the front of the same peak, and you'll have a day which pulls your skiing in all sorts of new and inspiring directions.
Shock horror! Soft, grippy snow! - 17/1/2011 18:12by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog
The Alps are steaming. One of the sharpest midwinter thaws anyone can remember has turned the season on its head, and suddenly the middle of January looks - and feels - like Easter. So, it's no wonder I'm feeling just a little bit smug this evening. Because for most of the day I skied cold, soft, grippy snow. How? Simple. This week, I'm exploring the Zillertal - the long, deep Tyrolean valley which burrows into the mountains south-east of Innsbruck - and at the far end sits the best glacier skiing in the Alps, at Hintertux.
Lots of national ski teams train here during the late summer and autumn, in the run-up to the start of the World Cup season, and it's not hard to see why. A handful of the pistes are far steeper than you'd normally expect from a glacier. In particular, there are three runs down from the top of the Gletscherbus lift which offer proper, hell-for-leather skiing. I'd hate to think how fast your average lycra-clad, thunder-thighed racer would be travelling by the time he/she reached the bottom.
Of course, I wasn't the only skier in the Zillertal to think Hintertux! this morning: there was a real league of nations up there - Germans, Poles, Czechs, Russians, Brits and the Dutch - and when I pulled into the car park, my heart sank. It was like a suburban hypermarket on a Saturday: only there were lots of coaches mixed in with all the cars. I needn't have worried. Bizarrely, everyone else seemed to be avoiding the best runs, right at the top. I skied laps, over and over, and each time I had only three or four other skiers for company.
Of course, being a glacier, it can be a bit bleak - especially if the wind gets up: but hey, you can't have everything, and today it offered some of the best skiing in all the Alps. Mind you, not everyone in the Zillertal was bothered by the thaw today...
The main resort in the valley is Mayrhofen, and before I drove the 10 miles up to Hintertux, I jumped on the cable car to the top of the Ahorn - one of Mayrhofen's two ski areas. This is where you'll find the White Lounge, an igloo-complex where you can sleep, eat, dance - and sunbathe.
I met this couple, above, round the back of the main igloo, slapping on the factor 15: Jeanet and Fred Klein from Aalsmeer in Holland. They've been coming to Mayrhofen every January for 15 years. This year is the first they can't ski, because of Jeanet's knee, but they came anyway, and they can't believe their luck. "It must be 15C up here," said Fred. "Everyone will think we went to the Canary Islands, not the Alps."
And this is Regine and Kerstin, from Bonn in Germany. "We have been skiing, honest," they told me. "We're just having a quick break..." Not everyone seemed quite so conscientious. A lot of the guests here seem to have settled in for the day. Especially the ones I saw sleeping on giant inflatable pillows.
By the way, in case you're wondering, it looks as though the thaw will end on Friday - here's a still from our snow forecast, for Wednesday. Looks as though there will be light snow across Austria and parts of Switzerland, and the Zillertal should get some of it. I've got my fingers and toes all crossed...
Click on the links for our Mayrhofen and Hintertux resort report. Les Sybelles - finding a family secret - 15/1/2011 22:08by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Our roving editor Peter Hardy is at large in the Maurienne Valley this week. Yesterday it was Les Sybelles, January 14, 2011. In a week full of surprises in the Maurienne Valley the biggest was saved for last - a collection of six little resorts linked by an astonishing 310km of piste and 72 lifts. Yet despite it being one of the largest ski areas in France precious few British families have even heard of Le Sybelles, let alone actually been there. Until yesterday it was sort of on the edge of my radar. I knew vaguely that a bunch of fairly remote villages at the Chambery end of the valley had pooled their resources and joined forces in 2003. But I had no idea of the sumptuous scale of it. Before I go any further I want to make it clear that this is not some secret Espace Killy or an alternative Chamonix that I have stumbled upon. Frankly it's not a place for expert skiers and riders and it doesn't pretend to be. This is beginner heaven and wobbly-intermediate paradise. The statistics say it all: 21 greens, 49 blues, and just seven blacks. However, as my new friend Xavier Carroz of Maurienne Hors Piste tells me: "The off-piste opportunities in Le Sybelles are absolutely outstanding." So if you're a powderhound on a family holiday, you can always sneak off for the day. Facilities for children are excellent with the complete range of all-day care and ski classes. The resorts are reached from the valley capital of St-Jean-de-Maurienne by up a winding 20km road dotted with a sequence of ancient farming villages. First you have to decide where you are going to base yourself. In ski convenience terms it doesn't much matter because they are all linked by a kind of central piste highway. From you chosen resort you take lifts up onto a plateau from where you can drop down and explore each of the others. They range in character from Sixties purpose-built to farming villages. I started by day in Les Toussuire, which is somewhere between the two: low-rise apartment blocks, but some wooden chalets as well. Being Friday, I got lucky. The farmer's market was I full swing with a huge range of local produce including of course cheeses
My guide, Jean-Baptiste from the ESF, was born here. Helene, originally from Yorkshire, has made her home in Les Toussuire with her French partner and their three children. She's proud of Les Sybelles and was determined I was going to like it. Don't worry Helene, I love it. On a weekend when the temperature soared into double figures it felt more like April than January as we raced around as much of the 310km as possible in five hours. If you manage to keep up with J-B, that's a lot. Helene took up the rear on her board - for a region with some many greens there are remarkably few flats and a high percentage of visitors were snowboarders. Only temporary problem here on my day out - as in the rest of the Alps - is the ice. In April boilerplate pistes soft during the day. In January they do not. But the rattle underfoot didn't detract from the fun. First view of Le Corbier comes a bit of a shock. How anyone back in the Sixties could have had the temerity to plonk build Tignes-style tower blocks on such a beautiful mountainside is beyond me. But the base area is limited by the terrain and I suppose if you can't build out you have to build up. Once over first impressions it's clearly a practical place to stay with immediate access to the lifts and a pleasant child-friendly front de neige. The remaining five resorts are all farming villages: St Sorlin d'Arves, St Jean d'Arves, St Colomban des Villards, Albiez Montrond, and Les Bottières. St Sorlin is attractive and has some of the best skiing, although where you stay here in important because the village sprawls for 3km.
Prices everywhere are incredibly low. You can rent a four-person apartment in low season January for as little as 200 euros. This makes Les Sybelles hugely popular with Eastern Europeans. I heard more Lithuanian and Serbian spoken on the mountain than English. At lunch on the sunny terrace of the Saint S'O above St Sorlin we were serenaded by a group of Poles who'd brought two guitars and a violin with them. Les Sybelles is ideal for a family on a budget with pre-teen kids and enjoyed at its best on a full day out when everyone has learned to ski parallel. Spag bol at lunch cost just 9 euros and a croque monsieur with chips the same. On price, combined with quality skiing, you just can't beat the Maurienne.
Heaven Orelle - 14/1/2011 09:29by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Our roving editor Peter Hardy is at large in the Maurienne Valley this week. Yesterday it was Orelle, January 12, 2011.
I feel pretty chuffed with myself. On a January day when the thermometer imagined that April was already upon us I found myself skiing in Orelle, one of the highest and most snowsure resorts in the whole of Europe. With the freezing level well above 2000m it paid to aim high and we cruised all day, for the most part in glorious sunshine. With the base of the ski area at a heady 2350m and a glorious 900m vertical above it, you just couldn't go wrong. "Hang on," I hear you say, "what Orelle's this place he's talking about? Never heard of it. I happen to know that Val Thorens is the highest ski village in Europe. Now that's the place to be in this ridiculous January thaw..." Yes, I agree, and that's exactly where I was. Since 1995 when they built the gondola up from little Orelle and the Rosael chair above it, the fabulous Maurienne has been the fourth valley of the Trois Vallées.
If you're staying in Val Thorens the link to the Maurienne looks daunting in the extreme. First you have climb by cable-car or gondola up to the ridge at the very top of the ski area. The Cime de Caron lies at 3200m and the Col de Rosael is only a couple of hundred metres lower. Then you take a deep breath and chuck yourself over the other side. In fact it's nowhere near as demanding as it seems - with glorious runs down graded blue to black. But most one-week VT-based skiers don't pluck up the courage to try it until Thursday or Friday. For the first half of the week you can have the pistes virtually to yourself.
Once on the Maurienne side, two slow chair-lifts take you up to 3230m - the highest point in the whole of the Trois Vallées. Sorry, I mean the Quatre Vallées. If you're based in the Maurienne, as I am this week, the approach is rather less dramatic. Orelle is a collection of tiny hamlets perched just above the valley floor. The resort - a strong word to use - has one gondola, one ski shop, one bar, one restaurant, a post office and a quaint little tourist office. That's about it. There are no hotels. The Tourist office can find you a low-cost gite. A more comfortable and almost as low-cost choice is Les Hameaux des Eaux d'Orelle (bookable through Peak Retreats), an apartment block with spa and pool. It's situated half-a-mile above the lift station.
The higher and wonderfully picturesque hamlet of Montvillard, reached by a tortuous mountain road, is in remarkable shape. The ancient stones houses clustered around an imposing church are in such pristine condition that you wonder if you haven't stumbled on to a film set rather than into the usual tumbledown alpine community where the locals still try to eke a living from their fast-fading agrarian economy. Beyond the odd flood, avalanche, and fire, not much of note ever happened down the centuries in Orelle. Someone once wrote - and I've repeated - that Orelle is famous for its carved choir stalls. Comment? Totally untrue. The existence of two rival, but now defunct, musical societies is about as choral as it's ever got around here. There was once a barrel-making business, but these days the only carving is done on the pistes that begin a 15-minute gondola ride above the village.
The one ski school is every bit as special as I've come to expect of each new discovery in this enchanted valley this week. Maurienne Hors Piste is run by Xavier Carroz, who spent eight years powering through the powder as a member of the Head freeride team. You've seen his picture countless times. The Maurienne is recognized as being home to some of the most glorious and most demanding off-piste opportunities in France. His team of five supremely qualified mountain guides guarantee to find you the best powder in the valley. I've made a date to return and explore some of this with Xavier. But with the ridiculous double-figure temperature and avalanche risk pushing upwards from 3/5, along with the tragedy in Val still uppermost in my mind, it makes sense stay on the groomed stuff.
As I swiftly discover, Xavier does do pistes when he has to - he even teaches from beginner upwards. However, when in the company of competent skiers he only does them flat out. Even Vanessa, my other companion for the day, is stretched to keep him in sight - and she's a mountain girl, born and raised in Valmorel. On the chair-lift, I gaze up at the rugged peaks of the Maurienne while Xavier gives a ceaseless running commentary of the joys of the myriad off-piste descents that we should be enjoying today, but are not.
After what feels like the first 100 high-speed kilometers, our legs get a rest over a relaxed lunch in Val Thorens at La Fruitière - sister restaurant to the one in Val d'Isère. For a guy like me who's hooked on the Maurienne, the number of people skiing over in the TV is all a bit overwhelming - along with the prices. (pix of val Thorens lift queue) My spag bol is 17 euros. Down at the friendly Chalet Chinal Donat above Orelle it's 9.50 euros. Local sausages and polenta cost 19 euros. The previous day In Valloire I paid 11 euros. High time to get back over 'my' side of the mountain and down into the Maurienne.
To return to Orelle we have to download by gondola. Despite the warning sign stating that 'this cable-car does not go to Val Thorens,' Val Thorens-based skiers have been known to board it at the end of the day. The taxi ride home takes more than two hours. As I'm about to get into the gondola, the local avalanche dog bounds aboard in front of me and snuggles down at my feet for the 15-minute ride. A largish avalanche had just triggered naturally off to the side the piste and Salut - that's his name - has been to take a look with his pisteur master. But mercifully no skiers were in the area. Salut, Orelle. I'm coming back here.
Fresh fish and accordions in Val Cenis - 13/1/2011 08:33by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Our roving editor Peter Hardy is at large in the Maurienne Valley this week. Yesterday it was Val Cenis, January 12, 2011.
"We dined at Lanslebourg," wrote Michel de Montaigne. "Everywhere can be found much trout and excellent new and old wines." Not much and a lot have changed since France's foremost Renaissance philosopher popped over the Col de Cenis into this robust ski village in the Maurienne Valley and promptly tucked into what was clearly a splendid fish meal in the local auberge. True, Michel doesn't mention the spanking new six-seater Ramasse chair, or even the Turra six-pack that starts from the same spot, spanning the forest to the wide open slopes above quaint little Termignon.
But hell, it was 1581 and modern skiing was rather more than three centuries short of being discovered. However, Michel was right about the trout. Opposite the lifts in the two-star Hotel Vieille Poste they serve it appropriately with pommes à l'ancienne. Down the main street at the Hotel Do Ré, welcoming hosts Renée and Dodo (no the name's not about Julie Andrews after all) offer succulent truite à la fermière or aux amandes for just 15 uros. I'll bet that in Michel's money it cost just about the same. Fresh produce at extraordinarily low prices is a delightful daily feature of my sojourn around the slopes of the Maurienne Valley. Everywhere you look there's a little shop selling local cheeses, sausages, and amazing honey.
This is the rural France of my dreams - one that previously I felt had largely disappeared. Yes, you really can find the kind of quaint family-run restaurant like Le Sabot de Venus where recipes passed down from generation to generation originally put France on the culinary map of the world...oh, and it's got fabulous skiing, too. Val Cenis, which now formerly calls itself Val Cenis Vanoise, is one of the valleys most important resorts. It's got 125km of piste above and below the tree-line, served by 26 lifts. Cedric, my guide, took me on a lightening tour of most of it. Lightening, it was. Cedric only has one speed. He used to run Prestige Ski in Courchevel, a school that caters for the resort's wealthiest clientele including Russians with bottomless purses, and charged 800 euros a day. Here that would probably buy you a ski school. Anyway, I managed to hang on to his coat tails as we tore around wonderfully deserted pistes.
But for that, of course, you have to pay a price: during the main winter months sunshine on-piste is in limited supply and temperatures can be consequently low. March is the best month to visit. By then the sun rises sufficiently high in the sky to bring a bit of warmth to the proceedings.
There's no town of Val Cenis as such. The resort is made up of the villages of Lanslebourg, Lanslevillard, and the hamlet of Le Haut that climb up towards Bonneval at the end of the valley. The ski area is also linked from Lanslebourg to charming Termignon further down the valley. Peak Retreats features the simple but good-value apartments, Les Balcons de la Vanoise, on the edge of the slopes here. Termignon is hosting the country's top accordion festival next week. No doubt berets and even bicycles festooned with onions will be in abundance. This is real France - you get the picture?
Lanslevillard has purpose-built apartment blocks and therefore the most beds and outstanding nursery slopes served by a new six-seater chair-lift with child-safe seats and a bar that closes and opens automatically. It's a great area for complete beginners. By the end of their first week they should be able to manage the 11km Escargots green run and finish their holiday on an enormous note of achievement. But this is a resort that will satisfy every level of skier. I particularly enjoyed the mile upon mile of open high-speed cruising above the tree line. There are also a handful of stiff blacks as well as boundless high altitude off-piste.
When snow conditions are uncertain - as they are in a relatively dry winter such as this - Val Cenis is a great place in which to base yourself. The unwelcome spring-like conditions forecast across the Alps for this weekend will have little impact on the fun we're having here. More snow is needed in France at the moment. But as Montaigne famously wrote: "Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do." Cinderella meets Alice in Wonderland - 11/1/2011 20:25by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Our roving editor Peter Hardy is at large in the Maurienne Valley this week. Today it's Aussois, January 11, 2011.
I feel a bit like Cinderella around here. This afternoon I was just cruising down the last run of the day to Lanslebourg - that's part of Val Cenis - when Boiiiing! A couple of teaspoon-sized snowflakes hit my goggles. By the time I got to the car park, we were into an authentic impression of me doing a midnight runner from the Prince's palazzo. By the time I got my boots off and was in the driving seat I heard another midnight Boiiiing! I headed home to La Norma, my base for the week, just as fast as I dared on my rental car's summer tyres. Yes, you heard that right...summer tyres. Unbelievably at Chambery Airport, Gateway the Alps, none of the usual suspects including Alamo/Europcar offer winter tyres on their cars. You can request them, but they say they can't promise to deliver. Actually, they can't deliver at all. Why not say so in the first place?
Advertisement "Don't worry, I can give you a set of chains," said the smiling guy behind the desk. Anyway, it's raining outside - not snowing!" Don't worry? I'll bet he's never tried to fit chains on a mountain road in the dark in a blizzard. Rain in Chambery, you clot, means snow in the Maurienne Valley. Triple Boiiiing! The back of my Citroen Compact Something-Or-Other is playing pendulum on every serpentine upward bend during the last couples of kilometres. But I make it - and skid entirely out of control - into my parking space. I like pumpkins and even white mice. I just hate bl**dy chains. Not that I'm complaining, mind. If the snow carries on like this, we'll have a fresh half a metre overnight. If I'm to be in Valloire for breakfast, it's going to be steel links at dawn. "A false spring is on the way," warns my obviously jealous, albeit expert, snow-forecasting colleague back home by phone, "you'll be wearing shorts by the weekend."
In your dreams, son. The Maurienne can do no wrong in my eyes and quite clearly some kind of Papal dispensation with a direct line on high allows it to have it's own micro-climate. Not perfect snow conditions where you are? Sorry, but here pistes are nothing short of outstanding... oh, and it was -10C this afternoon, so don't talk to me about 'spring'! So far this week, I've visited a cluster of different resorts scattered along the mighty Maurienne Valley. I even tried to get to pretty little Bonneval-sur-Arc this afternoon, but I abandoned my attempt -because of the amount of snow on the road. You can ski off-piste with a guide to Bonneval from Val d'Isère. It's an amazing powder run. But, as I can vouch today from by car in the Maurienne, it's best to budget for the 120 euros helicopter ride back to Val.
Aussois has long been a village that I've rated - not least because it has what I consider to be the lowest-cost real skiing in the whole of Europe. By this I mean that you have to quantify the cost of your holiday and extras against the quality of the ski area. I could possibly find a lower price in Eastern Europe, but the skiing simply doesn't compare. British tour operator Peak Retreats specialises very successfully in little-known French resorts (the owner is a Frenchman) and it comes as no surprise that they feature La Norma and, of course, Aussois, in their portfolio of Maurienne Resorts. Le Flocons d'Argent apartment complex is on the edge of the piste in Aussois and has an indoor pool. For £399 in March you get a whole self-catering apartment for four to six people. Ski drive price includes FlexiPlus Eurotunnel. I mean, who can beat that?
It's an ancient village with a seventeenth-century church, perched on the sunny side of the valley. It's the kind of place where the beasts of the field live downstairs during the winter as they have done since the seventeenth century. There's even a communal village oven where everyone can bake their own when it's fired up on feast days and holidays. Frankly, January, February, and early March are the best months here. The local welcome is as warm as it gets. Tons of sunshine is also always welcome. But as winter moves to spring the snowpack doesn't necessarily agree. Like La Norma, what I genuinely didn't expect was a truly serious area for high intermediate and advanced skiers. Yes, it's great for families. But it's wonderful to find resorts - and I appear this week to be finding them on a daily basis - that suit everyone. As a strong skier, you can come here with beginner/low intermediate kids, have a great family holiday at extraordinarily low cost - and sneak off for a burn down a truly tough piste or a full day in the powder.
The scenic/animal bit is even more dramatic than I'd expected. Yes, Aussois is on the edge of the Vanoise National Park. In fact the ski boundary is 50m from the edge. "That's a white rabbit," said Benedite, my guide, pointing to tracks in the snow beneath the chair. I'm not at all sure about this. I mean, can you put your trust in a guide who's got no poles and is carrying an ABS backpack with 14kilos of safety stuff and you're not? Fortunately, I didn't fall and my guide proved not to be Alice, but a very charming pisteuse who had clearly spent so long driving a bloodwagon all a day and chucking sticks of dynamite at dawn that she didn't need any other sticks at all. The big surprise was how extensive was the ski area. Statistics say 55km, but that's a big understatement. A couple of chair-lifts takes you up from 1550m to 2750 and some extraordinary views of the valley in front and the cliff faces of the 3139m Pointe de Bellecôte behind.
There's tons of routine stuff that was made rather less routine by new snow. But the big fun is the top-to-bottom Les Balmes black. You can also ski off-piste from the top of the second chair all the way to Termignon, which is linked to Val Cenis. "It's difficult at the beginning, difficult in the middle, and difficult at the end," said my guide. Well, I like a straight talker. Is that with or without poles? If I come back to Aussois and certainly I aim to, maybe I'll give up them sticks, too. Coming next: Val Cenis.
Madness in the Maurienne - 10/1/2011 21:26by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Our roving editor Peter Hardy is at large in the Maurienne Valley this week. His first stop: La Norma, January 10, 2011.
I've fallen in love. I've only been here 24 hours and I've tumbled head over heels - fortunately not literally - for enchanting La Norma and sunny Aussois, her more experienced playmate across the valley. My heart's going bumpety-bump and I've got a whole batch of butterflies hatching in my stomach. I want to live here, a concept that is not as completely barmy as it seems because you can buy a cool three-room apartment in the region for £60,000. Indeed, if you have the necessary, you can buy a massive chalet with a rental flat underneath for £650,000. In Val d'Isère Put a 4 in front of that figure. In Courchevel, make it a 6. This is real rural France with great food, welcoming locals, low prices, and reliable snow.
What, you may well ask, is he talking about? OK. La Norma is not, in this instance, the long-suffering wife of former British Prime Minister John Major, but an intriguing purpose-built resort in the French Maurienne Valley. Very few people in Britain have ever heard of it and the location of Aussois on any world ski map would test the best. Yet both, along with the other ski villages of the Maurienne are incredibly easy to reach. If you've bashed pistes in Val Thorens or in Val d'Isère you've already skied unwittingly within a couple of miles of them - as the alpine chough flies. The Maurienne is the neighbouring valley to the Tarentaise which houses Moûtiers, Bourg-St-Maurice, The Trois Vallées, a host of other big name resorts along with much the largest slice of the British seasonal skiing cake each winter.
Advertisement Train travel is sweet and eco. The TGV from Paris takes four hours and stops in the valley town of Modane, which is just a 10-minute taxi ride away. The biggest airport hub is Geneva, but those in the know fly to Chambery which is just a 90-minute drive from La Norma. Well, it should be. On Sunday I flew from Gatwick to Chambery with Snowjet, a long-established low-cost ski airline which I'd never before tried. Actually, I'm not sure I want to tell anyone about this. I think it's a winner. £140 return is a positive bargain these days, but service is almost as important as price. On arrival at Gatwick the queue for Ryanair was horrendous. But neighbouring Titan Airways which owns Snowjet took just three minutes to check me in. Snowjet couldn't have been more professional with sensibly priced in-flight drinks and snacks. The other end was, of course, quite another matter. Russian Christmas Day, in case you have forgotten, was on Friday, January 7. Chambery airport was so overwhelmed by hungover homeward-bound Russians that we had to wait on the plane before joining the Moscovite rush hour in the arrivals lounge. And it was pouring with rain, a downpour so monsoonly insistent that drivers were pulling over on the autoroute. But raindrops falling on your head at valley level are mostly a skier's dream - unless you happened to have been in France last week when it was wet at 3000m and above! By morning La Norma had 30 fresh cm on top and even a welcome dusting at 1350m resort level.
"Meet me in Le Grenier, the village bakery, for breakfast," emailed Veronick, my guide, "La Norma is small - you won't have any trouble finding it!" She was right. La Norma is more reminiscent of a small Canadian resort rather then a French purpose-built station de ski. Given that it's 40 years old, it blends remarkably well into the dramatic scenery of the Maurienne.
No big barrack-like concrete blocks here but mainly wood-clad apartment buildings and a smattering of chalets clustered around a front de neige with a small selection of shops, restaurants, and bars. It's traffic free and extremely child-friendly, with a crèche that takes children from three months and a good nursery slope. A gondola and a chair provide mountain access to a 65km ski area that is full of surprises. La Norma calls itself La Station Cosy. While I'm not quite sure what this anglo-style affront to the French language really means, it probably implies that this is the no-fuss and intimate family resort that it is. However, this fails to tell me that the skiing here is also, for anyone who wants it, full on.
Within 20 minutes of leaving breakfast, Veronick was poised on the lip of a stomach-churning couloir of Chamonix pedigree at 2750m called ... er ... Le Couloir... that was blanketed in 30cm of overnight snow. Only an avalanche warning of 3/5 pulled us back from the lip. We settled instead for a much less vertiginous west-facing bowl that had been both Gazex-ed and bombed by the ski patrol. For a family resort, this was phenomenal skiing with tons of off-piste down into the treeline. On the north-facing side of the ski area, the Col de Pelouse offers more challenges before descending to the aptly-named Plateau de la Repose. It has lots of blues and the mighty green Ste Anne that winds its way across the full width of the mountain and all the way down to the resort. If you can complete that at the end of your first week on snow, you'll be hooked for life.
Perhaps the second biggest surprise of all is the absence of other skiers - not just this week but, I am assured, all season. Queues don't exist - not even at New Year. The area can cope with at least 7,000 per day but there's half that number of beds and many of them are privately owned and not available for rental. So what the biggest surprise? The prices. For anyone who normally skis over the hill in the Tarentaise these come as a welcoming shock. Imagine a world where a pizza for lunch in a French ski resort cost 10 euros, a fondue 15 euros and you can wash it down with 0.50lt pitcher of decent wine for 5.50 euros or a beer for 4 euros.
In the supermarket prices are the same as in any valley town - with no mark-up for altitude. Try buying a bottle of plonk for 3 euros or even a good bottle of Bordeaux for 7 euros over the hill in the Tarentaise! Oh, and a six-day lift pass is 127 euros. Some 90% of La Norma's visitors are French, attracted by both the prices and the uncommercial ambience of the place. A smattering of Dutch and Belgians add international appeal but I didn't hear English spoken anywhere today. Mostly I didn't hear any language spoken because I was alone with a guide in the wilds of unspoilt Maurienne. I like that. Actually, I just love that.
Sun, snow and sadness - 29/12/2010 17:01by Peter Hardy, blogger at large After Christmas in Val d'Isère, editor Peter Hardy points his borrowed BMW X3 towards Normandy and Hampshire.
Christmas Eve in Val Advertisement It's been a very special Christmas in Val, tinged with tragedy on Boxing Day. It was our 14th consecutive family trip there, a fact that must say something about Val or us - or both. Never have I seen the resort or the mountain look in such good shape, with 60cm of snow falling during the course of the week. Getting there via Portsmouth-Caen with Brittany Ferries at the wheel of the new BMW X3 proved a doddle, despite some of the most challenging driving conditions I've ever experienced. Boutique chalet operator Fish & Pips, new to Val this year, did us proud. What separates them from most of their 50-strong pack is the quality of their cuisine coupled with a willingness to go the extra mile in terms of service. Thumbs up from me. The fresh snow and bitterly cold temperatures produced some superb skiing conditions both on and off piste. But when we arrived at a small party given by locals on Boxing Day night we were greeted by long faces. A British couple, skiing off-piste with enormously experienced Canadian ski guide, Wayne Watson of Alpine Experience, were caught in an avalanche. Chrissy Robinson managed to pull the lever on her ABS. Her 67-year-old husband David did not, and was buried.
Off-piste guide, Wayne Watson Wayne and a third client found him with their transceivers within 30 minutes. He was airlifted to hospital in Grenoble, but later died. Wayne has taught off-piste skiing for 30 years. What was immediately clear is that he followed all the rules and didn't take any unnecessary risks. His fellow guides all agree that he did nothing wrong. But just sometimes the mountain breaks those rules. The avalanche spontaneously released well above the party of skiers on the Combe du Signal at Le Fornet. As another of Wayne's clients put it: "We all know the risks, but we hope it will never happen. Sometimes it does and it's now more to do with how we cope rather than dwelling on the event."
Ready to depart On that reflective note it was time to head for home. There's no doubt that the new BMW X3 is a great car on snow. After half an hour of digging it out of the car park, it started immediately. It's just a pity that the same summit level of German precision engineering did not apparently go into the construction of the ski box. Guys, did no one actually test it in action? In -15C the little key stuck firmly in the lock and no amount of de-icer or even a lighted match would free the mechanism. Fortunately it jammed open. Fortunately, I managed to borrow a couple of bike retaining straps. If the car has an electronic lock, why can't the ski box? I don't know who actually made it - possibly not BMW themselves - but it looked to me, as I cussed and swore gloveless in the cold for an hour, that this sort of frail mechanical locking mechanism hadn't advanced in 20 years.
Goodbye Val But the car itself, I have to say, was a dream. With Max my co-driver we cruised effortlessly the 1000km to the Normandy coast in an easy nine-and-a-half hours. What's more, we had used just one tank of diesel along the way. The outside temperature never rose above freezing. We had snow on the bonnet when we left, and still some left when we reached Caen!
Caen, and still carrying the snow with us 'Slightly choppy' was the mid-Channel forecast as we boarded Brittany Ferries' Mont St Michel. But that didn't worry me at all. After a quick steak and a well-earned bottle of Bordeaux we crashed out in cabin for a full seven hours. By morning, the snow was gone from bonnet. Oh, and that blasted key turned in the lock. I have to say that Portsmouth Gare Maritime in the pre-dawn light of a foggy and drizzly tail end day of the year is not as inviting as Val d'Isère. But hell, Hampshire's home isn't it?
Portsmouth at 6.30am Click on the link for our Val d'Isère resort report. Christmas in Val d'Isère - 24/12/2010 20:50by Peter Hardy, blogger at large
Ho, Ho! What do you want for Christmas in Val d'Isère?
30cm of fine, light powder...how about half a metre - and counting! Left to right: Colin Tanner, Barney Hardy and Max Hardy.
Crikey, we're drowning in the stuff! Christmas Eve turned out to be the best day of winter so far...heli-ski conditions without the need for a helicopter.
Here's Colin Tanner of TDC Ski powering his way through the trees just off the Matisse piste. TDC is ten years old this winter and has firmly established itself as one of the most important ski schools in Val. Photo by Max Hardy.
Oh look ! Here's my son Barney doing just the same.
Look at my BMW X3 enjoying the powder outside Fish & Pips Chalet Santons Solaise.
Val d'Isère this evening Way to go...BMW (Bl**dy Marvellous Wagon) - 21/12/2010 08:28by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Peter Hardy continues his snowbound Christmas journey to the Alps. When Captain Oates famously stepped outside his tent in Antarctica saying: "I may be some time", weather conditions could not have been much worse than those that greeted us in Caen. It was certainly going to take that - and some - to reach Val d'Isère as we drove up the ramp of Brittany Ferries good ship Normandie before dawn on Sunday.
Another car en route Our fellow drivers slithered up the iced-up exit ramp, took one look at the weather and then another at each other in shared disbelief. Driving on the right across Europe is one thing, driving in the teeth of the howling blizzard sweeping in from the Atlantic would be quite another. Six inches of perfect powder had already settled on the motorway and the depth seemed certain to double before breakfast. Not a snowplough in site. Time to get the hell out of here - if we can. And we can. Thanks to our 4x4 completely winterized BMW X3 we quickly discover that we go anywhere we damn well please! While other drivers huddled in the terminal car park contemplating whether it was really possible to drive with snow chains at 20MPH all the way from Channel to Chalet, I put my foot down. The manufacturers claimed, somewhat arrogantly I thought, that this is the best car for driving on snow that has ever been built. After 10 hours behind the wheel in the most severe driving conditions imaginable, I now know that the claim is entirely justified.
As we left the port I smoothly shifted through the six gears and eased my way onto the N814 and the A13. Rather too smoothly, as it turned out. I must be the only driver in Northern Europe to have been flashed by a speed camera that morning. Let's hope the blizzard blocked the licence plate. Driving to Val via Portsmouth and Caen instead of Folkestone or Dover and Calais sounds like a long way round. In fact, in mileage terms (if you don't count the sea crossing) the distance is shorter - 654 against 687. What I hadn't banked on was Normandy being hit by what someone said was the heaviest snowfall in Northern France in two generations. But no worries. While other cars crawled at a snail's pace in the slow lane, we took the A3 off-piste in the unploughed fast lane. Yes, we did have bleepers, probes, and a couple of foldaway shovels in the boot. Incredibly, in up to six inches of fresh snow, it was possible to maintain a speed of 50-60MPH and to feel absolutely secure of traction on all four wheels. Touching the brake in such conditions on summer tyres and without 4x4 would have been suicidal. But with the A3 you could come to halt with hardly a trace of a skid in not much more than normal stopping distance. The only other guy to try and take us on for a five-mile stretch south of Paris was the driver of a Land Rover. He must have used every trick in the rally-driving handbook to valiantly cling to our tail during a tricky bit between motorways. But once we hit the next toll road we left him for dust...I mean, snow. Sorry mate, you were completely outclassed.
At a service station somewhere off the autoroute in Burgundy South of Paris, when joined the A6 Autoroute du Soleil, the blizzard ceased. We passed through snow-covered countryside all the way to our destination, but the rest of the journey was on dry roads until the final climb up from Bourg-St-Maurice to Val. We cruised along comfortably on the edge of the 80mph speed limit. We averaged a pretty cool 31.6mpg and we only needed one French fuel stop for a tank load of diesel -at £1.16 a litre it's cheaper than at home. We cruised up the hill to Val from Bourg-St-Maurice less than 11 hours after leaving Caen, and only an hour behind schedule because of the weather. I doubt there's a driver, plane, or passenger to the Alps who could equal our record last weekend. Bl**dy Marvellous Wagon, that X3. Driving with the X Factor - 20/12/2010 08:51by Peter Hardy, blogger at large
Leaving home Sometimes, guys, you just get lucky. I feel, rather smugly, like I've just won a triple rollover and I can't wipe the grin off my face. I suspect I'm the only person around today who's actually revelling in the worst driving conditions across Europe for 25 years. More snow and ice? Bring it on. Forget snowbound airports and head to Portsmouth. Thanks to the partnership of Brittany Ferries and BMW, I'm not sitting stranded at an airport wondering where I'm going to spend Christmas, I'm in Val d'Isere spot on schedule this morning...and waiting for the first lift. "We think that the new X3 is best car ever built for driving on snow," said The Man From BMW back in October, "Take it out to the Alps for Christmas and test it yourself." Outside my window the sun was shining on the green fields of Hampshire. "When do you want it delivered? Weekend of December 18?" Of course, neither of us on that balmy autumnal day had any idea what Mother - hell, bitter old Father - Nature was going to chuck at us in England this weekend, let alone the Alps. The car arrived on Friday afternoon. Saturday, 08.00 When I awoke and looked out of the window the lawn was buried in a blanket of snow. I knew from experience that our narrow, steep lane would be impassable. But wait...is that the Batmobile or what parked in the driveway? I must confess that before I got behind the wheel, I knew a bit about what was in store. Last month I flew to Austria to try out the X3 on the glacier at Sölden. But never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would be putting it through its paces in heavy snow at home. 11.00 The mid-morning drive into Newbury for a last minute bit of festive shopping was a doddle to the point of actually being a bit embarrassing. While other drivers slipped and slithered at walking pace, I cruised along at 50mph with the same secure traction as on a dry road. The secret to this lies not just in the permanent 4x4 drive and variable suspension, but in winter tyres. BMW even supplied me with chains. In France as in most alpine countries it is the law to carry them in winter. But I cannot imagine a situation where fitting them would ever be necessary. If you're the fist-shaking owner of the blue Vauxhall got stuck on the hill near Highclere on the A343, my apologies for drenching you in snow as I effortlessly powered by...couldn't help myself. 22.00
The 45-minute drive to Portsmouth was effortless. My ski-racing son Max took the wheel and rolled us onto Brittany Ferry's Normandie for the overnight crossing to Caen. A couple of fellow passengers who'd driven from Durham looked exhausted. They said they'd driven south in conditions that were 'nothing short of appalling'. Fortunately, what they didn't know as we made our way to our respective cabins was that by dawn the word would have been redefined.
Loading the car onto the ferry Sunday, 05.45 The ferry is a great way to travel - provided that you get your head down as soon as you get on board. Our twin berth en-suite cabin had sea views and a small sitting area with TV. Making use of the latter would have been a mistake: Reveille at 05.45 is actually 04.45. We've an hour to breakfast and rejoin the X3 as the bow doors open bang on time at 06.45.
In the ferry cabin What greets us is...a howling blizzard. The driver of the Ford Transit van just ahead of us got stuck on the Normandie's iced-up exit ramp. I've spent much of my long life driving on snow, but what lies ahead are the most challenging conditions I have ever experienced. Read tomorrow about Peter's epic journey across Northern France. This man can change the way you ski - 19/12/2010 23:24by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog
This is J. Scott Thomas - our guide and instructor for the day in Vail. He said two things which made a big difference to my skiing today. 1. Let your subconscious do the work. Instead, you need to look up, and look beyond the immediate moment. Let your subconscious, working in conjunction with your peripheral vision, deal with what lies between the part of the slope you're focusing on - well ahead of the next turn - and the tips of the skis beneath you. Scott points out that as soon as skiers get uncomfortable in more difficult terrain, they start to look down. "How are you going to be able to deal with what's coming up if you're looking at the tips of your skis?" he asks. "You should be planning your third turn, not the one that's just coming up."
2. Let your inside leg do the steering. This meant evening up my weight distribution and steering with my inside rather than my outside ski. At the same time, I should move my upper body through an arc which was centred over my inside, rather than my outside, hip. If I did this, he said, the outside ski would pretty much take care of itself, coming round in a nice, smooth arc, while my inside ski would stay controlled and in contact with the snow throughout the turn. As much as the specifics of what he said, it was the way he said it that really made a difference. I'm one of those skiers who hates being told what to do all the time. I actually rather enjoy the French style of teaching - which so many Brits find exasperating - in which instructors show you how to ski and invite you to copy them, rather than stopping to explain what's going on. Scott seemed to recognise this almost instantly and laid off the heavy pep talks. He let me ski, let me settle into the day, and waited until the moment when I seemed to be skiing at my best. Then, when I was at my most relaxed and receptive, he'd make a comment of laser-like accuracy, which seemed perfectly judged to the moment and the terrain. It worked like a little nudge to my thought processes, and then he'd step backwards and let me take it from there.
This isn't the only way he teaches: the whole day, he kept up a more detailed and continuous conversation with the other member of our little two-man group. It's this ability to tailor the style of tuition to the individual, as well as the points he actually made which really marks him out. The results were extraordinary. On a day of flat light and heavy snow he had me skiing more accurately and fluently than I've ever done. J.Scott Thomas. Try to book him if you're ever in Vail. I can't recommend him highly enough. Here he is, on one of our warm-up runs at the start of the day. Note how deep the powder was, even then. And it snowed for the whole day... Click on this link to read our full Vail resort report. Oh, Vail... - 17/12/2010 23:08by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog So in yesterday's blog I was saying how sorry I was to be leaving Breckenridge. Vail must have heard, and decided it wasn't going to be upstaged. I mean, just look at the corduroy this morning.
No really, look - closer...
See how soft and dry and frosted the snow crystals are? There's no grippier ski surface known to man than this stuff, and for the first hour after the lifts opened, this stuff was everywhere. You couldn't help but ski it at Mach2. When the snowstorm blew through this part of the Colorado a couple of days ago, Vail got about 9 inches of powder (a little more than Breckenridge). Clearly the time to ski it was yesterday. But this morning at least there were still patches of soft snow about.
By 11am, however, the bright sun had started to make the Vail's celebrated Back Bowls a little heavy so at that point my guide, Pat Barrett (pictured above), took me over to Blue Sky Basin, at the far end of the ski area (check it out on Vail's trail map).
There are actually two basins here, separated by a ridge line, and it's the favourite area of many locals. It's not hard to see why. Fewer skiers and boarders make it out this far from town, there's lots of variety, and the slopes are mostly north-facing, so the snow stays good and cold for longer than the Back Bowls. It was pretty heavily-skied by the time we got there, but here the crud was light and bouncy, and lots of fun. Especially for people with legs as strong as Pat's... The curtain came down on the day on the long, wide pistes above Vail itself. As a ski area, Vail does two things really well. The first is its not-too-steep, not-too-scary off-piste terrain, which is all avalanche controlled, and lift-serviced, so you can ski it endlessy, without a guide, until your thighs explode. The second are its 'groomers' - the groomed pistes (called trails in these parts) which roll down the north-facing slopes immediately above town. For an advanced, but not expert, skier the combination of the two can make you feel pretty good about life. You challenge yourself in the powder, crud or bumps in the morning, and then after lunch you go back to the groomers, and let fly... Click on this link to read our full Vail resort report. About as good as it gets - 16/12/2010 23:05by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog
Breckenridge was rubbing its eyes in disbelief this morning. There was supposed to be more snow - a continuation of the storm that engulfed the resort yesterday. Instead, we had clear skies and nearly 20cm of powder on the slopes... Most of the footage, above, was filmed on the south side of Peak 8, on runs such as Southern Cross. But actually the snow here was nowhere near as good as the stuff we found higher up on Peak 8, in Imperial Bowl. Up there, the wind had piled it into a thick, creamy layer, and the descent was absolutely gorgeous. I wish I could show you: but the sunlight was so clear and bright at that point that the video camera couldn't cope.
The corduroy this morning was close to perfect, too. But we didn't have much time for that. We didn't have much time for the Winter Dew Tour, either. The organisers of this high-profile freestyle competition must have breathed a huge sigh of relief this morning, when they saw it was going to be clear; and doubtless there was plenty of eye-popping action in the half-pipe as the day progressed. But what are you going to do on a bluebird powder day in Colorado? Stand about watching other people having fun: or get stuck in yourself? We voted with our feet, and starting queueing for a chairlift at 8.10am - half an hour before the lifts opened. We stopped after about three hours, by which time all the most obvious off-piste runs had been thoroughly trashed. It was the best morning's skiing I've had for two years. I've now moved on from Breckenridge, to Vail, which is 40 minutes' drive northwest, on the I-70. But I'm sorry to have left Breckenridge behind. It's one of my favourite ski towns. As I said in yesterday's blog, there's a rich mix of terrain here, and the people are fantastic. Yes, it's a resort, but it hasn't been swamped by second homes, and not everyone who lives there works in winter sports. It feels grounded as a result. Oh yes, and the stock of ski-in, ski-out accommodation has improved dramatically over the last couple of years, too. I stayed in a vast one-bedroom apartment in One Ski Hill Place, which has just been built. There's a hefty price tag attached, and you wouldn't want to try walking from there into the centre of town on a cold, snowy night. But there's no doubt it's the best address in Breckenridge now: I'd go back there like a shot - especially if I could be sure of having another morning like this one! Click on this link to read our full Breckenridge resort report. Breckenridge: a day of whoops - 16/12/2010 12:36by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog The snow came yesterday morning. It started light and got heavier and heavier as the day progressed, driven by strong winds. By the time the lifts shut it was pretty wild and white out there. I was lucky, I joined forces with with Teague Holmes of the Breckenridge ski school and our own Breckenridge snow blogger, Josh Cooley, and we got out into some of the higher bowls on Peaks 7 and 8, before the storm really took hold. The visibility wasn't bad, and the crud left over from the most recent dump was soft and forgiving. In places, there was 10cm of wind-blown powder on top too. This section of the Breckenridge trail map covers most of our runs.
The best of them was off the top of the T-Bar (lower left-hand side of the map); a run called Forget-Me-Knot, which split off into the Boundary Chutes. Steep, soft and with just enough definition from the trees. No wonder we were whooping! Well, Josh and Teague were whooping. I'm a Brit. We don't whoop... There's more steep stuff over on Peak 10 - see map below.
The more you get stuck into terrain like this, the more Breckenridge's reputation as a resort of easy pistes/trails seems wide of the mark. Yes, there are plenty of fantastically wide and forgiving runs lower down: it's why I'm always recommending Breck as a place for early intermediates who really need to get hold of their technique. But elsewhere there's lots for more advanced skiers and boarders to get stuck into. Add into that all of the resort's terrain parks - running from beginner level to world-class - and it makes for a really interesting mix. It's the kind of place you can experiment with all kinds of different skiing.
By the way, speaking of terrain parks, today is the start of the Breckenridge stage of the mighty Winter Dew Tour - a three-day event which will see the very best freestyle talent competing in the gargantuan Freeway Terrain Park and Olympic half-pipe. The features over which they'll be jumping are, in a word, terrifying and you couldn't but help feel sorry for the competitiors yesterday afternoon during training. How are you supposed to spot a landing on a 22ft half-pipe in the middle of a blizzard? It's not snowing at the moment - 6am local time - but there is more snow in the forecast. While the resort authorities are worrying about how they can run a competition if another storm socks in, the rest of us are delighted. There's 18cm of fresh snow on the mountain and only two hours to go until the lifts starting spinning. Whoop, whoop! Click on this link to read our full Breckenridge resort report. On today's menu in Breckenridge, Colorado - 14/12/2010 23:25by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Breakfast
Elevenses
Lunch
An afternoon snackClick on this link to read our full Breckenridge resort report. And don't forget to read Josh Cooley's Breckenridge blog. From the ridiculous to the sublime in Austria's Oetztal - 13/12/2010 18:53by Roger Bray news, editor
On piste in Sölden today. Today I skied my first serious powder of the season under a blue sky on the Hainbachjoch above Sölden. But little since my arrival had suggested such pleasure might be in store. Emerging after a mid-morning hot chocolate at nearby Hochgurgl I was greeted with an icy blast of such ferocity that I couldn't see my guide, ski school instructor Reinhard Gstrein, a few metres ahead. Despite the intermittently miserable visibility, however, snow conditions were excellent. Hochgurgl (at 2150m) and Obergurgl (1930m) are always good bets for pre-Christmas skiing and this winter conditions are better than average. "We've probably got 1.50m at the top and maybe 80cm at the bottom - which is more than usual", said Reinhard.
News ed braves the icy blast. The wind shut the link between the two centres so I was confined to Obergurgl's runs in the afternoon, finding the odd few metres of powder until it was time to warm up in the Edelweiss & Gurgl hotel - a particular favourite of mine, which is beautifully situated right next to the main access lifts. Then in was on to Sölden - cheese to Obergurgl's chalk. Obergurgl is compact. Its clientele includes several generations of the same British families. Sölden is strung out along the valley road. It's a party resort, drawing a younger crowd with nightspots such as Fire & Ice and Bier Himml (beer heaven). Harvey Gahl, senior manager with tour operator Crystal, says the firm will send around 5,000 customers to Obergurgl this season, but only around one tenth of that number to Sölden. "The main problem is that we can't get enough beds there", he says. Which is a pity, because if you turn a blind eye to the après-ski entertainment trumpeting Showgirls - calculated to appeal to the German market - the skiing here is superb. Around lunchtime today the sky began to clear. There were whoops of joy as skiers and boarders carved up the untouched powder above Giggijoch. Even after a reluctant lunch break - necessary in order to shake out the snow from two spectacular wipe outs - there was still a little left unspoiled. When the sun dipped after 3pm my freezing fingers were feeling the effects of temperatures around -8c, but there are times in the mountains when you just don't care.
Sölden's empty slopes. See our Resort Reports for information on Obergurgl and Sölden. Shivering and shovelling in St Anton - 11/12/2010 10:13by Peter Hardy, blogger at large
Scott Dunn staff shovelling snow at Chalet Artemis this morning. Brrrr it's cold and snowy here today - the thermometer's fallen to -16C up on the mountain and with wind chill that's a Jack Frost of -24C. Still, if the forecast is to be fully believed, that's positively Mediterranean in the context of what's in store for holidaymakers arriving this weekend. On the plus side they are greeted by half a metre of fresh powder adorning the town. The minus side is a big one: on Monday night the mercury is set to plunge to an Arctic -26C! Skiing? Me? Morning-only in the powder, lazy lunch in the newly rebuilt Rodler Alm and then a long chilled après-ski to live music in The Underground. St Anton's iconic nite-spot is relocated this winter to the charismatic Museum building. Back at Chalet Artemis, Scott Dunn staff are still shovelling. For further information on Chalet Artemis, contact Scott Dunn, and for more information on the resort go to our St Anton resort report.
Snowbound in St Anton - 10/12/2010 09:12by Peter Hardy, blogger at large
Statue of Artemis in falling snow last night I am, I think, in St Anton. This has got to be Happy Valley, but today there's more a grimace than a smile about the mountain. Indeed, with the wind chill factor at -19C in the teeth of a howling blizzard and visibility down to almost zero, this could well be a remake of Scott's trek to the South Pole. Oh well, look on the bright side - last week I skied in -29C on the Grande Motte in Tignes. Any snow? Yeah, tons of the stuff. But you have to feel it rather than see it. In truly challenging conditions such as this, lunch looms even larger than ever. No pilgrim of old crossing the Arlberg Pass was ever as happy to see the outline of the Hospiz Alm at St Christoph emerge from the whiteout.
Tiroler Gröstl at the Hospiz Alm One of the world's greatest mountain restaurants lived up to its reputation. A giant platter of Tiroler Gröstl - hash browns with bacon and fried eggs - along with a full cow's worth of spare ribs soon got us back on track. Best to go easy on the wine - if you've got the cash, it's easy to get carried away at the Hospiz Alm. The cellar, reached by a helter-skelter slide, houses one of the world's greatest and most expensive large bottle collections of Claret. When I say 'large bottle' I'm not kidding. A Melchior of Chateau Cheval Blanc 2000 holds 18 litres - 24 normal bottles. And when I say 'expensive' I'm also not kidding. Last year a German skier paid 47,000 euros for this one. Actually, it's been a pretty good buy. It's now worth 51,000 euros and he has yet to drink a drop of it.
One of the rooms of wine cellar under the Hospiz Alm We settle for a couple of rather more modest bottles. It's almost with relief that we discover the chair-lift has closed because of the weather and we have to travel by road back home to St Anton. Home this week is Chalet Artemis, Scott Dunn's contemporary Austrian flagship, which is refreshingly far removed from the Heidi chalet of old. It is a funky hexagonal box on four floors. On the terrace outside the sitting rooms is a seven-foot statue of the Ancient Greek goddess of both hills and virginity. Inside are six very individual bedrooms with gorgeous views, and there's a fabulous wellness area.
Dining table in Chalet Artemis For further information on Chalet Artemis, contact Scott Dunn, and for more information on the resort go to our St Anton resort report.
Left to right: Editor Peter Hardy, Andrew Dunn of Scott Dunn, Editor Felice Hardy - in St Anton yesterday. Testing weather conditions - 3/12/2010 18:25by Peter Hardy, blogger at large
I've done an amateur bit against the clock in my time. So racing at 40mph on a GS course on an Austrian glacier shouldn't have been too testing an experience - even in flat light and a temperature of 20C. Trouble was I wasn't on skis, but in a car. Admittedly it wasn't just any old car but the brand new BMW X3 which is billed as the ultimate hatchback on snow. The idea was to drive it out to Val d'Isere, crossing the Channel with Brittany Ferries to Normandy, and arriving in Val d'Isere for Christmas. That still is the idea - and later this month I'll be giving you my personal day-by-day account of my drive to the Alps. "But first you might benefit from a little tuition from our alpine driving experts on how to handle the X3 on snow," said the Man from BMW. Cheek of it, but he was most certainly right.
All of which is how I come to find myself running bollard gates on a flattish bit of mountainside up above a very snowy Sölden. The X3 unsurprisingly doesn't have race-prepared 88° edges. So it's quite remarkable to me that the winter tyres find enough purchase to stop the back swinging completely around and slapping the wall of snow on my left. I actually feel I'm in control and each consecutive lap time is just a little bit faster. Glancing to my left I can't help but I feel that Louise, my vastly more experienced petrol-head co-driver, does not share confidence. Did you know that 48 per cent of car accidents in the UK result from skidding? Judging from the palour of her complexion as I approached the chicane, Louise did. But the real challenge for the X3 on the glacier was off-piste. As we headed out away from the mountain road and on to the raw glacier itself it seemed sensible to let my co-rider take the reins. Up - or down slopes of 60°the car did a very passable imitation of a go-anywhere alpine military tank. Sölden is on the shortlist for where Hannibal crossed the Alps back in 218BC and fought his way to the gates to Rome. If he'd had the chance to swap his war elephants for a troop of X3s he'd have driven right up to the steps of the senate and taken control of the empire. Down the years I've driven scores of cars on snow. None of them handle as well as the new BMW. But there's a lot more to driving to the Alps for a family holiday than performance on or off road. Motorway cruising, fuel consumption, comfort, and Channel crossings all play their part. From December 19, Welove2ski be putting the X3 to the real ski test.
Opening weekend in Ischgl - 28/11/2010 08:49by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Sean Newsom shares good early-season snow with 15,000 other skiers and snowboarders in Ischgl, Austria.
How's this for opening-weekend snow? It was lying right down to the level of Zurich airport when we flew in on Friday - and we've seen nothing but white ever since. Over the main ski area at Ischgl there's a blanket of snow lying up to 60cm deep - with more on sheltered slopes where it's been deposited by the wind. Okay, so strong winds have scoured some of the pistes and left them icy. And on the two long runs back down into town, they're heavily reliant on man-made snow. But all in all, the on-piste skiing here wouldn't embarrass a resort in January. And we haven't even reached December yet...
Mind you, the 120km of pistes open yesterday got a hammering - because roughly 15,000 skiers and snowboarders have checked into the resort for opening weekend. The start of the season in Ischgl is a big deal amongst its overwhelmingly German fanbase, and the resort spends more than a million euros on its launch. The centrepiece of weekend is an open-air concert, which is free to anyone who has a one-day lift-pass. In recent years Katy Perry and Rihanna have both headlined. This winter, the choice of act was rather more idiosyncratic. Gossip - the band fronted by the supersized gay icon, Beth Ditto - played the Saturday night concert. Clearly, she's popular in these parts. The crowd was estimated at somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000, and it was spearheaded by an army of teenage girls for whom she's clearly a potent sumbol .
Those of us who are more interested in music than icons found the Gossip sound a bit muddy: Ditto has a great voice, and deserves a better showcase than these noodly, unfocused songs. But there was no denying the energy created by the event. The band were only on for about 60 minutes: but Ischgl's bars and nightclubs rocked for hours after they'd gone. The clubs were heaving until 4am. Now, a day later, it's snowing steadily, and the Welove2ski cloud and precipitation forecast suggests it will have cleared by late morning. Tomorrow could be interesting...
Click on this link to read our full Ischgl resort report. How to make Michelin-starred fondue - 23/10/2010 13:48by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Sean Newsom learns the secret at the 2010 Ski and Snowboard Show.
How do you stop a fondue from being heavy? Simple. You pump it full of carbon dioxide. Or rather, that's what you do if you're the father-and-son team of René and Maxime Meilleur, who cook together at La Bouitte, in St Marcel de Belleville. You may have heard of La Bouitte. It's the organic restaurant which everybody skis over to for lunch when they're holidaying in Méribel. Since 2008, it's had two Michelin stars. I say 'everybody', but actually, I mean those people who have the budget for a 69-199 euro lunch, and the foresight to book ahead: because René and Maxime's restaurant only has room for about 45 people. And even though it's not properly plugged into the Three Valleys system - you either ski there off-piste, or drop down to St Martin de Belleville and connect with a shuttle bus - it's full every day. No wonder they're busy. I met them this week on the Three Valleys stand at the London Ski and Snowboard Show - and boy, they know how to take a culinary cliché, and give it fresh legs. The fondue is a case in point. It starts just like an ordinary fondue: local Beaufort cheese, melted it into white vin de Savoie with a big slice of garlic. But then they sieve it, and decant it into a soda siphon - one of those old-school drinks dispensers with a cartridge of carbon dioxide in the nozzle. They pull the lever and - hey presto - out comes something miraculous: full of all the powerful flavours of a good fondue, but none of the weight. You feel like you could eat it for ever. Oh yes - and get this, neither René nor Maxime have had any formal training. René, the father, used to be a plongeur (a washer-upper) in a restaurant in the valley. In his spare time he noticed that off-piste skiers kept on showing up in St Marcel at around lunchtime, hungry, with nowhere to eat. So in 1976 he opened La Bouitte, serving traditional fondues and raclette. People kept coming back, and told their friends about it - and pretty soon La Bouitte was one of those 'secrets' everyone knows about. René started to experiment with his cooking, and never looked back. Then, 14 years ago, his son Maxime joined him. In 2003 they got their first Michelin star, which was followed by a second in 2008. They're now building a hotel, which will be open in December this year - featuring just eight rooms, and making extensive use of reclaimed timbers from Alpine barns. And when I say they're building it, I don't mean they're occasionally talking to the project manager over coffee. The week before they came to the Ski Show, they were laying tiles together on the roof...
Click here for our St Martin de Belleville report. Zermatt climbs to a new high - 22/8/2010 13:00by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Two of our editors have been exploring Zermatt out-of-season. Here's what they found there last week:
On high at the Treetops Fun Park - with one foot on the Matterhorn Peter: I didn't really intend to go skiing, I was all set for a summer hike. But when you wake in Zermatt to a glorious blue-sky August day and the Matterhorn's wearing her wedding dress. Well, you don't really have a choice, do you? "There's been 20cm overnight up on Plateau Rosa - on top of the 80cm we've had in the past week," Donald, my host from Mountain Exposure, calmly informs me over the croissants. That's it, then. A large group of Japanese tourists wearing shorts look on in bemusement as in full winter gear we clomp at speed for the Matterhorn Express. The delightful main street is crowded. Zermatt has a ten-month tourist season. It actually attracts more visitors in summer than it does in winter.
Zermatt's summer ski area I must confess that the glacier is not my favourite summer ski area - lack of gradient and inconvenience of access push it down the list below Hintertux, Tignes, Stubai, and Saas Fee. However the new link to the lift system at Furgg has hugely improved access. You climb into a gondola at resort level and change only at Trockener Steg for the final cable-car assault on the Klein Matterhorn. Zero degrees, fresh snow underfoot and a blue sky overhead - it looked and felt more like March than April! On a perfect day like this, there's a deliciously wicked quality to skiing in summer - at this time of year you just shouldn't be having so much fun! The snow's at its best from 10am to midday. But when we headed down again after a couple of full-on hours the quality was still remarkably good. However we had other fish to fry. Zermatt has some of the finest mountain restaurants in the world. On the way back we abandoned our skiers at Furi and hiked down to the ancient farming hamlet of Zum See for a glorious al fresco lunch cooked by Max and served by Greti. Octopus carpaccio followed by calves' liver Rösti washed down with a crisp sauvignon blanc and a delicate red from the Valais. Yes, as I was saying, Zermatt unquestionably has the best summer skiing in the world. Felice: Zermatt's sumptuous hotels are so smart and so Swiss they sometimes border on the clinical. Big money can buy you great comfort, but, with one or two lone exceptions, what Zermatt has always lacked is that delicious type of five-star chalet you can find in Courchevel, Val d'Isère and Verbier. So I was genuinely gobsmacked last week to find a British-run company - Mountain Exposure - with not just one but 30 uber-luxury chalets, both catered and uncatered. Their eclectic styles include cosy wooden apartments like Chalet Heidi, where I stayed for two nights. It's a sweet little self-catered chalet for six, set in a side street across the road from the church. It's perfect for a family, everything is clad in ancient wood and the living area has a wood-burning stove and a dining table made from an old plough.
Breakfast at The Heinz Julen Loft More dramatic is The Heinz Julen Loft, a confection of glass and concrete built by one of Switzerland's most celebrated and bizarre designers of the same name, who comes from Zermatt. It's perched on a cliff top. Reached by its own elevator built into the rock, it certainly is the most unusual chalet I've ever come across anywhere in the Alps...or anywhere else. Robbie Williams - a portrait by his friend Julen hangs on the wall - is just one of the many celebrities to have stayed here. The floor-to-ceiling windows are vast and, to let in even more light, the electrically-operated (weatherproof!) curtains are on the outside of the building and work at the click of a switch.
The Robbie Williams portrait that hangs in the chalet There's a giant illuminated glass dining table suspended from hooks on the ceiling - it's cranked down when needed. The floors and walls are unfinished concrete and the chairs are made from the sort of wood-and-metal boxes used by rock bands to transport musical instruments when on tour. The living area makes the perfect party space. Oh, and don't forget to bring your own sheet music - there's a grand piano for playing Angels.
The Zermatt Lodge But my favourite chalet is The Zermatt Lodge, a fabulous penthouse apartment. It has a gorgeous sitting room with a central suspended fireplace surrounded by cowskin stools. There's a sauna and an outdoor hot tub on the terrace. The five bedrooms are huge, in fact there's so much space you really can spread out. But what unites all the chalets is the wonderful food - rather better than in any five-star hotel here. Staff this winter include the head chef from a Michelin-starred restaurant who's love of skiing has led him to take a career break. All that light and space turned out to be the theme of my trip - with the highlight a morning's paragliding. I have to say that DIY flying is not my usual sort of thing, Even when the instructor up at Rothorn assured me that a child of two had flown in tandem, I was almost sick with fear before setting off. I was given a windproof one-piece suit, helmet and fleece gloves to wear and was then harnessed in and firmly strapped to my guide, Phil from Alpine Adventures Zermatt. Together we ran in the ankle-deep summer snow to the edge of the slope and out into the blue sky.
Felice and Phil flying above Zermatt. Photo: Alpine Adventures Zermatt We drifted down to the valley with the Matterhorn as backdrop and the town spread out below us. It was blissful and relaxing, even setting down at the end of the flight was smoother than I'd ever have believed possible. Sick? I felt elated - and hungry. Fortunately Zermatt always provides the answer. A 30-minute hike down from Sunnegga took us to the ancient gastro-hamlet of Findeln and the culinary delights of Chez Vrony. The farmhouse was the family home of Heinz Julen - Vrony is his sister. The house may now be one of Zermatt's most acclaimed mountain restaurants, but Vrony still supervises the cheese-making in the little cellar dug into the mountainside.
Vrony with Donald Scott of Mountain Exposure, in the restaurant's wine (and cheese) cellar For me it was a toss-up between the poached duck liver with Rösti or Vrony's exquisite burger from beef grazing outside the door. Zermatt's full of such deliciously difficult decisions: Where to stay, where to eat, and then there's The Treetops Fun Park if you want something really different. Mountain Exposure seems rather cleverly, to understand that. For further information see our Zermatt Resort Review. Let battle commence... - 11/5/2010 15:26by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Competition is hotting up between Britain's biggest ski companies. Welove2ski's editors reflect on what it means for their customers.
Seen the news today? One of Britain's biggest ski companies has bought two much smaller rivals - and in the process, it's been taken over by the management team of its new purchases. (Read the story here.) This fact alone makes it a fascinating story. But what really matters is the fact that Andy Perrin, the new CEO of Hotelplan UK, and Peter Dyer, the new Vice-Chairman, were the team that built Crystal, Britain's biggest ski travel brand. Crystal (now part of TUI) is their main rival - and we can expect intense competition between the two companies as they struggle for domination of the British market. What does this mean for the consumer and the rest of the industry? Here's how it looks to us: 1. Cheaper holidays. In the short term the clash between Inghams/Interhome/Total/Esprit and Crystal/Thomson/First Choice should mean we'll be spending less on our holidays. We're not talking about a return to the wonderfully low prices of the early noughties when sterling was king. But both groups have considerable leverage when it comes to negotiating contracts with hotels, apartments and chalets. And both can take advantage of economies of scale. Some (but not all) of these benefits will be passed on to consumers as they compete for our business. 2. More deals and more imaginative pricing. We saw this from Crystal last season, with its all-in-one Ski+ offers and Wipeout sale, and we expect similar innovations from Hotelplan UK. After all, its new CEO has a history of aggressive discounting - selling half-price chalet holidays at Ski Total in the darkest days of the recession in 2008. 3. Pressure on medium-sized tour operators. Many smaller rivals will find it hard to compete with the big boys' negotiating power, pricing levels and last-minute discounting next season. So they'll need to redouble their efforts to define themselves as the real ski specialists - companies staffed by people with an intimate knowledge of each of their properties, who know their resorts inside out and can add an extra dimension to a ski holiday as a result. 4. Andy Perrin to join a Lib-Dem/Conservative coalition as Secretary of State for Snow before selling Hotelplan UK to Harrods, taking over both parties before the autumn and becoming Prime Minister...or something. Frankly, after the Hotelplan deal anything looks possible... As for who's going to win this upcoming Clash of the Titans, well, it's anyone's guess. The Inghams/Interhome/Esprit/Total coalition is the smaller, more manoeuvrable force equipped with light cavalry that can skirmish and attack at will. Crystal has First Choice and Thomson - big guns, with lots of ammunition, that can help keep the enemy advance in check. Its weakness is the similarity of its three brands which General Perrin will seek to exploit. The British ski industry - just like British politics - has just got more interesting! From Lush to Mush - 9/4/2010 09:53by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Earlier this week, fellow snowfiend Fraser Wilkin of Ski Solutions sent in a blissed-out report of snow conditions in Avoriaz. Since then, conditions haven't been quite so lovely...Report filed April 9.
How quickly things can change! Monday was as good as it gets in April, but since then it has been downhill all the way. Tuesday was an absolute scorcher. At least the overnight freeze allowed some decent skiing early on, but by lunch-time all but a few of the shadiest pistes were baked, and it was time to retire to the restaurant terraces. Fine by me, this is Spring after all - but the real problem came on Tuesday night with the arrival of cloud. Assuming it is not snowing, cloud is a Spring skier's worst enemy. It stops the surface re-freezing properly overnight and leaves you with a porridge-fest from the word go. Wednesday night and all through Thursday it stayed cloudy, but with temperatures dropping again, the sludge firmed up a little at altitude! Better news this morning (Friday) - the skies have cleared again and the pistes are rock hard. Follow the sun around and a great morning?s skiing beckons. In short, there is still masses of snow here in Avoriaz, but it is at times like this that you appreciate the really high altitude skiing that the likes of Tignes or Zermatt can offer, but that is conspicuously lacking in the Portes du Soleil. IClick here for our Avoriaz resort report. Massive snow in Snowmass - 7/4/2010 04:39by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Two Welove2ski editors expected warm sunshine and sorbet snow conditions when they headed off to Aspen in April. How wrong can you get. "If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes, that's what we say in Colorado," said Campbell, our back country guide. Yes, I know they say that in Whistler. But he's been working there too, so forgive the guy. Actually, I can forgive just about anything of anyone who skis powder as dynamically as he does.
The past 36 hours we've had rattling frozen slush and beautiful packed pistes. These were followed by a giant dust storm that blew in from the desert, turning the whole mountain brown. The locals shook their heads in dismay - the closing days next weekend looked doomed. Then, overnight came the snow - and I MEAN snow. Giant soup-plate flakes set us up for one the best days of the entire season. When we met up at 8am, Campbell just couldn't stop grinning. He was still grinning when the lifts closed and he was finally forced to dismount from his 111mm-under-the-foot Volkl Katanas. I've never skied such perfect powder in April and in the final week of what's otherwise been a pretty dry season here in scrumptious Snowmass. April? It looked and felt like mid-January today with the thermometer at - 15C and 20cm of fresh powder underfoot. Almost nobody was out there and we virtually had the entire mountain to ourselves. If you thought Snowmass was a place where you went for a cruise on the days when you want to give Ajax and Highlands a rest, you'd be wrong. You'd be very, very wrong.
We rate Snowmass as one of the top five ski mountains in North America - and now with its smart new base area it's developed into a real resort in its own right. No longer is it Aspen's family-oriented little sister. It's come of age. Highlight is the brand new ski in, ski out Viceroy Snowmass where we're staying. Its spa has some of the most unusual treatments we've ever come across (a Bear Dance Ritual and other Ute-inspired treatments)and there's an outdoor area with lovely heated swimming-pool, two hots tubs and two open fires next to them. There's more snow forecast for tonight - Campbell's waxing his extra-wide Volkl Kuros. It seems that here in Colorado they've saved the best for last...and invited us to join in the fun. We're not complaining.
Click on the link for our Aspen resort report Deep snow and big smiles in Avoriaz this Easter - 5/4/2010 19:37by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Fellow snowfiend, Fraser Wilkin ofSki Solutions has just sent in this blissed out report of snow conditions in the French resort of Avoriaz. Ten days ago, who would have thought he'd get conditions like this for his Easter holiday?
It just keeps snowing. 30cm on Saturday night, just the latest in a series of storms that have left skiers purring at the prospects on offer this Easter. The skies finally cleared on Monday to leave us as delicious a day's skiing as you could hope for in spring. The powder was quickly devoured, but for the most part the pistes remained crisp, softening only gently in the strong afternoon sun. With temperatures set to ocket, afternoon slush will be back on the agenda tomorrow (Tuesday) but I've got no complaints about that - this is April after all!
Click here for our Avoriaz resort report. Sweeeeeeeet helmet cam footage from Engelberg - 31/3/2010 10:25by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Eric Spongberg of Ski Lodge Engelberg has just sent in this helmet cam footage from Engelberg, shot up on the Titlis on Monday. He reports that "a lot of snow came Saturday and Sunday, and we had a 10cm top-up overnight." Judging by our snow forecast, there should be some more over the next few days, too... Click here for our Engelberg resort report. Video Snow Report Engelberg March 27 from Ski Lodge Engelberg on Vimeo. A Heavenly visit - 22/3/2010 08:01by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Reporting on the latest snow in Heavenly - 22 March, 2010 To fly for 11 hours and then drive for a further four it's got to be a very special ski resort. Only in the last half an hour of the 24 that have passed since leaving home do you have any indication that you might be in for an epic downhill experience. A few patches of white beside the road, as you come over the pass on the road from San Francisco and down to the second largest alpine lake in the world, suggest that dragging my Salomon Lords all the way from Heathrow might not have been in vain. Virgin Atlantic is one of that select band of skier-friendly airlines that don't charge for carrying equipment.
This week I've missed out of the half metre of fresh powder that fell here ten days ago but the trails and bowls are in near perfect packed condition. Long runs cut through the forest of red fir provide a high speed playground for intermediates and above. Two of my party who were ski virgins are able after only two days of lessons to start hesitantly exploring the mountain beyond the nursery slopes. Such snow and sunshine make it a great place for beginners. My visit coincides with the annual Spring Break holiday season but the longest queue on the main hub lifts lasts barely five minutes and much of the ski area is nearly empty. Recession here, like everywhere else in America, is taking its toll on business..
Property prices along the lake are traditionally some of the highest in the country but, even at the top of the market, takers are scarce and they can name their own prices. A ten-bedroomed mansion with its own beach is officially on the market for $100 million, but over dinner the estate agent handling the sale assured me that any offer over $60 million would be accepted. On a more realistic scale a $300,000 apartment can now be bought for $200,000.
This picture is of a fake fireplace in the Embassy Suites where I stayed: a TV set with a picture of burning logs and, amazingly, people sit around it. By night the casinos beckon. You don't have to gamble to enjoy yourself - watching other people do it is fun in itself. If I had a full week I'd ski a day each in other Tahoe resorts such as Squaw Valley, Northstar, Kirkwood, and Alpine Meadows. But sadly, I don't. I've got to fly all the way home again. Still, it's been Heavenly. Click here for our Heavenly resort report. Drive your own piste basher in Serre Chevalier - 17/3/2010 11:19by Felice Hardy, editor It was another blue sky day in Serre Che, and the pistes were perfect again today. We spent the morning swooping down the gorgeous Casse de Boeuf and Luc Alphand black runs, as well as trying out the snow cross course. Serre Chevalier is known for its beautifully groomed pistes and I haven't seen even the tiniest stone since I've been here. It's hardly surprising that the resort is the only one in the Alps to run its own Grooming School (+33 (0)4 92 25 55 00).
Anyway, it looked more complicated than it actually was. The instructor's English wasn't great but he managed to demonstrate the various controls - including the gigantic blade at the front and tiller at the back. There was a slightly anxious moment when I saw there were no dual controls. Anyway, we set off for two circuits of the 10-minute course, which was fun and fast. The best bit was grooming the moguls - you go up each one extremely slowely, wondering if you'll ever make it to the top, but come down so fast that it feels like the whole machine might do a nose dive. Apparently the eight ton monster is hard to overturn and can easily climb slopes of up to 60 degrees. Anyone over 16 can have a go and it's a lot more fun - and feels more stable - than snowmobiling. You can book a lesson with an Erna Low holiday to Serre Chevalier. Click on the link to read our detailed Serre Chevalier resort report. Bluebird day in Serre Che - with grooming on the horizon - 16/3/2010 17:39by Felice Hardy, editor Felice Hardy reports on snow conditions in Serre Chevalier, March 16 It hasn't snowed properly in Serre Chevalier for two weeks but it's been so cold that the snow has lasted really well. Today we woke up to bluebird skies and -10 C up on the mountain. It was windy at the top so the highest chair was closed, but there was still plenty of skiing - with hardly a person to spoil the gorgeous views on the upper slopes.
Serre Chevalier has mainly intermediate pistes and some great off-piste, especially at the Monêtier end of the valley. The pistes today varied between good and grippy and some harder ones, which were not so pleasant for the snowboarders in my group. Best run of the day was the long and undulating Cucumelle that ends up in Chantemerle.
I am staying in the comfortable and convenient (new last season) Best Western Chalet 52 - with Erna Low, which is just across the road from the start of the Chantemerle lifts. But this is not all that's new in Serre Chevalier. Yesterday evening I wallowed in the gorgeous Grands Bains spa in Monêtier, which uses the area's thermal waters. It has all sorts of imaginitive additions, including a pool with underwater music - you have to submerge your ears in order to hear it.
New on the slopes is a collection of yurts and tipees from different parts of the world - inside are displays to tell you all about them, and there are also some educational ski-through tunnels where you can hear mountain animal sounds and learn about local history. Tomorrow I am going to Serre Chevalier's new Grooming School. Contrary to what you might expert, this is not for hair and beauty treatments but a place where anyone over 16 can learn to drive a piste basher. It's up the mountain on what looks like a pretty steep slope - hopefully the instructor has dual controls. Click on the link to read our detailed Serre Chevalier resort report. In praise of Bonneval sur Arc - 11/3/2010 09:43by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Editor Sean Newsom reports from one of the remotest resorts in the French Alps - Bonneval sur Arc - March 11, 2010
The last resort: that's what Bonneval sur Arc feels like, when you've driven two and a half hours up the Maurienne Valley, and picked your way over icy roads on the final leg of the journey. This cute little low-slung village may lie just over the Col de l'Iseran from the famous resort of Val d'Isère. But in winter, the road between them is closed and Bonneval seems to lie not just in another valley, but another era. It's home to 11 lifts and 25km of pistes. There's a short of street at the bottom of the lowest lift, and another cluster of houses around the church, half a mile away. And that's it. Once upon a time, a lot of ski resorts must have looked like this. Many would have shared the same unhurried atmosphere. But the last time I saw anything like it was in the remoter corners of the Canadian Rockies. I can't think of anywhere in the Alps which compares.
I have to admit I'm a sucker for end-of-the-road places like this. I love the quiet, and the sense of space that yawns out beyond the edge of the tarmac. Yes, 25km of piste is limited, but when there are so few people to share them with it doesn't seem to matter. Besides, there's a lot of off-piste in between - especially when a storm has just deposited 40cm of fresh powder on its slopes as it had when I arrived. For a week of proper R'n'R - mixing hard work on your ski technique with some snow-shoeing up the valley, and a couple of mornings wasted over a good book on a sunny terrace - it would be absolutely perfect. (Many thanks to Xavier at Peak Retreats for helping to organise my trip. For more information on the Haute Maurienne, visit www.hautemaurienne.com
By the way - this slope has the best fall-line pistes in Bonneval, on the Faucon piste.
The best 50/50 skis of the test - 6/3/2010 19:45by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Editor Sean Newsom files the second of two reports on the fourth day of the SIGB ski test in the Italian resort of Bormio - March 4, 2010
Overall, it was an awesome ski test - well-organised by Rare Management, well attended, and featuring 160 more pairs of skis than last winter. The only thing we felt the lack of was fresh snow. There was some in the forecast for Thursday, but it failed to materialise; so I had to make do with piste, crud and only patches of powder. That meant that my search for the best 50/50 ski of the test was a little compromised. Okay, so most 50/50 skis are not in fact designed for skiers who genuinely spend as much time in deep snow as they do on-piste. 50/50 is more of an aspiration than a fact. But all the same, it would have been nice to have let them run a little further in the deep stuff. As a result, it was the skis with the best on-piste rather than off-piste performance that brought the widest smiles.
One of those skis was the Salomon Tornado Ti: not too stiff, stable in the crud, and above all nice and carvy on-piste. They're in fact a much better option for your average 50/50 skier than the Salomon Lords, which I tested on Tuesday. The Lords require a lot of strength and power to be skied properly.
If you've read my other March 4 blog from the test (see below), you'll know that the Atomic Nomad Blackeye Ti scored highly with the Ellis Brigham ski team, with whom I checked in regularly during the test. The Nomad Crimson is a step up from that: £50 dearer, and 8mm wider under the boot. It's a pretty stiff ski and the extra width demands a more precise technique when it's skied on-piste, especially when it gets icy. But of the skis I tested, it was one of the surest in deeper snow. In other words, this is a ski that takes the 50/50 concept more seriously. If you really are going to be spending as much time in powder as on piste, and you ski powerfully, aggressively and with precision, it's a good choice.
I jumped on board a pair of the Mantras too. These are 96mm underfoot and so wider than anything else I tried at the test. Officially, they're a do-everything ski - though this time the emphasis is far more towards powder than piste. They were a handful on hard-packed groomed snow, to be honest, but they were better than anything else I tried in the powdery crud: smooth and very stable. Nevertheless, I wouldn't pick 'em for my own personal rack, because they're such hard work on-piste.
The Volkl Kendo was more my scene. It's 87mm wide under the boot so has a decent amount of float in the powder, and felt pretty snappy in the crud and bumps. But what really distinguishes it is the ease with which it makes the transition to groomed snow. It's one of those skis that boosts your confidence a little more with every sure-footed turn. By the time I got back to the test centre I was grinning from ear to ear - just as members of the Ellis Brigham team had been, earlier in the day. Volkl are really on to something here. They've nailed the requirements of the modern 50/50 skier - someone who's looking not just for the right performance, but who also wants a ski which looks different from the usual conservative piste-bashing equipment. Actually, they could push the graphic a lot further than they have, but it's a start. Other ski brands should take note.
Finally, let's go back to the Scott Missions, which I skied again on my final day at the test. The ski has been revamped for next year, with a whippier, livelier front section, and it was a joy to ski a second time. Nothing else was as much fun on groomed snow, and they seemed nice and steady in the crud. Of course, I'd really like to get them out into powder to see if the improvement in on-piste performance has come at a price in deep snow. But on the evidence of Bormio, this is the ski I'll be reaching for whenever I get the chance - with the Volkl Kendo a worthy runner up, and the Salomon Tornado a respectable third. I won't be the only one either: the revamped Missions won many people over in Bormio this year. Many thanks to www.carrentals.co.uk for providing Welove2ski with a hire car for this trip. By the way, I've just noticed, the end of season Ellis Brigham sale is now on.... Skis skis ski skis - 5/3/2010 09:39by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Editor Sean Newsom files the first of two reports on the fourth day of the SIGB ski test in the Italian resort of Bormio - March 4, 2010
The sun was out, the mountain was covered by teams of bright-eyed, hard-skiing Brits - and best of all, there were 711 brand-new pairs of skis to test. No wonder the atmosphere in the test was so upbeat yesterday. What's more, after four days of non-stop skiing, testers were beginning settle on their favourite skis - and the members of the Ellis Brigham team were no exception. For the men in the team - Steve, Rhys, Tom and Rob - one the biggest surprises of the week was the quality of this year's Blizzard skis. This recently-revamped brand is owned by Tecnica (which also owns Nordica skis) - and almost the entire range is manufactured in Austria. It seems to have sucked up a lot of Austria's ski-racing culture in the process, because its on-piste skis are its strongest suit. One of its top-of-the-range skis has recently won a big, fat industry award (Hardware of the Year award at ISPO 2010), but it was the more affordable on-piste skis that really caught the collective Ellis Brigham eye. I've already mentioned the Blizzard G Force Pros, below, which Steve Wells singled out on day 2 of the test - but we can now add to the list the Blizzard G Force Three IQ. Rhys loved them. "They want you to make turn after turn after turn," he said, "and they hold their edge like nothing else in their price range".
It's the combination of performance and attractive pricing which is the real winner here - expect to see plenty of Blizzards in the EB racks next winter. Atomic were scoring highly with the team too. On Tuesday, the twin-tipped Atomic Panics impressed the team, and over the next two days Rob in particular was buzzing about the Atomic Blackeye Ti. It's a pretty beefy all-mountain ski, which isn't as wide as the Atomic Crimson, and so is much happier on piste as result - in particular, it carves long-radius turns really well, but has enough surface area to provide float for shortish forays into the powder. "Frickin' awesome," was how Rob put it.
Rhys and Tom were also enthusiastic about the Atomic Access, one of the new breed of powder skis, with plenty of curled-up 'rocker' in the front of the ski to enable quick turns, and provide extra float in the deep stuff. Rob hated it - because he's taller and heavier than both of them, and likes to carve hard lines on piste: and a ski like this isn't very good at holding an edge on groomed snow. He dismissed it as "a bit flappy". This wasn't a problem for the other two, who thought it was 'good enough' on piste and fantastic off-piste: an ideal first freeride ski, in fact, for anyone who was getting serious about the powder. In fact, by March 4, Tom was talking about them being the 'ski of the test'.
Rhys also wanted to put a vote in for the Line Blend (below), which he thought had better graphics and was more versatile, and would be his vote for anyone planning to do a season in the mountains.
Three other skis impressed the men on the team. First was the Volkl Kendo - a contender for Rob's ski of the test. "You can get on it and relax, and just take it easy," he said, "or you can ski it hard, and the more energy you put in, the more it seems to give back." It's wide enough (88mm under the boot) to give plenty of float, too, without being too fat to be a handful. "It's the perfect tool for the aspiring freeride generation," he said.
Another big success was a pair of touring skis from Black Diamond (pictured below), which Steve summarised as "an uphill ski which wasn't too compromised when you turned it round and came back downhill again." But you'll have to forgive me, folks, I don't appear to have written its name down anywhere...
Finally, there were the Scott Missions. I've mentioned them in day 2's report, and I'll be mentioning them again in the next one too - so that's it for now...
For Katie and Justyna, the two women in the EB team, there were two skis which appeared to be emerging as favourites. The first was the latest version of the all-mountain Movement Black Rose (below). Justyna said, "it looks beautiful and it skis even better than it looks".
There was also a big thumbs-up for the Volkl Kiku. "When you're on groomed snow it feels 100% on-piste, and when you're in powder and crud it feels 100% off-piste," said Justyna. "It's a 200% ski!".
Many thanks to www.carrentals.co.uk for providing Welove2ski with a hire car for this trip. By the way, I've just noticed, the end of season Ellis Brigham sale is now on.... This will upset the anti-helmet brigade - 4/3/2010 18:34by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Editor Sean Newsom reports on the third day of the SIGB ski test in the Italian resort of Bormio - March 3, 2010
If you're one of those skiers who doesn't like the sight of ski helmets you'd better look away now. Yesterday, ski tester Justyna Wiklik - one of Ellis Brigham's team - was let loose the amongst the helmet stands in the test area. Here are the results.
Justyna thinks the first one is the best. We agree. Many thanks to www.carrentals.co.uk for providing Welove2ski with a hire car for this trip. The search for the perfect 50/50 ski - 3/3/2010 08:15by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Editor Sean Newsom reports from the second day of the SIGB ski test in the Italian resort of Bormio - March 3, 2010
A mountainside full of friendly faces, and hundreds of brand-new skis to test: that was the prospect yesterday on day 2 of the SIGB ski test in Bormio.
The test brings together some of Britain's best skiers, as well as shop owners, sales staff and ski writers like me, and lets them loose amongst racks and racks of skis for next season. No wonder it's one of my favourite trips of the winter.
This time round, I'm focusing on 50-50 skis - all-mountain models which are designed to carve well on groomed snow, hold an edge when it gets icy, and provide a reasonably stable, floaty platform in powder. They're inevitably compromise skis, but I use them all the time when I'm in the mountains, and I supect many Welove2ski readers do the same. After all, we don't have caddies to follow us around with a quiver of more specialised on-piste and off-piste skis, do we? Genuine powder was in short supply yesterday, but I did find an area of soft crud and bumps to play about in (above), and there's talk of fresh snow on Thursday, so hopefully I'll get to try them out in deeper, softer snow then.
Given the limitations of the conditions, the view I got of the skis was a very partial one. But I did have a lot of fun on the new, improved Scott Missions, above. They've been made whippier and edgier than before (by using more beech than poplar in the core at the front of the ski, apparently). I found them lively in the crud and incredibly snappy on-piste - great fun for carving fast turns.
I also got onto the Fischer Wattea 78s, which Steve Wells of Ellis Brigham was praising yesterday. These are going to be great value for money next season, and they seemed very stable and steady in the crud: but I found them distinctly less lively and whippy on-piste than the more expensive Missions.
I liked the Rossignol S80s on-piste too, although they seemed a bit lifeless in the crud. Or was that just the failing strength in my legs? I definitely need another go on these.
The one ski I didn't like yesterday was the Salomon Lord. I didn't much like them last year either (and there's no change on last year's construction). They seem to be more narrowly-focussed than the others: designed to be skied fast and hard at all times. At lower speeds, as well as in the crud, they were stiff and unwieldy. I reckon you could have a fine old time on them at the end of a long season with lots of skiing - when you'd have the strength to really blast a path down the mountain. But for more occasional skiers they're a bit of a handful.
Meanwhile, the Ellis Brigham test team were busy on a selection of on-piste skis and twin-tipped freestyle skis. According to Tom Wilson, the twin-tipped Atomic Panics were one of the real finds of the test so far - they're going to retail at just £375 including bindings next season. "For the price, they're the best I've skied so far," he said.
Steve Wells, the EB test team leader was impressed by the Blizzard G Force Pros. These are on-piste skis. "They're the biggest surprise of the day," he told me. "They're nice and solid at every speed, and release you out of the turn really easily," he said. Finally, I thought I'd finish on a couple of particularly fine pairs of trousers...   And thanks again to www.carrentals.co.uk for the hire car - invaluable for scooting about in Bormio, as I'm not staying near the lifts... Prada and Dirndls in St Moritz - 2/3/2010 18:13by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Editor Peter Hardy reports on the skiing in St Moritz - March 2, 2010 The devil, it seems, does not wear Prada. But ski instructors do - if they work for the Suvretta Ski School in St Moritz. Their smart blue uniform is one of only three other schools in the world that is tailored by the exclusive Italian designer (the others are Megeve and Cortina d'Ampezzo).
Probably you'd expect nothing less of the best ski school in the most famous ski resort in the world. But all that fame is proving a bit of a problem in these troubled financial times. St Moritz is a victim of its own success. When you spent rather more than a century building a brand that settles seamlessly into the same sentence as Rolls Royce, Krug, Rolex, and - indeed - Prada, it's difficult to face the recession question: How can it appeal to a wider audience? The fact is that St Moritz is not just about the Cresta and bobsleigh along with polo, horse racing, golf and even cricket on the frozen lake. You don't have to take a suite in the five-star Palace, Kulm, or Carlton. You can stay in much more modestly priced three, and four star hotels. In fact, St Moritz is no more expensive than anywhere else in Switzerland - and is currently a lot cheaper than the big-name French resorts. What's even more surprising to the first timer here is the range and extent of the world class skiing. Fast groomed pistes with a minimum metre-base don't really come much better than this. "Did you ever race?" I asked Michelle from the Suvretta Ski School, after the first lightening descent.She nodded. "At what level?" "World Cup." "Downhill?" She nodded. Ok. Sometimes in life, it's better not to ask questions and just ski. St Moritz' classic clientele is slowly giving way to a much more sporty type of person. These days, fur coats are no longer de rigueur. You'll see far more technical ski pants and jackets, along with a few more eccentric outfits. Today we stumbled across an Italian snowboarder who looked like he was on the run from Alcatraz.
Also, if you work at it, you can find a pretty girl in traditional local costume to carry your skis for you if you happen to have found the right place to stay.
Chesetta is a sumptuous new chalet for up to 14 people in the quaint nearby village of Silvaplana. It comes complete with a cinema, sauna, steam room, gym, and glorious views of the village from a giant picture window in the sitting room...as well as outstanding cuisine. I guess this proves that while St Moritz may be looking to widen its appeal, the old values still hold good. Whether you choose to stay here or in the three-star Julier Palace, you'll have a great time. Just don't tell anyone else about the amazing skiing.
Click here for our St Moritz resort report. Next season's skis - now - 2/3/2010 07:19by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Editor Sean Newsom reports from the SIGB ski test in the Italian resort of Bormio - March 2, 2010
It's ski test time! Half-way up Bormio's mountain, there's a big corral packed with next season's skis, and a lucky band of ski journalists, seasonaires and ski shop owners and staff are out to test them.
With lots of familiar faces on the mountain, half a season of stories to catch up on, and hundreds of brand new skis to try, it's one of the best trips of the season. Oh yes, and catching up on the latest fashion is always an eye-popping experience...
So it was a shame to have spent most of the first day in traffic trying to get there...Even at the best of times, the drive to Bormio is a slow one, but this time I did most of it at about 60kph, stuck behind a selection of the most cumbersome lorry loads in Italy. Huge coils of cable. Vast sections of concrete roofing. Even at one point a bloody fire engine. These were some of the loads I crawled behind, whilst above Bormio the sun shone and the other testers got stuck in. Argggghhhhh! Mind you, at least I didn't have to pay for my car hire - which was supplied by www.carrentals.co.uk. Thanks very much, guys! Although the number of skis on offer seems to be down slightly on last season's mind-boggling 550 pairs, the selection is still a mouthwatering one. The trend towards ever more colourful (and in my view, wonderful) graphics is continuing too; even Atomic is at it (below).
However, there are also a number gob-smackingly conservative designs around too - as well as a worrying drift in places towards 1980s-style neon...
Once on the mountain, I caught up with the Ellis Brigham test team, who'd been checking out the on-piste and all-mountain skis (the ones which are designed to cope with both pistes and powder).
Of course, it's much too early to get definitive judgements about the best skis in any categories, but there were already some very positive reactions. For example, Justyna and Katie were both very enthusiastic about the Volkl Attiva Sol. It's an all-mountain-ish ski, though biased more towards the piste. "It was solid and responsive on piste," said Justyna, "but it punched through the softer stuff really well."
J&K also really liked the Salomon Vital Touch - a more 'expert' on-piste ski for women, which will retail at around £350 next season, but which felt like a much more expensive ski. It was forgiving at lower speeds, but could be skied hard and fast too.
The men in the team were rather more provisional in their judgements. Steve enjoyed skiing the Fischer Wattea 78s (78cm under the boot), an all-mountain ski which is unchanged from last season apart from a new graphic.
He also enjoyed skiing the on-piste Head i.magnums. These two are pretty much unchanged on last season's ski. It'll be interesting to see how many unchanged skis there are around. It won't be a surprise, given the economic climate...
Now it's time to get back up the mountain and do some skiing myself! The other end of the Four Valleys - 25/2/2010 10:25by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Editor Peter Hardy reports on the resorts at the other end of the Four Valleys - February 25, 2010
"Typical Verbier-ite," said Jean-Pierre to my friend Melody Sky as we sat down to lunch in a mountain restaurant above Nendaz. "You've lived in Verbier for eight years, skied almost every day of each winter - and you've never been over here until today!" As tourist director for the 'other' major resort in the Four Valleys, Jean-Pierre is used to the oohs and aahs of delight of skiers who venture beyond Verbier's own ski area. Similarly, most skiers who base themselves on the far side of the 400km of piste, rarely bother to make the 45-minute journey across to Verbier. In staying here this week to discover the rest - actually most - of the Four Valleys, the first big surprise was the size of Nendaz.
When I first came here in the 1990s, Nendaz appeared to be little more than a lift station surrounded by sprinkling of ski shops and apartments. Now it has 4,000 chalets and is actually larger than Verbier. Surprisingly, you can count the number of British tour operators here on one hand, including Ted Bentley with its handful of comfortable chalets conveniently situated for the lifts. A modern gondola takes you up the mountain, but as you make your way across to Siviez and little Veysonnaz you have to cope with a lift system that is hopelessly inadequate for the volume of high season skiers. It's a long time since I queued for 10 minutes to get on a Poma. Indeed, T-bars and Pomas and the occasional chair-lift, provide the main means of uphill transport. But the terrain is beautifully varied, with some outstanding itinerary runs. Little Veysonnaz has a fast modern gondola out of the village - if you can call the small strip of pizzerias and shops a 'village'. We stayed here in the beautiful ski-in ski-out Hidden Dragon, a chalet built on feng shui principles with the best chalet spa (and adjoining yoga studio) we've ever seen, along with a real miniature cinema. If anything, the snow was slightly better at this end of the ski area - although it was pretty good everywhere - and during high season February it was also much less busy here. Our favourite run was the undulating yet steep Piste de l'Ours (World Cup Women's Downhill course), which was all but deserted.
Fluffy goodness and Jaegerbombs - 23/2/2010 17:20by Arabella Mileham, blogger at large Arabella Mileham, welove2ski's editorial assistant, reports on the snow conditions in Verbier - February 23, 2010 To my surprise, I had a fab day skiing over in Savoleyres today. It'd snowed overnight and was still pretty cloudy in resort. As the cloud was definitely thickest over the Medran, I headed out in the opposite direction, still half expecting another white-out. The snow conditions were lovely though - lots of fluffy goodness with some patches of powder here and there. Although still snowing half-heartedly, weak sunshine managed to get through and even when the snow became proper flurries in the afternoon, the visibility remained good. However it is beginning to feel like Spring - riding up the cranking chair-lift from Tzoumaz, you could hear birds singing away, although luckily the tell-tale Spring sound of running water hasn't quite started.
Most of the off-piste was already fairly tracked out, but there was still a little of the fresh stuff just off the shoulder of the Verbier-facing side of the mountain and a great little gully hidden between the main wide pistes to the other side, which was a lot of fun. I ended up skiing through the trees under the slow green two-man chair up from Tzoumaz. Unfortunately, when I got to the bottom of the valley, I found a steady trickle of people walking uphill towards me. Now, I don't mind hiking anywhere when there's the promise of a glorious powder field at the end of the hike, but I when you have to drag yourself up to a chair-lift because Televerbier can't get the Tzoumaz bubble going and don't bother warning you about it, it's a slightly different matter! It was rather a shame that there were no ice-hockey playing monks on the small rink below the bubble this week. Rather inexplicably, I saw them playing last week, long robes flying in the wind a bit like a tame Quidditch practice. Still no idea quite why they were there but it was an amusing sight!
I think I'd better remove my laptop to a safe distance - a party is just breaking out in staff accommodation, with Jaeger-bombs and champagne in the offing. Considering there aren't any glasses anywhere in the building - and even the jam jars have run out - it seems to be a case of swigging from the Jaeger bottle and then the can of red bull, followed by vigorous head-shaking to mix the two together... You can't say seassonaires aren't classy!! Click here for our Verbier resort report. Water-skiing through coffee icing - 23/2/2010 17:16by Arabella Mileham , blogger at large Arabella Mileham, welove2ski's editorial assistant, reports on the snow conditions in Verbier - February 22, 2010 Now that the English half-term is over, suddenly life is a lot more relaxed. The slopes are still busy but the queues are nothing like as bad. The temperature has been yo-yoing all week - one minute you're skiing through fresh snow, the next it's more like caster sugar and by the time you get to the bottom of the Medran, you're surfing through the top of a coffee cake.
The rise is temperature on Thursday last week meant that the slopes became pretty melty in places and as soon as the temp dropped again, froze to form hard-packed ice. There are also some patches of mud and even a few blades of grass poking through, especially on the final run home - the top of Carrefour is getting particularly carved away as everyone takes the same route home. However I bumped into Roddy, one of our Verbier snoggers, yesterday and he assured me that there is still powder down Vallon D'Arbi at the moment. How long it'll stay though is another matter! Despite all the meltiness, I still managed a great ski today with the gang. As everyone was a little hung-over, we took it fairly easily - Mont Gele was very tempting but I'm afraid we wussed out. Not quite sure how I ended up skiing switch most of the way down to Ruinette, but anyway! One piece of good news though - staff accommodation finally got a once over this morning. The person with the lowest tolerance to squalor (which wasn't me for a change!) finally snapped and after a whirlwind of chucking out dead cake and stale bread, retrieving mugs from underneath the sofa (how I wish I was kidding) and transferring the piles of manky crockery from the sink to the dishwasher, a semblance of civilisation has been restored. I give it until Wednesday before it needs doing again... Until then, I'm off to the Croc Bar now to chill with a mojito and some über-kitsch, smoky euro-lounge tunes... Click here for our Verbier resort report. Olympic ski cross: a star is born - 22/2/2010 10:05by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Wasn't it amazing? Right from the get-go, yesterday's Olympic ski cross was an electrifying event. At times, it felt mawkish to be watching such a demolition derby - especially when Daron Rahlves and Ted Piccard crashed so spectacularly on the final turn of the first heat. (In fact, the danger of life-threatening injuries is something the organisers must take very seriously if this is going to become a credible, mainstream sport, and not some kind of x-rated freakshow.) But for the most part, the skill, courage and sheer red-blooded competitiveness shown out on Cypress Mountain yesterday has set the skiing world alight. It's set the non-skiing world alight too - just as snowboard cross did at the Turin games in 2006. And that's one of the main reasons why everyone in the ski industry is buzzing today. After all, here's an event which distills all the physicality, aggression and competitiveness of ski racing into a single adrenaline-soaked hour. Each one of the 15 races is essential viewing, and you don't need to cut them down to a package of TV highlights to hold the non-skier's attention; in fact, I'm pretty sure most people who watched it stayed glued to their screens from start to finish.
In other words, old-fashioned Alpine ski racing had better watch out. After all, why would the non-specialist public want to watch people race one after another, when they can see them fight it out between themselves on the same run? Nothing in the Alpine racing programme on Whistler mountain - not even blonde bombshell Lindsey Vonn winning the women's downhill - has come close to generating the same heat, and if the ski cross can build on that buzz, it's going to become our new blue riband sport. The ski-racing establishment will hate the idea, of course - but if they want to get the wider world really excited about winter sports, then they need to recognise that ski cross has presented them with a fabulous opportunity. They should throw themselves into its promotion and development. In other words, today feels like a new dawn in ski racing. There is however one cloud on this bright new horizon. Judging by yesterday's event, there's a danger that ski cross will soon be dominated by racers the size of brick sh*thouses. The was something depressing about the steady progression of all the meatiest guys to the final yesterday - despite the heroics and racing talent of younger and smaller competitors. What's more, the Cypress Mountain course seemed to exaggerate the advantage they already have. I for one don't want to see sheer bulk become the determining factor in a sport that highlights so many other skiing skills, and hope that course designers in future will come up with ways to level the playing field. If by any chance you've just returned from the planet Zog, and you're wondering what all the fuss is about, check out Sunday's highlights on the BBC sport website here. Squalor and skiing - 16/2/2010 14:58by Arabella Mileham , blogger at large Arabella Mileham, welove2ski's editorial assistant, reports on the snow conditions and pending Mardi Gras celebrations in Verbier - February 16, 2010 Now that Valentine's day is over (and we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief that rigidly enforced romantic gestures are over for another year) the main question on everyone's lips in Verbier is what to wear for Mardi Gras. I feel a little sheepish for having completely forgotten to pack a half-decent fancy dress outfit with me as everyone always makes so much effort. I've now got about an hour to either cobble something together fashioned out of tinfoil and sticky-back plastic (actually, I don't think you can get the latter in resort) or be a party-pooper and make a stand for personal dignity. Hmmm, as I'm feeling totally uninspired at the moment and the only think I want to make is a chocolat chaud, it may end up being the latter. There are some aspects of seasonnaire life that I had conveniently forgotten in the years since I was last working out here - much as women reputedly forget the pain of labour shortly after giving birth. My hands are already as dry as a bone despite the wonders of Elizabeth Arden's 8 hours cream and I'm not sure if it's heartening or depressing to remember my way around the Coop with such unerring accuracy. However the weirdest thing is being back in staff accommodation. It's a return to eating bread and brownies during the daytime, the kettle fusing every time you want a cup of tea, and the usual seasonal deprivations of no mugs, milk, loo paper or light bulbs because no-one has remembered to bring any back... However, there is as much cake as you can eat and - if you can find an empty jam-jar to use as a glass - loads of wine. However, my housemates for the week are a great bunch and it's also lovely to catch up with people I was out here with several years ago, including our snogger, Oli from European Snowsport and the guys from Performance Verbier. As staff accommodation is clearly not the most propitious place to work in, I have found myself a great new 'office' to operate from. Le Rouge, a bar/restaurant at the end of the piste by Brunet bus stop, opened at the end of last season and does a fine line of relaxed chilling. With loads of sheepskin rugs and a good vibe, it's a really nice place to wind down in the evenings after work. Last night, I came with a few of the Armadillos and had a game of giant backgammon and a quiet pint, which made a change from the rigors of an evening in the Pub Mont Fort or après in the Farinet. However, having sat outside on the terrace for the best part of two hours, the DJ pumping behind me, my hands are too frozen to continue typing and I think my laptop battery is about to give up the ghost. I guess I had better start thinking about that costume again... Click here for our Verbier resort report. The Ghost of Chalet girls past... - 13/2/2010 14:55by Arabella Mileham, blogger at large Arabella Mileham, welove2ski's editorial assistant, dons her marigolds to revisit life as a seasonnaire and report on the snow conditions in Verbier - February 13, 2010 I've definitely just stepped back in time. Half-term week was looming fast when I answered a plea to come out to Verbier for a week to fill in for a chef who's had to return to the UK due to a family illness. It's that time of the season when chalet staff are generally in high demand due to half of them falling ill, falling over or generally just falling about. So this week I have found myself back in rubber gloves, oven-timer in one hand, laptop in the other and acting as a chef for 12 guests, while trying to snatch the odd hour or two to sub-edit the latest snogs, as well as checking out the conditions on the slopes. I seem to have just missed a fresh patch of powder that fell on the 4 vallées at the end of last week - Bruson in particular has been awesome (or so I'm told) and should be the best place to head to at the end of next week, when another dump is expected. However, it was lightly snowing when I first arrived (Thursday afternoon) and the temperatures have been around minus 10, so the conditions have remained pretty good, although increasingly tracked out and mogully in the afternoon. Friday was a bluebird day but bitterly cold and punctuated with a fair amount of glittery mist - it looks lovely but pretty much hits you in the face on chair-lifts, freezing your nose before heading towards your fingers and toes. Before I got just too damn chilly to continue skiing, I had a great couple of hours warming up. Starting over by Lac de Vaux, Atelas and Ruinettes, I skied all around La Chaux for a while, before heading up to the base of Mont Fort (though I decided to err on the cautious side so early on in the week and wussed out of the mogul field, inviting as it looked). The queues weren't too big, but next week will be mega-busy as the half-term hoards descend. Bearing that in mind, I skied over at Savoleyres on Saturday in an attempt to avoid the crowds. The slopes didn't seem too packed but there was the odd wait at the chair-lifts, which is quite unusual over there. I didn't manage to find any powder but kept to the pistes, which were pretty fast, with good snow but a few patches of ice in places. After playing on the south facing slopes, I blasting down to Tzoumaz and eventually skied back to Verbier via Carrefour as the valley was shrouded in mist. There are some views you just don't tire of... Click here for our Verbier resort report. British Schoolgirls Races 2010 in Flaine - 31/1/2010 19:04by Felice Hardy, editor Two of the Welove2ski editors were in Flaine last week for the British Schoolgirls Races and stayed in convenient Residence Flaine Foret with Erna Low. We had good conditions with plenty of snow and a mixture of sunny weather, a few clouds and even some fresh snow.
Pictured above: Emily Evans of the Kandahar ski team, won the British Overall cup for Slalom, came 2nd in the British-based Junior I for Combined and was also British Overall winner in the Combined. All photos: @Yoann Marot
Above: welove2ski even had one of its own - Izzi Hardy came 3rd in the British-based non-registered child's GS and also in the Combined. Also pictured here are Poppy Hartley of Bryanston in 1st place and Annabel Wright of St Mary's Calne in 2nd.
Bloggers meet: Max Hardy, coaching the St Swithun's team, bumps into Val d'Isere blogger Amanda Pirie who is coaching the Aiglon College team here in Flaine. Click here for our Flaine resort report. This is what a four-euro hot chocolate looks like - 28/1/2010 10:41by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Sean Newsom, one of Welove2ski's editors, finally gets a cup of hot chocolate that's worth the price - January 28, 2010.
By way of contrast, four-euro cups of hot chocolate do not - repeat DO NOT - look like the picture below, taken in a rip-off mountain restaurant on the Rocher de Bellevarde above Val d'Isere earlier this month. This stuff came out of machine and took approximately five seconds to dispense; and they didn't even fill the cup to the rim. B*stards.
Click here for our Méribel resort report. Ow. My eyes hurt. - 27/1/2010 18:41by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Sean Newsom, one of Welove2ski's editors, reports on a day of good snow, and perfect weather, in Méribel - January 27, 2010.
It was like this all day too: cold, but not frigid, crystal-clear light, smiles a mile wide on everyone's faces. The snow's pretty good here too: some of the pistes are a bit icy in places, especially where there's been heavy traffic (and even in January, the traffic can be heavy here); but generally the pistes are in great shape. There's powder too - although everything that's close to the pistes has been heavily skied...
Needless to say, we had a ball - although the day reminded me of the golden rule of the Three Valleys - if you want to maximise your skiing each day, forget 'ski tourism'. Everyone does it - schlepping round the whole area, ticking off the valleys, and the main runs between the valleys are congested. There are some big queues too - especially to get the cable car up to the Cime de Caron above Val Thorens. You don't want to waste a good day queueing.
Click here for our Méribel resort report. Flaine celebrates its 42nd birthday - 25/1/2010 18:29by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Two Welove2ski editors are in Flaine this week for the British Schoolgirls Races and staying in convenient Residence Flaine Foret with Erna Low,
Flaine celebrates its 42nd birthday this year and is moving serenely into middle-age with a fresh confidence with new lifts and a new MGM apartment complex on the drawing board. Not that you can find much middle-aged around here this week - the resort is packed with teenage girls in figure-hugging catsuits all screaming undying support for each other.
Each January Flaine hosts the British Schoolgirl Races, an annual gathering of both novice and experienced racers from 47 schools that for three days transforms the resort into a kind of pony club meet on ice. Zealous parents and a smattering of teachers on freebies look on anxiously from the touchline as girls aged 11-17 throw themselves down the mountain through 30 gates with extraordinarily mixed results. Over two runs in today's giant slalom the last finisher was nearly three minutes behind the winner. There are tears and joy, but it's all good fun. Meanwhile, beyond the racing arena Flaine and rest of the Grand Massif is skiing near its January best with 270cm on the upper slopes and around 70cm at resort level. 
Powder, blue sky and no crowds in Klosters - 20/1/2010 18:27by Felice Hardy, editor Welove2ski editors are in Klosters this week staying in gorgeous Chalet Bear and Chalet Maldeghem, which are part of Klosters Chalets .Although it hasn't snowed here since New Year, piste conditions are pretty close to perfect. We've had blue skies for two days, cold enough temperatures, and we've even been able to ski off piste in a mixture of pristine powder and some crusty stuff.
Canyons and huskies - 14/1/2010 17:52by Arabella Mileham, blogger at large Arabella Mileham, welove2ski's editorial assistant, reports on the snow conditions and the cross-country skiing in the Leutasch Valley - January 13, 2010 Oh, I can also definitely feel muscles that I was not aware of before today! Stupidly, I wasn't quick enough of the mark to book a massage last night, so a quick swim and a sauna had to suffice before dinner in Seefeld. The food at Krachelemoos was absolutely fantastic - I had a particularly mouthwatering shashlik of pork on creamed Savoy and Tirolean apfelstudel with a cinnamon and toffee ice-cream - and the now obligatory schnapps, of course.
After the strenuous activity of yesterday, today's plan of snow shoeing and dog-sledding with Tirol Alpin sounded a lot more chilled. However, I hadn't reckoned on being leashed round the waist to Maggie, the most inconsistent and noisy husky on the planet. She didn't get off to a brilliant start by lying down in the snow to have her tummy scratched and it soon became clear that she just wanted attention - running up the hill with me lumbering after in my unwieldy snow shoes only to stop dead and wait for me, just as the gradient increased. After the first hill, she was relegated to the sled and I was attached to a rather less high-maintenance dog to enjoy the walk through the walk. Tramping through the trees in the woods behind Kirchplatz was lovely. It's pretty rare to wander quietly through the trees just enjoying the scenery as I usually whiz past it on skis. However our destination was a gorge further up in the forest for a spot of canyoning.
Now, I have to admit that I'm a bit of a wuss when it comes to throwing myself off cliffs. I probably shouldn't be as I spend half of my childhood clambering over rocks, climbing trees and swinging across the garden on ropes, Tarzan-style - but I generally prefer to hold on wherever possible! The zip-wire across the gorge was great fun but I was distinctly less keen on the 40m abseil when we got to the other side. But a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do... so with jelly legs and a white face, I braved it for the descent. There was quite a large over-hang which I hadn't really expected so I ran out of cliff to walk down after 15m or so and it was with undignified relief that I reached terra firma, and was able to clip myself onto the ropes strung across the rocks.
As it was pretty nippy, we didn't explore the canyon for terribly long but after a little bit of clambering around the rocks, we made our way up through the snowy gorge to the spot where the dogs were tethered to find a Tirolean picnic waiting for us. After a couple of mugs of tea mit rum and a rather good schapps (it seems that anytime is schnapps time in Tirol!) we piled onto the dog sleds for the race home. Thundering through the Leutasch Valley was tremendous fun but there only was time for a quick coffee on arrving at the hotel before collecting our stuff for our final cross-country trail.
We'd already pumped Steve, the Headwater rep, for information about where to go, so armed with maps and cross-country skis and with the light slightly fading, we were dropped off at Moos for our 5km langlauf home. Our route took us along the floor of the valley with views over the Wetterstein to our left. After a great deal of faffing getting into our skis, we made quite good time and became so mesmerized concentrating on the tramlines in front of us that we only stopped for a quick hot chocolate when we were in sight of Kirchplatz - about 5 mins from home. Perhaps it wasn't such a good move as sitting down made my newly discovered muscles start to seize up a little and it was with great difficulty (and not a little swearing) that I clipped my skis back on for the final 200 yards towards home - and the bar!
I would definitely do cross-country again, but I think next time, I might spend a little bit longer preparing my legs in advance. The Vikings who allegedly invented this great sport were probably a little bit hardier than I am! For more information about the Olympiaregion Seefeld and Leutasch see www.seefeld.com or click here for our Cross-country skiing guides. Bambi takes to the slopes - 12/1/2010 20:58by Arabella Mileham , blogger at large Arabella Mileham, welove2ski's editorial assistant, reports on the snow conditions in Leutasch and Seefeld in Tirol and tries her hand (as well as her arms and legs) at a spot of cross-country skiing - January 12, 2010 Tucked in a corner of Olympiaregion Seefeld, 25km northwest of Innsbruck, the Leutasch valley and neighbouring Seefeld is a mecca for cross-country skiing. I headed out for a few days on a Headwater holiday, eschewing my normal downhill in favour of this ancient, Nordic sport.
Innsbruck was unusually snowy when we landed and the white stuff was still falling as we arrived at the Sporthotel Xander in Kirchplatz, after the shortest possible transfer - a smooth and painless 45 minutes after touching down. It had been very peculiar flying over a snowy Britain on an almost empty Easyjet flight, so this made it a hat-trick of staggering proportions.
Although we were primarily here for the cross-county, a visit to the Alps wouldn't be complete without a little downhill, so Tuesday morning saw us up, bright and early, making out way down the road to Rosshütte, to check out the slopes at Seefeld. After all the snow the night before, it was beautiful groomed corduroy all the way, with some great powder to the sides of the pistes. I probably should have put my nice, fat all-mountain Salomon Tornado Extremes through a darn sight more gruelling test than I did, but as the first run since April last year (not to mention testing the local schnapps the night before) I think I can be forgiven for restraint on the powder-front.
It was a pretty blinking cold -9 degrees up top but gloriously sunny. My teeth were definitely the coldest part of me because I was grinning so much to be back on the slopes. We worked our way around the slopes of Rosshütte with Markus (the head of the Tourist Office for the region, no less) as our knowledgeable and charming guide and ripped down virtually empty pistes towards queue-less chairs, only stopping for a brief and very welcome der Kakao mit ruhm at the Rosshütte restaurant. As well as the new café and terrace, the lifts have been upgraded over the last three years to speedy six-chairs, although the Seefeld Jochbahn is still a dinky, red phonebox style, 12-person gondola. Although it's a bit of a tight squeeze, it was worth it for the views over the spectacular Karwendel Nature Park to the northeast and Wetterstein mountains, not to mention the only black run of this small area.
Over the other side of the valley at Hamelekopf, we could see some interesting lines down a jaggedy couloir, but the off-piste can be unpredictable and it is not readily encouraged. However, the top of the route yielded some beautiful, ungroomed powder and we had a great run down to lunch at the Reitherjoch Alm. We rounded off a feast with a massive shared skillet of 'Kaiserschmarrn' - a whopping Tirolean caramelised, fluffy pancake, liberally soused with icing sugar and served with apple puree. A main course in its own right, it's utterly delicious but probably dangerous to the waistline - a few spoonfuls each were more than enough to send us pelting through the trees (to the alarm of the locals walking up) and the final downhill run towards town.
A quick scoot across town and a boot swap later, we were kitted out and ready for our first foray into langlaufing. There are two styles of cross-country, classic and skating, and we were going for the former, apparently the most efficient way to move across a flat area of snow - although maybe not the way I was doing it! The Cross Country Academy in Seefeld is situated by the picturesque Seekirchl right by the Olympic centre and one of the many cross country trails. It is run by former Olympic medallist, Martin Tauber and its team of yellow-clad tall, tanned langlauf instructors are easily spotted around the tracks. The upside of this is great tuition but the downside is that they make it looks so damn easy while you're slipping Bambi-like across the frozen plains.
Although the boots are a lot comfier than their Alpine counterparts, I felt horribly precarious perched on top of my ridiculously thin skis and it's hard not to revert to Alpine techniques, which frankly don't work here! Settling into tramlines cut in the snow of the trail made it a lot easier to keep boot, knee, and nose in line while perfecting the walking arabesques. By the time I'd worked up enough steam to light up Oxford Street though, I started to get into some sort of rhythm, swinging one arm forward, the opposite leg back and slightly bouncing on the middle of my ski to prevent myself slipping backwards. (they are softly rippled on the underside which is supposed to help) This was fine on level ground (after a fashion) but far less effective when faced with a slope. However, after an hour and 40 minutes we'd done a mind-boggling 7km around the circular course, stopping only to look at the Olympic ski jump and check out the new biathlon range. All in all, it was a huge fun, but I fear in will be agony tomorrow despite spending half an hour recovering in the steam room of the hotel!
Arabella travelled to Tirol in Austria with Headwater on the 'Cross Country Skiing in Leutasch and Seefeld' holiday. Prices of start at £1,009 per person for seven nights 4* accommodation at the Hotel Xander including breakfast and dinner, ski equipment hire (skis, boots and poles) and a guided ski programme with a Headwater resident representative. With flights and transfers, prices start from £1,187 per person Gatwick to Innsbruck with Thomson Airways, or can be arranged from most UK airports. For more information about the Olympiaregion Seefeld and Leutasch see www.seefeld.com. Click here for our Cross-country skiing guides. It's nice to know French airports can be rubbish too - 11/1/2010 10:08by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Sean Newsom, one of Welove2ski's editors, reports on a long journey home from Tignes on January 10, 2010
"You're probably better off going to Milan," said our rep, as he waved us off, "because it's going to be chaos here for a while." Having seen the queues for food at the cafe in Chambéry, and the numbers of bored skiers sitting on the floor, I reckoned he had a point. After a five-hour drive to Italy I wasn't so sure. This of course was on top of the two-and-a-half hour transfer from Tignes to Chambéry. Not easy when you've got a 20-month toddler to amuse. However, the trials of the day didn't dent our enthusiasm for the holiday we'd just had - one of the key elements of which was the Chalet Corniche (pictured below) where we stayed. It's brand new, very nearly ski-in, ski-out, and it sits right on top of the best commercial area in the whole of valley: the parade of shops and bars in Tignes-le-Lac which includes the Chalet du Pain (excellent sandwiches for cheap midday lunches), and the Clin d'Oeil restaurant. The bedrooms are much bigger than average too, and have nice views up the valley - and there's even a lift (a joy if you've got young children to organise, and an attraction in its own right if you're 20 months old and fascinated by machines, as our boy is). The only real drawback is its undersized nursery. The nannies got round that by taking our their charges to a bigger Esprit nursery elsewhere in the resort, but if you're bringing a baby or a toddler and you'd like them to be cared for in situ, you might want to look elsewhere.
What's more, Esprit has done justice to the building by putting in an A-team of staff, who do a much better job than anyone has a right to expect at this price level. Russell Cooch, the chef, is a star, and every member of the team seemed to genuinely like children. It wasn't just me who was impressed, either; the chalet was full last week of families who were veterans of family skiing holidays. Several said they'd be coming back.
Click here for our Tignes resort report. Skiing in Watership Down 2000 - 10/1/2010 21:54by Felice Hardy, editor Reporting on the snow conditions in a rather unusual resort - January 10, 2010. We've been snowbound in our 'chalet' in the hills of Hampshire for the past six days. I've walked in it, measured it, even driven on it with and without snowchains. But today was the day for skiing it. We were up bright and early and my daughter Izzi was so excited that she didn't even change out of her pyjamas.
Off to ski the Hampshire Hills The half a kilometre run from my garden is a gentle downhill slope, and you could just about put in a couple of quick turns and schuss the rest. No welcoming chair-lift or even a rope-tow, so we put our skis on our shoulders and hiked up to the first blue run. The last time I skied on snow of this particular quality was 15 years ago in Bulgaria, although the off-piste in Hampshire was considerably deeper. The only obstacles were my three excited avalanche dogs... A big white cloud has eaten our ski resort - 9/1/2010 17:00by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Sean Newsom, one of Welove2ski's editors, reports on fresh snow and zero visibility, in Tignes on January 9, 2010
It's changeover day in Tignes for most guests, and this morning the resort was all but deserted. If the sun had been out, we'd have had a day of days, blasting about on the superb terrain here. But instead we spent our time skiing repeated laps of the Double M piste above Val Claret, with our noses a couple of inches above our ski tips, wondering what the hell was coming up next. I guess it was good for our technique... Still, at least it's looking good for next week. At least 15cm of fresh snow fell today, and there was more over in Val d'Isère. It was cold too. When the skies do clear eventually, there will be another day of skiing to match the superb conditions of January 5 and 6. Shame there aren't a few more tree-lined pistes in Tignes, though. But that's the price you pay when you book a high-altitude, snowsure resort... Click here for our Tignes resort report. Sam pulls a sicky - 8/1/2010 18:31by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Sean Newsom, one of Welove2ski's editors, wonders just how ill his son is in Tignes, January 8, 2010
I had 90 white-knuckle minutes with him in a white-out here over lunch. We blasted over pistes at speeds I'd usually reserve for a day of immaculate sunshine, and every now and again Kev would stop and make a couple of spot-on points about my technique. Then we'd blast off again and I'd follow in his wake saying things like "f***, f***, f***, f***, f*** as the piste served up the usual zero-visibility suprises. It was like taking a cold bath. Shocking, in its way, but also deeply invigorating.
Not before we'd been tobogganing, of course...Sam's really starting to enjoy that.
Click here for our Tignes resort report. From the Dolomites to Watership Down Deux Mille - 8/1/2010 10:14by Peter Hardy, blogger at large There's 26cm of fresh powder and all runs are open - and that's just in Hampshire at Watership Down Deux Mille. Over here in San Cassiano in the Sudtirol we've picked up the same amount overnight and it's still snowing like billy-o.
It's off to work we go in San Cassiano today It's all a dramatic change from yesterday when I continued my gastro tour of Altia Badia. Nothing too strenuous, you understand. I paused for a light lunch of spaghetti with lobster at Club Moritzino and later an eight-course dinner from remarkable chef Norbert Niederkofler (pictured below) at the two-star Michelin St Hubertus in the Hotel Rosa Alpine in San Cassiano. The pigeon with tempura snails was a treat, I can tell you. Sadly, I should point out that I don't normally live like this. On the stroke of midnight the fairytale crashed. Now I'm back to spag bol and baked beans.
Chef Norbert Niederkofler at the St Hubertus How much of the Sella Ronda they manage to open today remains to be seen. But it's only of academic interest to me because I'm changing resorts. I'm leaving snowy San Cassiano for equally snowy Watership Down 2000...Gatwick and trains permitting.
Pictured above: tree-skiing at Watership Down 2000 Liquid chocolate? Or liquid gold? - 7/1/2010 17:56by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Sean Newsom, one of Welove2ski's editors is temporarily lost for words in the Espace Killy, January 7, 2010
These two hot chocolates - which came straight out of a machine at the press of a button - cost EIGHT EUROS in a restaurant on the Rocher de Bellevarde above Val d'Isère. EIGHT EUROS. Three gulps and they were gone. They weren't even enough to warm us up. We had to buy a tiny bowl of very mediocre soup for another seven euros before we started feeling human again. Admittedly, it was very cold today -15C without factoring in the wind, so after a couple of ill-judged chairs my wife and I were more or less blue. But all the same - what are they thinking? Are there really enough millionaire Russians in the world to keep their tills ringing for an entire season? Do they want the rest of us never to come back?
Click here for our Tignes resort report. Eating the South Tyrol - 6/1/2010 22:36by Peter Hardy, blogger at large One of our editors is eating his way around a corner of the Sudtirol. Here's his menu-of-the-day from San Cassiano.
It hasn't snowed here since New Year's day, although it might tonight - judging by the storm clouds brewing over the Brenner Pass and Austria this afternoon. But who cares? The pistes are perfeto and the panorama of the Dolomites remains as gloriously majestic as ever. Skiing down Forcelles today and looking up at those cathedral-like crags that would have glowed pink in the sunset had there been a visible one, I can't help but think of Sylvester Stallone in Cliffhanger. They said it was in Wyoming. No it wasn't, it was here. It's pretty comforting to know that Rambo in reality doesn't like heights. When he was on the rock-face they had to build wooden screens to filter out his vertigo.
The notorious Val Mesdi Across the valley the Val Mesdi, that cleft in the Sella Ronda that runs from Passo Pordoi to Colfosco, looked just about skiable, but uninviting. Anyway my heart - or rather my stomach - was largely (and that's the operative word today) indoors rather than out. I'm eating my way around Alta Badia. You can, I am assured, ski the Sella Ronda in under three hours if you don't stop and there aren't any queues. Doing it my way will take you at least a week. The chefs of a dozen Michelin-starred restaurants in this delightful part of the Sudtirol have each created a different dish for a similar number of mountain restaurants. I thought it would be fun - and someone employed me to - go around and see what they all taste like. My Altia Badia instructor friend Gunther agreed to act as guide. He just had no idea what he was in for: grappa marinated trout at 10.30am doesn't feature in the ski school manual.
By midday and a bit of octopus carpaccio we'd speeded up - largely thanks to the different grappa we'd had to consume along the way. I mean when the chef's offering, it would be churlish to refuse, wouldn't it? The only way to cope was to give the region a proper work out with some fast GS turns on the mainly blue and red runs. San Cassiano - La Villa - Corvara - Colfosco - Selva Gardena...I'd forgotten quite what a stupendous area this is. The runs are mainly intermediate, best suited to families and fast cruisers. The cucina is expert.
Suggested uses for schoolboy French: no.1 - 6/1/2010 17:31by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Sean Newsom, one of Welove2ski's editors, gives his A-level French an airing in Tignes, January 6, 2010 Bloody grateful for my schoolboy French today. It meant that I could shout down the splenetic Frenchman who skied over the back of my skis this afternoon, sent us both tumbling, and then attempted to blame me for the accident. On reflection, I may have shouted a bit too long and too hard. People stopped to watch. But he shouldn't have tried to lecture me on how I should watch where I was going when I was below him, and had no idea he was there. And a part of me loved watching him switch from pompous "I own this piste" mode to a series of sheepish shrugs. I think he even went "bof" at one point. What an a*se. There's a lot of this kind of thing about though, isn't there? People skiing too fast on crowded pistes and somehow imagining that the people below them have eyes in the back of their head. They think that by skiing fast they're proving how brilliant they are - but usually they don't have the skill to adapt to sudden changes in another skier's line (or, heaven forbid, a snowboarder falling over), and they're inches away from trouble the whole way down. All they're really proving is what morons they are. The crash threw me off my game for a while, which was a shame, because today was by common consent the best so far this season: cloudless, cold, and blessed with near-perfect snow. Even the crud off-piste was soft and bouncy. I can't think of a better resort to be in than Tignes on a day like this...
Click here for our Tignes resort report. A (half) day to remember - 5/1/2010 16:03by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Sean Newsom, one of Welove2ski's editors, reports on snow conditions in Tignes, France - January 5, 2010
Woof woof woof! The snow that fell on Sunday night and Monday was every bit as good as we'd hoped for: light, dry, fluffy, and (for the most part) deep enough to hide bumps, rocks and ice. Only on the steepest pistes and the busiest off-piste routes were there any nasty suprises. There was sunshine too...
I was on an aged pair of 174cm Rossignol Bandit b78s this morning, which were too short and narrow for the powder given my height and weight (I'm just over six foot and weigh 90kgs). They were pretty flighty too - much happier making snappy turns on piste than powering through the crud. I was much happier once I'd switched to newer, longer, 180cm Bandit SC 80s. Okay, so they're not much wider than the b78s under the boot, but they're a much heavier and more solid ski, and the extra length gave me loads more power and stability. It serves me right for not bothering to change them first thing... Problem was, once I'd got the skis sorted, it was time to stop - and pick up our 20-month son, Sam, from the nursery at our chalet; the brand-new Corniche. But of course it wasn't really a problem - my wife and I were both missing him after three hours. Our chairlift conversation had switched from talking about where to ski next to reminiscing about the funny stuff he'd been up to the night before. In the end, the balance of the day - four hours of superb skiing, followed by an afternoon playing in the snow with Sam - was near-perfect.
Click here for our Tignes resort report. Plenty of fresh powder in La Plagne - 5/1/2010 10:40by Kat Boland, blogger at large Our new snogger, Kat Boland, has sent us her first blog on the snow conditions in La Plagne - January 5, 2010. While we wait for her snogspot to go live, we've incorporated it into our Editors' blog. Today the sun is shining in La Plagne and with plenty of fresh powder yesterday and last night, conditions are great. Hopefully the weather will settle down from now on as over the past couple of weeks temperatures have ranged from +4 to -20 at 1800 meters. Things are definitely in full swing in La Plagne now. I enjoyed an excellent New Year's bash with my mates at Bellcote last week and all the bars seem to be packed every night now, which is great after a very quite start to the season. Wifi issues at my chalet have meant this is my first snog but it'll be the first of many! That's all for now. Bon ski! Click on the link for our La Plagne resort report The long drive home - 28/12/2009 23:05by Peter Hardy, blogger at large
Izzi Hardy on her last day in Val Welove2ski editor heads for home at the end of his car journey to the snow. Time for the long drive home. All good things come to an end - but Christmas week in Val d'Isère seemed to drain away even quicker than usual in a riot of outstanding snow, food, and drink. Sunday morning found me heading down the hill in the Skoda, with a family cargo of luggage, skis, boots, Christmas presents and one passenger. While the other three flew quickly home on a VIP/Snowline charter flight from Geneva, I headed for Chamonix with my ski racing son. Max is spending a few months washing dishes and working as a teaching assistant at the British Ski Academy in Les Houches. In return he gets technique training from Malcolm Erskine and his coaches. This should sharpen up his performance when he returns to the skicross race circuit later in the season. Lying awake on my last night in Val I'm thinking: "Will I have to put on chains to get out of town?" I'd sell my own grandmother - if I had one - to avoid putting on chains. In the event, 4x4 on summer tyres were enough to get me up the slope from garage to chalet. Despite all the new snow, the road to the valley had been snowploughed clean. We cut on the back road from Albertville through the Val d'Arly on a beautiful sunny Sunday morning past Flumet, Praz-sur-Arly, and Megève, and around St Gervais to join the Autoroute Blanche for the last few kilometres to Les Houches.
Max and the Skoda Goodbye to Max, his five pairs of skis, two pairs of boots, waxing table, work box, oversized suitcase, two backpacks and the biggest ski bag you've ever seen. I swear the Skoda breathed a sigh of relief as I set the satnav for Tunel sous La Manche. I've done the drive-in-one more times than I care to remember - and after each I say 'never again'. But this time, to my astonishment, I almost enjoyed it. In all, including the leisurely meander to Les Houches with a supermarket stop along the way, it took just 14 hours to cover the 780 miles. Did I exceed the 130kph speed limit? Maybe occasionally, but not by much. The cops were out in force on motorways that - apart from the usual short stretch around Dijon - were almost traffic free.
On the road The Tunnel was a contrastingly different experience to the Eurostuck chaos on the outward journey. With a Flexi ticket, I'd have been on the train within three minutes of arrival at the near deserted terminal - were it not for Amsterdam-Detroit bomber. Security was at its highest at both the French and English customs posts. Well, not actually at the French - they'd turned out the lights and gone home when I arrived at 9.30pm. "What's that you've got in the box?" asked the English customs guy, pointing at my ski box. "Skis," I said. He nodded. I expect he sees a lot of those. The real joy of the Skoda is the comfortable, stable ride with 3.6 litres of V6 engine under the bonnet. My only dislike remains its unquenchable thirst. I started with the 60 litre tanks three-quarters full (on the way out I topped up south of Chambery). I had to buy 67 euros of petrol at Bourg-en-Bresse, the same again south of Rheims, and - in order to get home to Hampshire - a final £55 worth at Maidstone. But overall it's a great ride. I particularly like the artful bonnet catch. Click it one way and it opens just that: a saloon car bonnet. Double click and you suddenly find yourself the owner of spacious hatchback with tons of room for skis and all the other essential winter clobber. I'd buy one, if someone else bought the petrol. I dropped off the Klack and Go snowchains and snowSocks at Snowchains.co.uk which, apart from being a website, is also a warehouse in Borough Green near Sevenoaks, and was home and in bed by midnight. "What kept you?" said my wife Felice. A hot date with a very fast car. For more on driving see our Driving to the Alps feature. Christmas Day blog - 25/12/2009 15:20by Peter Hardy, blogger at large
Peter Hardy on piste this morning Father Christmas needed sleigh chains to get into and out of Val d'Isere today as winter arrived with a vengeance. Stocking presents were quickly cast aside in favour of catching the first lift, as as pisteurs did a good job of progressively opening pistes in the teeth of the blizzard. Val was already skiing at its Christmas best. And the best just got better.
However the new snow came with a fresh danger warning: "Cough," said off-piste guru Henry Schniewind , "that's all you've got to do to trigger an avalanche right now." At the time we were safely ensconced in a bar, so I guess he meant outside. "The snowpack is very unstable with lots of slabs. With a local warning of 4/5 You need to be very careful indeed.". In Tignes a girl in the ski patrol was badly injured by a slab that crushed her against a piste machine and in Chamonix a snowboarder was killed in a slide on the Tete de Balme. Resorts across France and Switzerland urged skiers and snowboarders not to stray from the piste until the pack has stabilised.
Max Hardy sorting out his sister's goggles. Photo: Barney Hardy. Up on the mountain visibility was strictly limited and high winds meant that lifts were prone to sudden closure. This afternoon skiers were trapped for an hour in the Aeroski gondola coming back up from Tignes Le Lac. This caused considerable discomfort for at least one unlucky skier. Still, he did have a water bottle, and as as the picture below shows, not all precipitation fell as snow.
Caught short in the Aeroski goldola. See our Val d'Isère resort report here Christmas by car - 21/12/2009 21:08by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Welove2ski editor Peter Hardy and ski racer son Max continue their Christmas journey to Val d'Isère by car across snowbound Europe to the Alps.
It's 8.30pm in a freezing cold service station somewhere in Champagne. It's over 14 hours since we left home and we've come relatively nowhere. By now - without Eurostuck and still falling snow - I'd planned to be tucking into dinner somewhere near Lyon 300 miles further south. But we're tired. It's been a long day. To find a hotel I should, of course, have started looking at least two hours ago. But it's never like that, is it? In summer they're all booked up. In winter, they don't really care if you stay or not. Rural France hibernates. In small towns across the country they've normally drunk their cocoa, donned their Wincyettes and turned out the lights by 9pm. But, thanks to the red Michelin Guide we strike exceptionally lucky. Vitry Le Francois, a historic old staging post before they built the motorway, is just 20km away. "Oui," says Madame at the Restaurant de la Cloche: "if you can get here by 9pm we will give you dinner, but not a moment later." And yes, they have rooms. The Skoda Superb senses a warm garage billet out of the falling snow and we look forward to a succulent coq au vin and a bottle of the local finest. Wonderfully, that's what happens. Sometimes, not always when touring across Europe, you hit the jackpot. Meanwhile Marco, my Dutch friend, who is on the way from Amsterdam with his family to house-sit for us in Hampshire is still, after 12 hours, stuck in Calais awaiting a ferry. Yes, the kids are tired and hungry. He doesn't seem to want to hear about our dinner and the wine. The next morning we push on southwards in deteriorating weather conditions. Just getting back to the autoroute through drifting snow is an ordeal that takes all my concentration. But the four-wheel drive Skoda rises Superbly to the challenge. It has only two apparent faults. The first is its thirst - the 3.5 litre engine drinks petrol at roughly the same rate as your average busload of Germans downs litres of beer at the Munich Oktoberfest. We filled up in Kent, we filled up in Champagne, we filled up in Burgundy, we filled up Savoie - and each tank holds 60 litres! Has this car got diabetes? 20-24 MPG is not the kind of consumption figure you wanted to boast about in Copenhagen last week. Th second fault is slightly more unexpected. Despite adding an Arctic concentration of anti-freeze to the screenwasher reservoir we freeze at -3C and the temperature is -9C. The amount of salt on the road obscures vision within minutes of each stop. But while less robust cars sliver along in the slow lane we power on towards Val d'Isere at maximum speed. The worry, with this much snow in central France, is how we are going to get up the hill in the dark when we finally arrive. Yes, we've got our special 9mm low profile Klack and Go snowchains provided by Snowchains.co.uk which are the only ones that the Superb will take. But I've been there before. With an unfamiliar car and unfamiliar chains I know it's going to be a long and bitterly cold Klack before we Go. We've been in heavy snow for 600 miles from Hampshire to Lyons...but then it disappears. Typical really, when you're going on a ski holiday. We should have stayed at home and given the Salomons a go on Watership Down. But by Bourg-St-Maurice dry snow is falling again. Despite summer tyres, the final climb up to Val proves to be a doddle and we finally arrive in a resort that is covered - deliciously - in fresh snow. We even make it uphill on packed road to our chalet with not so much as a whisper of a slither. Driving? Well done, Skoda. Worth it, really. We've got all the presents and the skis out here with no weight restrictions...Oh and my friend Nick Morgan from Le Ski is still sitting in a snowbound Manchester Airport. Happy Christmas.
View from Snowline's Chalet Santons Solaise window. For more on driving see our Driving to the Alps feature. Eurostuck - 21/12/2009 08:18by Peter Hardy, blogger at large On Saturday one of Welove2ski's editors, Peter Hardy, set off to drive to Val d'Isère for Christmas, choosing one of the worst days in the history of Eurotunnel to make his journey. Here's his story. Leaves on line....wrong type of snow....and now wrong type of air! Britain on the rails? You couldn't make it up. The first reports were coming in long before dawn as my ski racing son Max and I left Hampshire with eight pairs of skis and Christmas presents in our laden Skoda Superb. 2000 Eurostar passengers on five trains had been trapped overnight inside the tunnel. All because the locos couldn't take the transition from the extreme cold air of northern France to the humid atmosphere underground. Condensation fried the electronics. "Six hours," said Eurostar, when the BBC finally forced a reluctant comment from them. "14 hours on the train from Disneyland Paris," said one 'survivor'. "They turned off the power and told us not to breathe too deeply to conserve oxygen. It was very frightening." As a disaster-management and public-relations exercise by the train company it was a failure of epic proportions. "Poor train passengers", we thought, as we drove across snowy Kent. But what about Eurotunnel and us drivers? We learned that a 32-mile traffic jam had developed on the M20 but there was no news as to whether or not we should continue. If the BBC knew that cars could use the tunnel they failed to mention it at all.
Eurotunnel applied itself with equal vigour to the task of reducing road problems by supplying urgently-needed information to would-be travellers. Their website gave no news at all beyond 'delays'. However, it offered a passenger information line. We rang, and amazingly got through. "If you want information," said the recorded voice, "ring this number..." It was the same number that I had just rung. We decided to divert for breakfast with my daughter in snowbound Tunbridge Wells - and promptly, with deep embarrassment, got stuck. She lives up a steep drive, but surely the 4x4 Skoda with its enormously powerful 3.5 litre engine would power up it? No it wouldn't. We slithered sideways into the hedge. I'd borrowed snowchains from Kent-based Snowchains.co.uk. When they'd arrived at my home by courier the previous day, I'd hardly expected to carry them back to Kent and then be forced to fit them within 10 miles of the company's warehouse at Borough Green. But then this was clearly not proving to be a normal journey to the Alps. However, there was another solution. Time to test the Weissenfels WeissSock. It's "the smoothest ride ever on snow-covered roads" says the advert. This is a fabric sock that slips over the car wheel and will, I'm assured, get you out of trouble - although it's no substitute for chains. Wrong. I'm sure it works beautifully on the flat. But you have to be on the flat in order to fit it. "How are you going to get out to Val if you can't even get out of Tunbridge Wells?" asked my daughter's boyfriend. Shut up and go and cook breakfast. Finally with the aid of a bit of body power, the car was restored unharmed to the main road. According to the radio, the jam on the M20 goes all the way back from the coast to Maidstone. This was when the brain kicked in. What if we were to head down to Romney Marsh, wind our way on A and B roads to Folkestone - and then approach the Tunnel in the opposite direction to the traffic? It just might work. And it did. The rush in missing 31.5 miles of gridlock and joining the traffic just 600m before the Tunnel must be about the same as completing the Hahnenkamm course in Kitzbuhel and finding you're still on two skis and not in hospital. We inch towards check in, but our troubles aren't yet over. "Owing to severe weather conditions on the other side, the French are restricting the number of cars they will allow on the roads," says the lady at the kiosk. We've heard it all now. And we don't believe a word of it. Sure, it's snowy on the other side, but once we hit the A26 and point the Skoda towards Rheims and Lyon the road is clear. it's still bitterly cold; -9c on the car's exterior thermometer. But, finally, we're properly on our way to the Alps. What a day. Huez the snow? It's here! - 17/12/2009 20:10by Roger Bray, blogger at large Our News Editor Roger Bray reports on the snow conditions in Alpe d'Huez - December 17, 2009 It has hardly been a vintage start to the season in Alpe d'Huez but low temperatures ensured some excellent skiing on a limited number of pistes this week - and even sustained an adventure or two off them.
A metre plus of natural snow, immaculately prepared, made for pleasant, long runs between Pic Blanc at 3300m and the Plan des Marmottes, 1000m lower. Below that, where the resort's beginner and intermediate runs fan out, there was 30-40cm at best. But snow canon, which cover roughly 25% of its 240km of pistes, worked furiously at night. As a result, though there were some hard packed stretches, there were remarkably few stones or bare patches. Off piste conditions varied wildly. Even between its lower pistes, boot clip deep, unresisting snow lingered between lower pistes. Watch out though if forecasts of a few extra centimetres this weekend and more from Tuesday on prove accurate. There might just be enough to hide barely concealed rocks whose tell tale molehill shapes allowed me to steer a safe path.
Further up the hill you didn't know what to expect. With an instructor, Christophe, I side slipped between tight rocks below the Mine de l'Herpie to emerge into short but exquisite little couloir full of near perfect powder. Shangri-la. But later, after a long traverse to the Couloir Falken, we progressed on juddering edges from frozen ruts and lumps to wind pack which even threw my nimble guide off balance. 'You encountered all snow conditions in one run there', he observed afterwards, as I shook snow out of my pockets.
The resort comes in for some flak for vulnerability of its main, south facing bowl to sudden spells of warm weather but that's less of a problem in deep mid-winter and this week with sunshine and freezing temperatures (it's hovered around -8 degrees during the day) it has been a positive advantage. Views from the Pic Blanc observation platform were stunning, with Mont Blanc visible in the far distance and Mont Ventoux, like Alpe d'Huez itself, the climax of frequently used and notoriously arduous stages of the Tour de France, floating in a sea of cloud. According to Christophe you can see 20% of the surface area of France from here - though you might take that with a pinch of salt.
You can also swallow less than perfect conditions more readily when prices are not as outrageous as in some other resorts we could name. An omelette aux fines herbes for 10.80 euros or a half litre of beer for 3.50 euros seemed relatively reasonable. Many runs remained closed. It was not possible to ski to Vaujany or take the Sarenne tunnel route - claimed to be the longest black run in the Alps - though there was talk that the latter might open this weekend. I did make it down to Villard Reculas, at a mere 1480m, without feeling any scraping of skis though low cloud in the valley and a pre-Christmas absence of other skiers made it an eerie experience.
Visibility was so good I skied until almost 5pm, finishing with a flat run out past the stables where horses used to tow skiers in the resort's latest après-ski activity - ski joring - are kept. And there was enough snow to ski right to the door of tour operator Snowline's impressive new complex of five chalets. Built at the top of the resort area at about 1870m there are a couple of fast turns from the lifts, are full of the scent of fresh timber and are already booked solid for Christmas. But more of them elsehwere on the site, shortly. Click here for our Alpe d'Huez resort report. This is not snow - 16/12/2009 07:08by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Sean Newsom, one of Welove2ski's editors, reports on snow conditions in Seefeld, in the Austrian Tirol - December 15, 2009
Winter has come suddenly to Seefeld. At the beginning of last week, in the grip of another &8$**!@ing thaw, they were wondering if it was ever going to get cold here. Then, on Thursday and Friday, the temperatures started to drop, and maybe 30cm of the white stuff blanketed the town. Now, with the trees heavily-laden with what looks like frozen blancmange, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's been like this for months. Up on the slopes, the snow cannons have been working flat out, and mixed with the natural snow, they've produced a pretty convincing skiing surface. It's a little bit scratchy in places, and on the lowest slopes you need to keep your eyes peeled for the odd ice cookie. But provided your edges are sharp, and you stay loose and focused, you can have a lot of fun here. What's more, temperatures are expected to stay below freezing for at least a week, and there's a little more snow in the forecast; so things can only get better in the run-up to Christmas.
Yesterday, it appeared to be snowing, too. Big fat lazy flakes drifted from the clouds, but I was told repeatedly that this was only fog snow, and it didn't really count. So I guess the frosting of 10cm of the lightest, fluffiest non-snow I found to the side of the pistes didn't really count, either. Of course, I realise it probably won't make any difference to the snow depth once it's settled. But that didn't stop me having the odd yeeeeeeeeeeeahhhhhhhh moment when I floated through it.
Visibility was a bit of an issue in places. If I'd skied bent double with my nose 15cm above the pistes I still wouldn't have been able to see where I was going. But at the very top of Seefeld's ski area you could just get above the clouds...
It may have been -15C but no-one I saw was complaining. There wasn't a breath of wind, and the air was thick with sparkling ice crystals. I don't know where they came from - maybe they drifting upwards from the top of the clouds - but it was one of the most beautiful things I've seen in the mountains since, well, last Wednesday, when I skied Selva Gardena in the Italian Dolomites, and stared slack-jawed at the sheer cliffs of the Sella massif.
Up here, the snow was squeaky and super-grippy too, which makes me think that conditions in Austria's higher resorts must be superb at the moment. Seefeld is home to around 48km of pistes, which is modest by anyone's standards. But then downhill skiing is only half the point of coming here. This cute little pedestrianised town is one of the Alpine capitals of 'other' wintersports. If it involves snow or ice, you can try it in Seefeld, and no visit would be complete without taking off your ski boots and test-driving something different. Yesterday morning, it was the biathlon for me...
Of course, like most downhillers, I've always regarded cross-country skiers as the bottom-feeders of the wintersports world. But I have to say that having it tried it, finally, I'm not sure... Skiing the big pudding - 12/12/2009 10:06by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Sean Newsom, one of Welove2ski's editors, reports on snow conditions in Kronplatz, Italy - December 11, 2009
Yesterday I skied the big pudding. It's called Kronplatz or Plan de Corones, depending on which side of it you live. To the south, it's Plan de Corones. To the north, east or west it's Kronplatz, and if that sounds confusing - well, that's because you're in the South Tirol. This part of the world used to be Austrian, now it's Italian, and that's before you even get to the Ladini, who were here first, and who tolerate the strutting and preening of German and Italian speakers with amused indifference. It certainly adds cultural interest to a skiing trip.
But back to the pudding. It's a vast dome of rock, flattish on top and steepish at the sides, and lifts and pistes scale three of its flanks. I can't think of anywhere else quite like it in the skiing world. There's no "resort" as such - rather a series of villages scattered around the base, and it attracts skiers from all over Europe. It's like a league of nations up there - especially just before Christmas when the hotels are cheap. Czechs, Poles, Russians, Croatians, Italians and Germans - they were all up there on December 11. And I think I was probably the only Brit. What's the draw? Simple. Kronplatz makes you feel good about your skiing. The pistes are wide, the grooming painstaking and the lifts super-quick. In this respect, it's rather like skiing in Colorado. What's more, thanks to the speed of the lifts, you're likely to get twice as much vertical in here as you would in your average Alpine resort.
They also know a thing or two about snowmaking here. I met the son of the man who, in 1980, bought a Standard Model Snowmaking Machine from Hedco in New Jersey (for $60,500), and installed Europe's first-ever snow-making system - at the village of San Vigilio on the southern side of Plan de Corones. Ever since, the people here have been learning how best to lay down a good solid base of the white stuff, and improve its quality. And before you sniff too loudly at the thought of man-made snow, bear two things in mind. First is that before the snow cannons arrived, Kronplatz could only really be sure of opening on January 6 each winter. Now it's the beginning of December. Second is that while lower resorts elsewhere in Europe are struggling with their snow cover, Kronplatz offers good skiing all the way down to the bottom of the lifts, at just 1160m. Okay, so it's been lucky with the weather. Like the Val Gardena, it got a good dump of natural snow at the start of December and a top-up earlier in the week. But even so, the consistency of the snow cover here, so early in the season, is remarkable. A lot of famous resorts could learn a thing or two about looking after their skiing guests from the guys here.
Unfortunately, the most interesting runs here - the north-facing blacks which drop down to Reischach/Riscone through a thigh-burning 1200m - were closed, but I had a couple of wonderful top-to-bottom descents on the south and east faces. The snow was grippy most of the way down, and the only seriously icy patches were on slopes that had a lot of sun. There are a couple of drawbacks. After a while, the pistes get a big same-y: and despite some gorgeous views from the top as the sun sets over the Dolomites, it lacks the stunning, in-your-face scenery of Selva Gardena, where I skied on Wednesday (see my last blog). No doubt about it, I'd go to Selva rather than Kronplatz, given the choice - but then, I'd take Kronplatz over a lot of other 'budget' destinations and smaller resorts - so long as I had my own transport and could commute to somewhere like Corvara (less than an hour's drive) on days 4, 5 and 6 of the trip to add some variety.
Click here for our Kronplatz resort report. Owwww. My eyes hurt. (My legs too.) - 9/12/2009 16:03by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Sean Newsom, one of Welove2ski's editors, reports on snow conditions in Selva Gardena - December 9, 2009
Oh my sainted aunt...Will you just look at this place?
I always seem to get lucky with the weather when I ski the Dolomites, and this trip is no exception. Yesterday morning it was raining - as it was in many parts of the Alps. But then the wind swung round into the north, the rain turned to snow, and upper slopes of the Val Gardena (in which Selva is set) got a 30cm top-up of the white stuff. This was on top of the 80cm that fell 10 days ago. Then, this morning, my first in the resort, the skies cleared - and suddenly we have perfect winter weather.
It's my first day back on skis, and I couldn't have had a better reintroduction to the slopes. On the Plan de Gralba, above about 1800m, the pistes have been in superb condition, and the snow as soft and as grippy as you could hope for.
Just like everywhere in the Alps, they've had a topsy-turvy autumn and early winter here, and they've laid down almost no man-made snow. Almost all the cover has come from the sky, and yet there's not a pebble in sight. Lower down, things are a bit icy - on the steeper runs into the valley - but nothing too serious. There's no more snow in the immediate forecast for the Dolomites, but with temperatures now forecast to plummet, and stay low for at least nine days, they'll be able to get lots of snow laid down from the cannons at least.
I even got to ski the Saslong - which hasn't yet been closed in preparation for the World Cup festival here on December 18-19. Oss, my guide, who's from Selva, duly blew my mind half-way down when he showed me the camel humps, which racers routinely jump during the World Cup Downhill. Apparently you need to get about 5m of height and travel 30-40m to clear them...
Oh yes, and there was time for a good lunch too! I think my judgement might be ever-so-slightly impaired by such a faultless first day back on the slopes - but I can't help thinking, again, that many Brits would have a lovely holiday here. The pistes are wide and confidence boosting. There are plenty of places to avoid the crowds (the golden rule is to steer clear of the Sella Ronda). The food's good. Beer is 3-4 euros for half a litre. And as for the scenery... Click here for our Selva Gardena resort report. Winter is here with a vengeance! - 30/11/2009 21:03by Peter Hardy, blogger at large ...in Val d'Isère and Courchevel - November 30 2009
Val d'Isère followed its gloriously sunny opening day at the weekend with 25cm of fresh snow at village level - and more on the way. I spent Monday cruising the pistes on the Bellevarde side of the resort in the powder with Welove2ski Snogger, Paddy O'Powder who joined me from his native Courmayeur for some truly tremendous skiing. The only problem was the visibility, which was about as limited as it gets. Not that this worried Paddy, who floated along on his Scott Missions as if it was a blue sky day. The good news is that the heavy snowfall is not confined to Val and neighbouring Tignes. Driving down from the resort this evening, snow turned briefly to sleet at Aime and then quickly returned to snow again at Moutiers. On Friday Courchevel 1650 didn't have a flake but this evening you needed chains or snow tyres with four-wheel drive to tackle the approach road. It was littered with abandoned cars belonging to drivers caught unprepared by the severity of the storm. The resort itself is half-buried under a fresh 20cm -and it's still snowing! Click here for our Courchevel resort report. We're back in business - 24/11/2009 18:19by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Welove2ski editor Peter Hardy is in Val d'Isère and Tignes for the second day this week.
Whoopeeeee! We're back in business. Val d'Isère is opening on schedule on Saturday - although the link to Tignes may take another couple of days - and if I can find my favourite Dynastar powder skis, which seem to have mysteriously disappeared during the summer, I'll be on that first lift. What a difference a day makes! Just 24 hours ago postponement seemed inevitable. But exactly as predicted on our Weather pages, rain at dusk turned to snow by dinner time and I awoke this morning to 15cm of fresh powder on roads and roofs. Winter's back with a vengeance. This morning we had to dig the cars out and the road up to Tignes was littered with cars being fitted with chains. High winds kept the funicular from running for 90 minutes, but the Tissot chair is up and running two weeks ahead of schedule this year and provided a useful warm-up. Up on the glacier conditions were ....er...challenging with a 50km blizzard blowing and visibility close to zero. It was hard to tell which way was up and which way was down. Our weather maps optimistically predicted a window of sunshine at midday. Just for 60 anxious minutes the Welove2ski forecast came under heavy fire from the 50 skiers taking part in the first of our November Ski Clinics. Oh ye of little faith! Some 54 minutes behind schedule the clouds clear to reveal the perfect winter panorama. I skied 1500m vertical without stopping all the way down to funicular station at Val Claret. November in the Alps never ceases to surprise - and the dying days of the month are full of promise with the prospect of a serious storm hitting the region on Sunday and Monday. Click here for our Val d'Isère resort report. In the beginning...Val d'Isère and Tignes - 23/11/2009 17:57by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Welove2ski editor Peter Hardy is in Val d'Isère and Tignes this week. Here's his first daily report.
Pat Zimmer of Top Ski teaching a class in Val today Snow in Whistler may be wonderful, but large chunks of Europe are struggling to catch up. Here in Val d'Isère the locals are looking skywards and praying that a last-minute dump will prevent the postponement of Saturday's opening of the resort - and the power of collective prayer may just pull it off. If you'd asked me this morning I'd have that said there wasn't a chance. But outside my window this evening it's raining and the temperature is dropping rapidly. I'm hoping to open my curtains to an all-white panorama tomorrow. Our Weather Maps suggest some substantial new snow tonight and tomorrow, but whether it will amount to enough for Val to fire up its the lift system and open the link to Tignes at the weekend is in the lap of the gods. The resort is expected to make a decision by Wednesday morning at the latest. Two weeks ago it all looked so promising and racers on the Grande Motte glacier over in Tignes were training in winter conditions, but a spell of extremely mild weather brought rain last week below 2200m. That said, I've spent seven hours on the glacier today and you can ski all the way down to the funicular station at Val Claret with not a rock or even a pebble in sight. The bottom half is hard and icy in places, but the top is in good shape. I've skied here on the same week for the past 13 years and I'd rank the current November conditions a 7/10. I started the day with 50 turns in soft fresh powder from the top of the cable-car. This seemed not a bad way at all to kick off my season. The 50 skiers who joined me on the first of our November Ski Clinics felt much the same - plenty to smile about despite a cold wind that made a mockery of the -5C temperature. The only problem was the close cloud cover which prevented me - perhaps luckily - from examining my tracks. By the time we hit the bottom at nearly 4pm it was snowing heavily, so tomorrow looks extremely promising. It's not Whistler, but I could find myself in 30cm of new overnight powder. I suppose a couple of hours of sunshine is just too much to ask for? Probably. Click here for our Val d'Isère resort report. Holy Cow! - 15/10/2009 09:47by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Where have all the flowers gone? They're buried beneath a layer of snow in Klosters.
Holy cow! Alpine farmers don't normally panic. Life is measured by the passing seasons and taken at a steady pace. But let's just say that there's been a bit of bovver here in Klosters this week. A dusting of snow at the weekend sent them up scurrying up into the high pastures to bring down the last of the cows. By Monday morning they were struggling through 30cm of fresh snow, bells a-clanking. Winter is here. Flowers are still blooming in chalet window boxes, but yesterday to reach the Alpenrösli mountain restaurant for lunch up an already covered summer road we needed 4x4 and chains - and, pinch yourself, it's mid-October.
This morning it's bitterly cold, mountain and village are white. Kids are building snowmen and sledging. Last night over dinner in there was brave talks of skinning up the Parsenn. The redoubtable Ruth Guler who runs the Hotel Wynegg and, in effect, the whole resort for the past half century, said: "you're crazy. There's no base yet. You'll break a leg. Let it settle." She's right, of course. Autumn weather is notoriously fickle and it could all go away. But this morning I get the distinct impression that that is not going to happen even in the village, let alone on the mountain. Ryanair, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways... - 1/10/2009 14:01by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog Sean Newsom, one of welove2ski's editors, has just been soaked for £40 because he missed Ryanair's deadline for on-line check-ins. Here, he reflects on the airline's business practices, which seem tailor-made to lose friends and irritate people.
A couple of days ago I was having a typical pre-flight morning. You know the kind of thing. Up at 6am; breakfast at my desk; last-minute work frenzy to meet a deadline; no time to pack. The fact that I had to check-in online for my Ryanair flight, before I left for the airport only added to tension. I hate all that fiddling about clicking boxes and praying that the printer isn't going to run out of ink half-way through. But if you travel with Ryanair these days, there's no alternative. From October 1, old-style, face-to-face check in at the airport is no longer possible. Eventually, three hours before the flight was due to depart, I logged onto ryanair.com (I live half an hour from the airport). And that's when I discovered that I'd missed its four-hour deadline for online check-in. "No problem," I was told when I rang the airline in a panic. "But there will be a charge..." Turns out that charge is £40. £40! Forty quid for the privilege of going to a little computer terminal in the middle of the floor of Stansted airport, punching in my details, and printing a flimsy paper boarding 'card'. The process took less than five minutes and involved no conversations with staff and no procedures which I could see took up anybody's time - and which might need to be paid for as a result. What's more I did it two hours before the flight departed, so there was no sense in which I was holding up the flight. Probably, it hadn't even landed yet. In other words, the £40 charge seemed to bear no relation to any costs Ryanair might incur processing my 'late' check in. Perhaps I'm wrong about that. I'm still waiting for Ryanair to give me a formal explanation of why this charge is so high. And of course, I'm well aware that the airline sent me an email warning me about the charge in the days before my flight (I'd been too busy to read it). But whatever the rationale there's no doubting how I felt in Stansted airport: like I'd been mugged.
Now I realise that in one sense this is good business practice: you attract people with cheap tickets, and then make your money from them with a host of add-ons and the odd outrageous penalty charge. But in another important sense it seems like commercial suicide. By catching people out at moments of maximum stress like this, the airline is making lots of enemies. It's certainly pissed me off. Hatred is not too strong a word to describe how I felt in those final three hours leading up to my flight, and judging by the feedback I've had on Twitter, it's an emotion that's widely felt by others in the ski community. We are, after all, particularly vulnerable to its system of charges, which add at least £130 to every return flight price advertised on Ryanair's website - if you plan on taking a single 15kg suitcase and a pair of skis. You don't believe me? Then let's have a look at them (you can also check them here on Ryanair's website): Then there are all the penalties. Of course, other airlines levy charges, but it's Ryanair which has taken the lead in this diabolical process, and levies the highest fees (check out our chart here). And this, by the way, is the organisation that calls itself 'Europe's favourite ski airline'. Pretty soon, I think the world needs to get together and start returning the favour to Michael O'Leary. If he buys a pint, bar staff should charge him extra for the glass, or simply pour the beer on the floor. If he books a taxi, the driver should charge him extra to put a suitcase in the boot. If he goes to the cinema, the usher should charge him to tear his ticket in half, and let him into the auditorium. Any other suggestions would of course be most gratefully received, at editor@welove2ski.com. Spencer has lost £2million, Andrew has lost two holidays, but some ex-Descent guests will still be going skiing - 21/8/2009 18:33by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Tory Party Treasurer Michael Spencer has lost £2 million in the collapse of Descent and the poor old Duke of York has lost two hols all in 24hrs. It's Black Friday for him. Peter Hardy reflects on the fall of Descent. If you're City tycoon Michael Spencer, losing £2 million probably has the same the emotional and financial impact as if you or I were paying a parking fine. That, by the way, is the figure given by his investment company IPGL for its loss in the collapse of luxury chalet operator Descent (IPGL was its third largest shareholder). Doubtless, he's pissed off at the loss. But it's not exactly going to stop him from going on holiday. The same cannot be said for Prince Andrew. He's lost his £30,000 deposit on Chalet Eugenia and currently has nowhere to stay for his ski trip - sorry, business trip - to the World Economic Forum in January in Davos. Reeling from the impact of this devastating news - which means losing out on one of the great cellars in the Alps - the poor old Prince has had more bad news from Gordon Brown. Because of the furore over the freeing of the Lockerbie bomber, he's been told to skip his forthcoming British trade mission trip to Libya and miss out on a bit of late summer sun. You can't help but feel sorry for both York, Spencer and the Descent CEO, Kit Harrison. Harrison seems to have been left standing alone in the glare of the floodlights to take the rap while the klaxons sound and all other management escapees seem to have headed for the wire. Harrison has done his best to help those guests who have already booked and the first positive fall-out came this afternoon within 24 hours of the crash.
While rival companies fought over the bones, one of the 19 chalet owners told me that not only would he and his wife be going it alone this winter. Not only would they continuing to offer a sumptuous Descent-style service, but they'd also be honouring existing bookings. Clients at the sumptuous Ferme de Moudon in Les Gets who have already paid and lost deposits of £20,000 to £30,000 with Descent will not have to pay twice and will still get their holidays this winter. Owner James Dobree said: "We have now employed the same former Descent staff as last year so, as far as the guests are concerned, nothing much will have changed. The standard of cuisine and service will be as high as ever. "Many of our guests return year after year and it is only right that we should honour the bookings of those who have already paid and lost their deposits." The Ferme de Moudon is the last word in alpine barn conversions. Muck out a magnificent 17th-century cow byre, mix in a few tons of euros, and transform it with flair and care - and you've got arguably the finest winter home in the entire French Alps.
James' wife Nicky Dobree has painstakingly avoided rustic Heidi kitsch - no heart-shaped fretwork or checked gingham curtains here. Instead she has taken the best original features of the old farm building and fused them with a cool 21st-century look to create a happy marriage of manure and minimalism. The chalet was featured on the TV programme, Grand Designs Abroad, and if you're interested, Dobree tells me there are several more weeks available for rent.
Adding the X-Factor - 12/7/2009 18:55by Peter Hardy, blogger at large
Photo: Future Forecast Peter Hardy takes a look into his crystal ball to find out which travel company is trying hardest to get us to the slopes this winter. VAT is the keyword of the moment. This is not the HMCE's miserable 15% tax, but Value Added Turns (or Ten-eighties, depending on whether you prefer piste to park). Basically, they're offering price-enhanced packages that take some of the sting out of the pound-euro exchange rate as well as convincing us that we can, despite it all, afford to ski this season. Mathew Prior of Crystal Ski was the first to set the bonus ball rolling a couple of weeks ago with the introduction of Crystal Ski Plus - 'No Hassle, no Hussle, Just Ski' says the strapline. The name of the new product is not going to win any prizes for originality - I guess we can blame Google Adwords for the absence of an iota of creativity here - but the price is right. £479 in Paradiski (La Plagne/Les Arcs) includes regional departures and slopeside accommodation, but much more importantly it also includes a lift pass as well as ski hire or carriage. How many of these holidays are actually available sounds far from Crystal clear, but Mathew promises there will be plenty of them and they will be extended beyond Aime and Bourg-St-Maurice as demand dictates.
Paradiski. Photo: Skishoot To counter the canvas of gloom and doom we need more positive offers such as these, where you can pay for as much as possible in pounds before you leave home. Crystal confirms that there will be far fewer holidays on offer this season and that anyone who thinks that they can wait for last-minute half-price deals like last year's is living in the past. Sure, they'll be limited deals of a kind, but no surviving tour operator is going to take that kind of a wholesale financial hammering two winters in a row. Yes, they've dropped their number of catered chalet beds by 40%, although they are quick to point out that chalets make up only 15% of their winter business. Overall the number of British skiers, according to Crystal, was down by over 13% last season on the previous one, after seven years of fairly consistent growth. But we still have rather more than a million regular skiers and snowboarders out there. Some 23.6% of these go to Austria - an increase of nearly two per cent of market share. Sensible prices here are cutting into France's 37%. Well done, Austria, we say. "Good, but we've got a long way to go," says Austria Tourist Director Oskar Hinteregger: "people forget that we were once the primary market for British skiers. I hope we will be again one day." Certainly if the main French resorts continue to overprice every commodity from cocktails to clothing as they do, it's only a question of time. Other slices of the ski market cake hold few surprises. Andorra is down from 7% to 5%. Italy's up a bit and North America is down a bit. All in all, said Mathew, we are in for a pretty tricky winter. I couldn't agree more, so keep those all-inclusive offers coming. Second barrel in the VAT campaign came from Inghams, second player in the mass market. Surprise, surprise, they are offering similar enhanced deals: packages to Slovakia, Andorra, and Romania with equipment rental, lift pass, and even tuition all included.
Romanian bear BBQ. Photo: Skishoot The lead-in price of £599 focuses on Poiana Brasov and, as they point out, it includes complimentary drinks. Actually, if you're beyond beginner level and have ever skied in Romania, you'll understand why lots of drinks - complimentary or otherwise - are absolutely essential to keep your mind off the banality of the pistes. Inghams would have done far better to find value-enhanced ways of getting us to mainstream Alpine ski areas rather than fiddling around on the periphery. Esprit Ski has come up with Crunch Busters. MD Andy Perrin, who helped found Crystal before taking over the family specialist operation, is a man for whom hyperbole is an entirely alien concept. "The ski market has never seen anything like this before," he says. Over 20 offers include free holidays for children and free equipment hire for them, up to £75 off holidays for adults, and free Monday 'kick-start' lessons for parents. Esprit says the offers combine to create savings of up to £1,500 for a family of four compared to the same holiday last season. The carrot for booking a holiday this season is undoubtedly price. Check out our Deals page for the pick of the packages. There are some amazing offers around - particularly for North America. Snowballs - 13/6/2009 17:01by Peter Hardy, blogger at large
This week Peter Hardy swaps his camel for his high horse and jousts in favour of our kids against Schools Secretary Ed Balls. If you don't know the date of your child's half-term holiday next February, just pick a ski travel brochure - any brochure will do - and find the most expensive holiday. It happens to be Thomson Ski & Snowboarding Preview that my hand lands upon. I open at random page 97, La Thuile in Italy. Let's see now...the Planibel Hotel half-board from Gatwick on January 31: £745, February 7: £809, February 14: £1,235, February 21: £745. No prizes, then. Oops! I've got it wrong - the price, not the date. On the Thomson website it's shot up now to £1,335. Terrible, this financial situation, isn't it? Of course, it's quite understandable to stick on another 100 quid - a total of £400 on the cost of the holiday. We'll just forget lunch on the mountain and the kids' jackets with have to last another year. Those of us who have school age children are resigned to being held to ransom every February, but don't blame Thomson or any other of our 150 ski tour operators. They've got to make a living. If demand is overwhelming for that one week, you really can't blame them for capitalising on it. After all, if last year is anything to go by, they'll be lucky to be half full for the other February weeks. As for low season January...let's pray for another bumper snow winter- but what if it's not? No, don't shoot the tour operator, don't even shoot Johnny Foreigner who owns your hotel or apartment, because he's also trying to make a euro or two when he can. Instead, aim your gun at the Government and the man responsible is Children's Secretary, Ed Balls.
Photo: Skishoot Half-term school holidays in England and Wales are traditionally spread across the two mid-February weeks. Until recently, local education authorities in the public sector and head teachers in the private have been able to plump for one or the other. The Scots, sensibly have their own holiday agenda, along with a superior education system. The English winter break wasn't such a shambles 40 or even 30 years ago when relatively few families travelled abroad in search of snow, sun, or both. But these days, February half-term has descended into hopeless holiday chaos. Leaving aside sea-and-sun seekers, half a million skiers besiege airports over the starting weekend. Most go to France where they mingle with one-third of French families who are also on holiday. Now the French don't always get it right. As the Queen, who had hoped for a flying visit to Normandy this summer, can testify. But for the past three decades they have sensibly staggered their school holidays by three geographical zones - Paris one week, Lyon the next, and so on. So why can't we do the same? Has anyone even asked? This produces a rye laugh from Andy Perrin, former Crystal boss and now MD of Esprit Ski and Total Ski: "Don't think we haven't tried," he says, "but over the years we've had no joy at all." But last year, the situation got much worse. Instead of the English and Welsh break being spread across two weeks, it was reduced to ONE, and in February 2010, it's ONE week again.. The effects of this on skiers and the ski industry are manifold: travel firms that are struggling to survive against the twin backdrops of the poverty-stricken pound and the eco-downturn, lose a vital high season week. The public suffers from the consequently inflated prices. Overcrowded airports and airways make travel a misery. But the much, much more important: this bumbling bureaucratic bottleneck is putting our children in serious danger. Modern high-speed lift systems dramatically reduce queues. French ski areas such as Espace Killy, Paradiski, and the Trois Vallées pride themselves on the fact that even at the busiest times queues now last no longer than a few minutes. But the queues disappear because the volume of skiers is simply being transferred to the slopes.
Photo: Skishoot As anyone who has skied down a blue motorway in a major French resort during half-term week will testify - you take your life in your hands. With so many skiers and snowboarders - and often inept ones at that - trying to turn in such a confined space, the risk of collision has become unacceptable. In resorts such as Méribel and Val d'Isère, where British skiers account for more than 30 per cent of the people on the mountain at any one time, serious injury - or worse - is an accident waiting to happen during half-term week. And it's all because the Government won't address the problem. So come on Ed Balls. You may not have got the reshuffle job that you wanted and therefore can do nothing to help with the currency situation, but you've still got a job (which is more than a lot of people have got). Your full title is Secretary of State for Children, Schools, and Families, which nicely covers every aspect of what we are talking about here. Don't dither. Just do it, before tragedy strikes. Stagger the February half-term across three weeks instead of one, and zone it, French-style across the country. Humping skis - 5/6/2009 12:14by Peter Hardy, blogger at large
Photo: Skishoot Welove2ski editor Peter Hardy gets the hump about ski carriage and security. Travelling around the world with ski equipment is becoming increasingly fraught, with airlines and even camels conspiring to make it an unpleasant and (in the case of camels and non-reclining Row 33D by the loo) a smelly experience. At Easter, the Flybe check-in girl at Southampton paled visibly at the sight of the helmet attached to my hand-luggage rucksack. Well, you would, wouldn't you? After a huddled conference with a colleague, she informed me that there could be a problem at the security desk, but it 'might be alright'. And so it was. But a week later when I arrived, suntanned and relaxed, at Grenoble for the journey home, a grim notice at check-in informed passengers that helmets and boots taken as hand luggage would be 'confiscated and destroyed'. Hang on, there's something wrong here. Surely they have not only not got the right, but they haven't got this wording right? No, it's lost in translation. It should read: 'confiscated and resold by thieving airport staff'. An indignant complaint to a tour operator rep was met with a shrug of almost Gallic intensity: "Yes, sorry about that, mate, nothing we can do about it - you know what the French are like". easyJet, Ryanair and others also play hard at blatant highway robbery. Earlier in the season I travelled via Lyon to Val d'Isère for a few days on business. I planned to ski for only one morning and as I know that easyJet charges an iniquitous and inexcusable £18.50 each way for carrying skis, I left mine at home and rented from Snowberry. But while I was in France one of my kids asked me to pick up his ancient, but much-loved pair of Salomon 1080s. As a dutiful Dad, I packed them in a borrowed ski bag and headed back to Lyon, stoically resigned to spending £18.50 on a pair of skis so knackered they were probably worth less. "That'll be 35 euros, pay over there," said the po-faced easyJet check-in girl, a smile was clearly also extra. "35 euros? But that's 35 quid!" I squealed. "Only 25 euros, if you'd paid online," she gloated. "Hang about, can't I pay online now?" I said, patting my trusty laptop. "Non," she said with the cross-legged emphasis of a nun on a hot date. "Then, I won't take them - I'll leave them behind," I sulked. "If you do that, we will have to charge you to dispose of them," she countered. So yes, I paid. I mean, it's a scandal. Someone should write about this. Taking my pound-impoverished, but ski-rich kids to train on the glacier at Saas Fee last August with Warren Smith I calculated that equipment carriage costs would make it 40 per cent more expensive for us to travel to Zurich with easyJet than with BA. If you've go any sense you'll turn to people like Snowjet or JFL2Go.com who offer reasonably-priced ski flights with no charge at all for carrying skis. But the Dick Turpin technique is not confined to what were once ludicrously referred to as the 'low-cost' airlines. BA and Swiss are, in my experience, above blame in this respect. You turn up with a ski bag and, no-questions-asked, it is treated as free sporting equipment.
Flying with skis. Photo: Ischgl Tourist Office But Air France and Air Canada have both refined a spectacular trick for ruining the end of what might otherwise have been a good holiday. As a family of five you arrive at your departure airport with five pairs of skis in three ski bags. Staff check you in with a smile (with scheduled airlines, smiles are often still provided free). However when you return to Lyon or Vancouver you are told that only one pair of skis per bag is carried free of charge. In excess baggage costs you must pay the price of moat clearance or construction of a Swedish duck house. The more I travel, the more I am learning to hate travelling - not the destination, but airports. OK, so maybe I overdid it a bit this winter - 26 countries in the first three months is enough to test anyone's travel temperament. But it's the extraordinary small-mindedness of some security staff that really gets to me. My friend, musician John Garrison, was at the security desk at Heathrow on his way to New York last winter when he was bewilderingly told to "come this way, sir". "What's the problem?" he asked when they reached an interrogation room. "Your T-shirt," he was told, "You can't board the aircraft wearing that." John looked down at his chest. The picture portrayed the logo of the T-shirt company, a skull shaped like a gun. "But it's not a gun," he spluttered laughingly in disbelief, "it's a T-shirt. I mean, like you can't shoot someone with a T-shirt!" "You'll have to change your clothes," said The Men in Suits, and they weren't joking. "But I can't change because I've already check in my suitcase," said John whose new album is appropriately called Departures. "Then if you want to travel, you'll just have to take it off, Sir," they unisoned. Take if off? Why it's a whole new way of giving ridiculous Heathrow the cold shoulder. "Wait," said John, in a moment of artistic genius, "What if I was to turn it inside out?" A huddled discussion followed between The Men in Suits. "That would do nicely," they chorused.
Johnny in That T-shirt My own recent experience was less dramatic, but equally farcical. I have a metal pin in my left leg, the legacy of an old ski mountaineering accident. Going through security can be a tedious experience, but I submit willingly to it. After all, we don't want folk packing a six-guns in their pants and climbing aboard planes. So, I normally walk through the metal detector holding up my hands for the inevitable hand search. "I have metal in my leg," I say. It's happened only once and, inevitably, in the US. "I see, sir, so can you take it out for me?" came the reply. Skis and airports? I'll stick to camel travel, although unlike idiotic airline staff and stupid security people, their bite tends to be worse than their bark - and they smell something 'orrible. Fowl play in the ski industry - 29/5/2009 13:04by Peter Hardy, blogger at large
Fowl play in the ski industry? Welove2ski editor Peter Hardy waxes woefully about what should be on every sensible skier's mind right now. So, it's time to talk turkey, which is what skiers in America will eat on Thursday November 26 and in Britain on December 25. Provided, of course, that any of us can by then afford to buy the bird and the energy to cook it. The dates are not so very far away. Sadly, I got the first Christmas Stocking Presents brochure through the post today. Equally sadly, I've just put an 89 degree edge on my Lords and booked myself a pair of Salomon Czars in the hope that the snow is going to be just as deep as this past season. But if you haven't already noticed, there's a few problem out there in the ski travel industry... and that depends on what you define as 'a few'. I've no commercial ice-axe to grind, I'm not making a euro out of telling this. But basically, you need to get out there now and book your holiday. Prices aren't going to get any better and availability is going to get much, much worse. Don't think for a moment that you are going to land that less-than-half-price deal for January or March that you managed to wangle at the last minute last season. Tour operators aren't completely stupid - they are not going to take another sickening punch in the orchestra pit, selling at lower-than-cost, two years in a row. The bare fact is that the combination of economic downturn and disastrous-euro means that the number of ski holidays next year will be down by 30%+. Yes, but what does that actually mean? Can't I go skiing? Of course, you can. But it means one-third less flights from the UK to ski destinations and it means one-third less chalet beds than last year. Do the maths. No more cheap deals on the same scale ever, ever again. Try and book a chalet at present with Crystal, First Choice, and Thomson from their Preview brochures and the odds on getting what you initially wanted are marginally worse than putting all your holiday money on black or red at a roulette table. I said in my last blog that, collectively, they've jettisoned half their chalets for the coming winter and I now think I was wrong. Closer to 60% seems a more sensible figure. At a time when they should be promoting their First Edition brochures, they are still busily number-crunching - to the consternation of an industry that looks at times as if it is running in Spring slush. These major companies hold the yardstick by which most small independent operators set their prices. The little guys just don't really know what to do. Those heavyweight brochures should have hit the doormat in April, but now we can't expect them until July. Of course, their position is completely understandable: hang on as long as possible in the hope of making some sense of what the euro will do doing next winter - and at the same time slash costs, and keep on slashing them.
Photo: Skishoot Buy or build-to-let chalet owners are bearing the brunt of these sabre thrusts. They're being told: "Take a 15-30% drop in revenue or we won't work with you". And that's just the lucky ones who are getting the offer they can't refuse. Many others are receiving just a cold Dear Jean email: "due to the financial climate...deep regrets, etc". Ninety chalets 'let go' so far? And that's just the Big Boys. Almost everybody is out there carving the excess fat (and in some cases great slices of lean, too) off their programmes. 10% (Le Ski) is the minimum, while 30% (Scott Dunn) is no longer abnormal. Two operators have kicked the bucket so far. Inevitably, others will follow. The mass market operators want out of chalets altogether - and they'll achieve this over a three-year period, leaving them to concentrate on more cost-effective (and much more boring) chalet-hotels. Actually, following Darwinian theory, this giant cull won't be such a bad thing in the long term: smaller chalet companies that know their onions will benefit, along with their clients. But the medium-term fall-out across the Alps - particularly in the French Alps - will be immense. So far the property market in resorts across the Trois Vallées and in Val d'Isère has been falsely cushioned against the realities of recession. But now I predict that the currently grossly over-inflated prices are going to tumble into freefall. Owners seeking to offload an eight bedroom chalet in Courchevel for 37 million euros and another in Val for 24 million - yes, you did read those figures correctly - are going to have to climb down from their golden cloud. At this supreme end of the market a drop of 30-50% is on the cards. If you've just paid the going price of 10-14 million euros for four/five beds in Courchevel 1850, you've been had. Panicking estate agents here secretly think that prices are set to fall by the same - if not by more. It is, or at least, it's going to be, a great time to buy. 'Retiring' Members of Parliament could do worse than invest their Golden Goodbyes here. So what about hotel holidays? After a ghastly March, French hoteliers are very slowly waking up to the fact that if they completely alienate the British by OTT prices, they won't have a business. Their blinkered mentality led to a handful in the Tarentaise closing their shutters weeks ahead of schedule last season. The Swiss and the Austrians are marginally more switched on and are cutting - or at least containing - prices. North American hotels have been much quicker off the mark to realise the gravity of the downturn and are offering some truly great deals (check out our Deals page) - and they are being backed at the moment by airlines. So what about self-catering? Apartments used to provide the cheapest accommodation, but food and other in-resort costs within the euro zone now make catered chalets a much more price-sensible proposition. For most of us it's become imperative to pay for breakfast and dinner with wine, ski pass, equipment, lessons, and childcare in sterling before you leave home.
Photo: Skishoot However, you've still got the problem of lunch on the mountain. On my Easter family holiday in Vaujany we packed a picnic each day. That's fine in April but not much fun in December. Whole restaurants deserted at dejeuner throughout March have given even the French indigestion: "We've taken the necessary decision not to put up prices at all for next winter," one restaurateur proudly confided to me. It's not enough. Like those MPs, they just don't get the picture do they? So don't b***er around waiting for holiday prices to improve. Book now...and ski through lunch. Carnage and condoms - 13/5/2009 18:43by Peter Hardy, blogger at large
What's going on out there in the Alps? Welove2ski editor Peter Hardy has a snog behind the scenes and finds that anyone planning on another cut-price holiday this coming winter is in for a rude shock. In Europe the snow has mostly melted and the sun and wild flowers are out - along with canny local kids, marmots and foxes who are having a fine old time scavenging beneath chair-lift cables all over the mountainsides. You'd be amazed at what they harvest in May: bars of chocolate, biscuits, gloves, maps, and ski poles are the obvious, along with cigarette packets, cans, and sweet-wrappers. But then there are hats, mobile phones, money, wallets, jewellery, whole backpacks, glasses and even, so I'm told, the occasional glass eye, and knickers and..er...condoms. Remarkable, really, what people manage to take off in a blizzard. But more remarkable what, given the sub-zero temperatures, they manage to put on. Down in the valley at this time of year you'd imagine all would be peace and quiet as hoteliers, restaurateurs, and shop owners head off to Mauritius or the Caribbean to spend their bulging treasure chests. But no, the anguished wails of a thousand chalet owners rent the alpine air. They're leaning over their fret-worked balconies wondering what the hell has happened to the queue of eager tour operators who normally elbow each other out of the way in their efforts to beat a path to their front doors. But this May there's no one in the garden - not even The Man From Crystal is storming up the street, open cheque in hand. For almost two decades this same alpine air has been filled each summer with the sounds of saw and hammer. Farming families in the Trois Vallées and elsewhere have been planting their seasonal cash crop of six-bedroom-six-bathroom rental chalets. Now, interspersed with the cries of the owners, you can hear the thud of the axe falling on their livelihoods. The combination of the Brown-blighted euro and worldwide recession has sapped the life and laughter out of the chalet party. If you went skiing this past winter, you possibly left it to the last minute to book, and thereby saved yourself a fortune. Sh**-struck tour operators were halving January and March in the greatest give-away since The Commons allowed MPs to drain their moats and pay their cleaners on the public purse. OK, so it was expensive when you got there - but the actual holiday was a snip, and the snow was sensational.
Planning the same again? Forget it. You'd better wake up to what's really going on. Britain's 150 ski specialists are in trouble - and a handful of them are at death's door, fighting against the day when they do their final face-plant and are forced to call in the administrator. The number of deaths will be small, but most - to survive - are having to prune their programmes quite dramatically. TUI - that's Thomson, Crystal, and First Choice - will have cut their chalets by as much as 50% by the time they've finalised plans for next season. Supposedly, they've shed 70 in France alone, and right now their contractors are still out there in the mountains cutting away chalets from a portfolio that has taken a decade to acquire. Pick any of the 180-odd chalets 'available' in their massive Preview brochures and you've a double-figure chance of being disappointed when you get on the website or the phone to them. Their First Edition ski brochures for 09/10 should be cluttering up the racks of every travel agent and giving the postman lumbago by now, but they're not even printed - and won't be until July. It looks like they're getting out of chalets altogether - their only constraint is that a lot of their chalets are on three-year contracts. Mathew Prior, TUI's Ski MD, says this isn't exactly true, but told me: "We're taking an aggressive negotiating stance with our owners and dropping those properties where they won't play ball. It's true that we're concentrating more on our chalet-hotels rather than individual chalets." Aggressive negotiating stance? In plain-speak this means that they - and every other tour operator - are asking, no they're telling, chalet owners to drop their prices by 15-30% or they can look elsewhere. Trouble is there isn't much anywhere else to look. True, the Dutch and the Germans are taking up a bit of the slack in Méribel, Courchevel, and Val. But British companies normally account for more than 75% of the French rental chalet market. What's more, it's not just the mass market that's cutting back capacity at such an alarming rate. Scott Dunn is down 30%. YSE has dropped five out of 26 chalets. Skiworld are down 15% and Le Ski 10% - the list goes on and on.
Yes, but what does all this mean to me the skier? What it means is that you've got to plan NOW where you want to go next winter, and with which company. If you want to be sure of getting the holiday of your choice, you can't leave it to December, you can't even leave it to the end of summer. You've got to book NOW. You see, it's not just chalet holidays that are affected by these cuts: charter flights are being reduced. TUI have already dropped their Birmingham-Grenoble service. You should still be able to fly to Austria and France from regional as well as main airports, but the number of flights is expected to drop by a third. Yes, but all these tour operators will end up discounting as usual as the season gets underway, won't they? No, not in the same quantity as we've grown used to over the past decade, because with such restricted programmes they won't need to. You had a great time last year, but they took a hammering that they won't willingly repeat. Oh, and TUI has just dumped Finland off its ski programme. What? All of it? Yes, although First Choice will still offer its Santa packages. Merry Christmas. It may only be May, but it's time to think about that - and beyond. All photos: Skishoot Click here for more on next season's price hikes. Hannibal crosses the Otztal - 25/4/2009 20:01by Felice Hardy, editor
Felice Hardy reports from Sölden - April 25, 2009 Yesterday the sun came out and we skied Sölden. An ancient chair-lift starts in our hotel garden, but it isn't working this late in the season, so we start from the much speedier Giggijoch gondola. Sölden is somewhere I've always associated with raucous beer-swilling nightlife, along with a bit of easy intermediate skiing. However at this time of year the slopes are empty and what slopes! I've been before - some time ago - but never really grasped the enormous size and variety of the ski area. Right now it's skiing at its best if you make used of the two glaciers linked by a tunnel. With a top height of 3340m the thermometer can be deep in double minus figures in mid-winter, but at this time of year the temperature is just perfect. Like Obergurgl, the season stretches on until May 3. The pistes are wide with a good steep gradient, so we took some really fast thigh-burning descents, using the full vertical drop of 2000m. There's some serious skiing here and oodles of great off-piste. Everything is accessible by fast chair-lift or gondola and we wallowed in the 40cm of fresh snow that had fallen overnight.
In the evening, at a chilly 7.30pm our main reason for being here - the Hannibal Show began. Don't know about this? It's an hour-long annual spectacle narrating the tale of that head-strong Carthagenian general who crossed the Alps with 30 war elephants to take on the Romans in their own backyard. He got within trumpeting distance of Rome. Of course, no one knows what route he took, though the French are convinced he crossed the Petit St Bernard from La Rosiere to La Thuile. A cast of 500 take part in this annual extravaganza, with gorgeously dressed dancers and actors, opera singers performing on a pyramid of ice, a large group of instructors from at least three local ski schools. Some 20 piste-bashers acted as the elephants and were joined by an unlikely armada of other transport including parapentes, light aircraft, helicopters, snowmobiles, sailing dinghies and motorbikes.
This was the ultimate in torch-lit descents. The highlight for me was the part of the tale where an avalanche takes out some of Hannibal's elephants. In the cause of life-like special effects, pisteurs blasted a real one way up the mountain and under red floodlights the tumbling powder looked like a tidal wave of blood. Just for a moment, I thought they might have underestimated just how much snow had accumulated in this vintage winter. Clearly they had calculated it to the last flake, but there in the dark, us quaking spectators didn't necessarily share their confidence. This amazing son et lumiere, culminating in a fight to the death between elephant piste-bashers versus an enemy of helicopters and snowmobiles was an amazing spectacle for any age or nationality. Hannibal - a sort of Oberammergau of the Otztal - takes place in Sölden every April.
Catch it next year if you can - it's 35 euros per adult, 20 euros per child (both include coach transport to and from the resort) and is world class open-air theatre at its most passionate for any age or nationality and - er - a very cool experience indeed, in every sense. Click here for our Sölden resort report. Four seasons in one day - 23/4/2009 22:51by Felice Hardy, editor
Felice Hardy reports from Obergurgl and Sölden - April 23, 2009 I'm grabbing a couple of days' of unexpected powder in the death throes of this vintage season, which is going out like a lion with a roar that can be heard across much of the Alps. Underrated Sölden can be one of the Tirol's liveliest on - and particularly après - piste resorts. During peak season February weeks both village and mountainside tend to buzz 24/7. But it's so extraordinarily so quiet here at present that you can (almost) hear the sound of snow softly melting. My hotel, the Bergland, has a great swimming pool and good food - last night's dinner was excellent. This morning we set off for a day's skiing along the valley in Obergurgl, less than half an hour's drive away. For me it was something of a pilgrimage. Obergurgl is where, aged five, I took my first tentative steps on skis. It wasn't a great start - I somehow became detached from my boot on my very first day in ski school. My skills have since improved somewhat, along with the resort, which remains close to my heart. The lift system is now pretty much state-of-the art, with two new gondolas added in 2007, one of which has very welcome heated seats. It's been a while, and unbelievably this was the first time I'd been on the gondola that links the ski area with Hochgurgl - and what a difference this makes to the overall appeal of two these once-separate resorts at the end of the Otz valley. Given that the bluebells are in full bloom at home in Hampshire, I was expecting seasonal slush and brown grassy patches, but it wasn't anything like that. When we arrived, the temperature in Obergurgl was a full-on wintry -3 C in the village, and up the top of the mountain it was snowing so hard you couldn't seen your glove in front of your goggles. Fortunately, the occasional patch of blue briefly showed us we were in Austria - otherwise we could have been forgiven for thinking we'd beamed up into the Arctic Circle. Yes, we had every possible snow condition in one day: fresh powder, slush, diamond hard pistes and perfect pistes, sometimes a thin layer of powder with ice underneath which called for eggshell technique - not least because I was on a pair of slalom skis. Better than sitting in the office, eh?.
We had lunch in the Hohe Mut Alm, which has an open fire, sheepskin and wood-panelling everything. Prices seemed to be good compared with France - Eu9.30 for spag bol, Eu2.60 for a coffee, Eu2.90 a small beer. I opted for a Harry Potter - a children's menu Weiner Schnitzel for Eu6, and easily big enough for an average adult Muggle - and it came with a free plastic car. Who says you can't relive your skiing childhood? Click here for our Obergurgl resort report. Picnic in Vaujany - 9/4/2009 16:52by Peter Hardy, blogger at large
Peter Hardy reports - April 9, 2009 The local Alpe d'Huez weather forecast was wrong about the drop in temperature yesterday, and it was as warm as ever - although it was cloudy all day. Hot it is - actually bl**dy hot - today, which of course is exactly what you expect at this time of year. So, with the ear-pieces off the helmet and factor 30 on the face, we stagger en famille to an early lift - say 10am. Any earlier and you are on a collective hiding-to-nothing unless you like feeling how fast you can take that 89 degree edge off your skis. These, incidentally, currently need to be 100mm-plus underfoot as all waterskiers know.That said, conditions are surprisingly good in the Alpe d'Huez ski area, with the freezing level down to 1800m overnight. Today we hit the infamous Charbonniere at 12.30pm, the exact moment when ice turned to spring snow. I could bore you by telling you that this off-piste run was once Europe's highest coalfield and that a mysterious son of Alpe d'Huez built a mansion on it halfway down after he made a fortune in America. As chalets go it's probably very pleasant but you can only reach it by helicopter, snowmobile - or by skiing down the the wickedly steep itinerary, which is presumably no fun if you are carrying suitcases, shopping, and a new mattress for the mighty master bedroom. But I won't bore you. I've skied this run around 30 times in my life and there has never been anyone at home. The shutters were closed again today and snow was piled deep on the verandas. Maybe he can't afford the helicopter any more. Anyway, we had lots of fun, a peek through the windows, and a picnic on a rock just below.
If we're lucky we'll pick up 20cm of powder on Friday night just in time for a final glorious day before heading for home on Sunday. Click here for our Vaujany resort report. Springtime in Vaujany - 7/4/2009 17:53by Felice Hardy, editor
My neice, Rosanagh Robertson, at the top of the Pic Blanc Felice Hardy reports - April 7, 2009 It's been wonderfully warm weather in Vaujany, which has meant Spring snow in the late morning, getting heavier as the day goes on. Together with our friends the Purkhardts, who run Ski Peak, the two families make up a total of 12 adults and children. So to cut down spending in the mountain restaurants, where a Plat du Jour is now 15 euros, we have been shopping at the local supermarket and packing a suprisingly delicious picnic to take up the mountain each day. Our picnic cost about a tenth of a restaurant lunch. Nigel Purkhardt, who knows this mountain like the back of his hand, has found us some little copses at the side of the piste, where we've laid out our picnic and enjoyed the sun. Tomorrow the weather is going to change though, with temperatures dropping to -7 C up at the top of Pic Blanc at 3300m, so we'll be eating inside for once. Click here for our Vaujany resort report. The Brits in Laax - 3/4/2009 19:39by Felice Hardy, editor
Felice Hardy reports - April 4, 2009 Phew! It's steamin' in Switzerland at the moment both on and off-the mountain. Just back from Laax where the temperature on the lower slopes has been hitting double figures. The sun is out with a vengeance at it's not even freezing up on the glacier at 3000m. Still, that didn't seem to worry competitors in the 20th Brits - the British Freestyle Championships. Convenient Hotel Signina is just at the bottom of the gondola up into the Weisses Arena ski area, and it's been upgraded in keeping with the new Rocks Resort apartments which opened this season. Actually, the rooms are nice but rather small, so if you want more space head for the apartments which are stylishly designed with sitting/dining rooms, well-equipped kitchenettes, and either two or four bedrooms and one or two bathrooms. The apartments share the hotel's swimming pool and spa, and several new bars and restaurants are going to be opening at the base of the buildings in time for next season - including an avant garde Asian eatery.
Skiercross heat, Max far left We were here to watch welove2ski writer, Max Hardy, compete in the Trespass Skiercross Championships. If you've never seen it, skicross (or skiercross) is the most exciting spectator sport of all ski disciplines. The Olympic Committee think so, too. They've included it in next February's Vancouver Winter Games. To begin with, skiers compete individually against the clock down a sequence of wicked rollers where at Europa and World Cup Level they hit around 70mph. Then after the time trial they race each other in four-strong heats. You are not allowed to push or shove another competitor, but as in polo you can - as they say - hold your line. It's fast, it's dangerous, and incredibly exciting.
Flying Max Max was placed third after the time trial. But British Ski Team member Gregg Samuel dominated the eliminating rounds through to the finals to secure the 2009 title. Second place went to Craig Robinson with third and fourth place going to Ed Cozzi and John Andree consecutively. Max ended up 5th overall - not as high up as he had hoped, but promising for his first season. In the women's competition, Danielle Freeze followed Jasmin Taylor into second place whilst Serena Woods and Helen Pickford finished in third and fourth place. At the same time, a dramatic half-pipe competition was taking place on a nearby slope up at Crap Masegn, with World Cup Halfpipe Team members Lesley McKenna and Ben Kilner taking the top spots. The previous day, the Animal Slopestyle Championships produced some amazing photos.
Flipping Animal But skiing and snowboarding are not the only events that take place during the Brits week. By night it's one big party with live bands and DJs at Rider's Palace and other hot venues. We didn't get to free ski as much as we would have liked - nothing, you understand, to do with the late nights. But were warm and sunny weather for once made watching races live a real pleasure. From winter back to spring in 60 minutes - 27/3/2009 18:35by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog
Welove2ski editor Sean Newsom reports from St Anton - March 27, 2009. Holy cr*p. Now we're back to spring again. It took about an hour to switch seasons. Yesterday the three-day storm finally eased up, and everyone enjoyed a couple of hours of soft snow and decent visibility. Then it snowed heavily again overnight: but at about 11am the sun came out and the temperature went through the roof. Even the wind felt toasty. Many of the higher lifts and runs in the resort were still closed today because of strong winds and the high avalanche risk (4/5 - in other words, off-piste skiing should have been out of the question) so everyone was concentrated on the lower runs. Of course, many skiers and boarders ignored the avalanche warnings - so every square inch of accessible powder was skied out by lunchtime. What's more, because all the open terrain was fairly low, the snow degraded very quickly too. The powder went crusty and the pistes began to get very soggy, and super-bumpy too. Even flat pistes had moguls on 'em today!
We heard there was good powder up high at Rendl, which is rather more sheltered from both wind and sun, but elsewhere the snow went from superb to so-so in the blink of an eye! No wonder really - it is nearly April, but still - it would have been nice to have had at least one day of sunshine and cool winds. Oh yes, and this evening, the valley was echoing to the sound of avalanches. So much snow, on top of slick spring slopes, and now this sudden rise in temperatures - it's a recipe for disaster. I hope hope hope people keep their heads when the top lifts do eventually open!
Click here for our St Anton resort report. Val d'Isère in a white out - 26/3/2009 17:04by Peter Hardy, blogger at large Welove2ski editor Peter Hardy reports from Val d'Isère - March 26, 2009 Blimey! What March snow madness! In 30 years of skiing in Val I've never seen anything like it at this time of year. Driving back last night after a flying overnight visit to Val, it was still snowing on the Chambery side of Moutiers. With windscreen wipers working furiously, it was time to reflect on my best day's skiing of the year..er, actually, my only day's skiing in 2009, so far. We awoke on Wednesday to a perfect blue sky and all seemed set for a day in the sunshine, when a phone call interrupted a leisurely breakfast in Descent's Big Yeti chalet. "See you at the lift in 10 minutes," said my friend Pat Zimmer from Top Ski, "we've got maybe 90 minutes before it starts snowing again." He was right. After a quick blast down the OK, train back up, a cruise down the Face de Bellevarde, someone turned the lights out. By the time we'd explored Saulire it was snowing - flakes the size of soup plates (well, almost) were floating all around us and clogging up my goggles. Now, one of my co-editors has managed to spend a quite enormous number of days in this record winter drifting down mountainsides - all in the cause of research, you understand. Meanwhile for various reasons, I have sat diligently behind my computer screen and tried to earn an honest living. It's just not fair. But I hadn't realised how unfair until I saw just how much snow is banked up around Espace Killy - at this rate, the mountainside will still be white in June. Runs that I last skied on Boxing Day I could now hardly recognise. Forget lunch. This was a day not to be frittered away in my favourite mountain restaurant. In zero visibility we spent six hours drifting through the powder - so heavy was the snowfall that it was hard to tell at times whether we were on or off piste. That was my yesterday. Today I'm back in Hampshire behind my computer screen once again. Did yesterday really happen? My whole body says it did. Every muscle aches as if I have just run back-to-back marathons. In the garden, daffodils dance in a cold, damp breeze. I tell myself that this skiing business is over-rated. No, it's bl**dy well not. Still snowing... - 25/3/2009 13:52by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog
Welove2ski editor Sean Newsom reports from St Anton - March 25, 2009. It was sunny, briefly this morning, and then the snow started again around 11am. It really got going at about 3pm, and it should continue in this vein until the morning. Already it's nearly 48 hours since the first flakes fell... Of course, visibility on the all but the lowest slopes in the resort is non-existent, and there are quite a few lifts shut because of the wind. The avalanche risk is creeping up too... In other words, the trees are the place to be today. As for me - well, I'm in a new place in my skiing career, nursing my ten-month old boy through a stomach bug in the hotel. We've just been to see the doctor, for ten minutes, which cost a cool 145 euros. But I can't really complain, because there was guy in there whose daughter had just been choppered off the mountain with some kind of serious injury who'd just been hit with a medical bill for over 600 euros. And that didn't include the cost of the helicopter. I hope he had some good insurance... Click here for our St Anton resort report. Bucketing down - 24/3/2009 18:37by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog
Welove2ski editor Sean Newsom reports from St Anton - March 24, 2009. Not much time for a blog today - but check out the snow! It's been snowing like this, on and off, for 24 hours, and it's still coming down. The only time it wasn't snowing was mid-morning when we got in a few glorious turns over on Rendel, in watery sunshine. There must be 25cm of fresh powder now, and we're expecting the same tomorrow. By then, you the pistes will be in superb shape and you won't be able to feel the crud and ice beneath the fresh snow off-piste, either. Amazing. Click here for our St Anton resort report. January skiing in March - 12/3/2009 05:45by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog
Welove2ski editor Sean Newsom reports from Moena in the Italian Dolomites - March 11, 2009. What a day! I've just had the chance to blast around an area called the Tre Valli, above the town of Moena in the Italian Dolomites. It's set in the Val di Fassa, and it's not a million miles away from the famous Sella Ronda. All day I skied gorgeous pistes, in good company, with a backdrop of gobsmacking views...
The quality of the snow helped too. This part of Italy is famous for its man-made snow, which ensures decent skiing even in a snow drought. But they haven't needed it in the winter of 2008-9. Ten metres of the stuff has fallen from the sky so far - and then there was a vital 50-70cm top up at the end of last week. Plus we had an extra dusting in the morning before we got to the lifts, accompanied by a stiff northerly wind, which sent temperatures tumbling. Okay, so it made things a bit chilly on the tops, but it was worth being cold now and again, because the snow was just gorgeous. As grippy as you could wish for. January snow in March, in fact.
There's a real mix of pistes here - half are wide wide wide cruisers above the treeline, half are narrow and steeper below, and there are some lovely black-rated runs scattered about to make sure you're concentrating.
The area is under-used too - because the crowds are all sucked away by the lure of the Sella Ronda - the ski circuit which girdles the Sella massif. They're welcome to it. I'd much rather ski at this end of the Val di Fassa. The pistes are so uncrowded you can really get up on your edges and carve, without always having to look over your shoulder to see if anyone is coming...
Like skiing through milk - 5/3/2009 17:01by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog
Welove2ski editor Sean Newsom reports from the SIGB ski test in Bormio, Italy - March 5, 2009 (see March 4 blog for more on the test). Stupid, stupid, stupid. That's the only word for it. I sat in front of my laptop in the hotel for a two hours this morning - and missed the best conditions of the day. Overnight the Cima Bianca, Bormio's ski mountain, got 20-30cm of fresh snow, and from about 9.30-11.30am there was reasonable visibility and oodles of powder. I missed it. I managed one decent run, in watery sunshine, on a pair of Salomon Shoguns. Then the cloud rolled in, and it was like skiing in milk. The temperature rose too, so the snow got a bit sticky too - and then, suddenly, it got colder again, and it started snowing much harder. Weird weather. When the skies eventually clear - tomorrow - there's going to be some awesome skiing. And I'll be on plane back to the UK... Arghhhh! Nevertheless, it was an interesting day. The Shoguns are a great ski - light, nimble and responsive in the deep stuff, and pretty good through the crud and bumps on-piste too. You don't have to drive them too hard either, like you do the Salomon Lords - which were one of the most popular skis of last year's test. I found them quite a handful. I also met Andy David (pictured below), for the first time. Andy's a British pro-skier who's launched his own ski company - check them out at www.stormskis.com. We'll have more on Andy shortly!
Oh yes - and check out the new graphics on Head's big fat powder ski...Coooooooool....
674 pairs of skis... - 4/3/2009 17:34by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog
Welove2ski editor Sean Newsom reports from Bormio, Italy - March 4, 2009 YEAH BABY! It's ski test time again! Each year, in March, the Snowsports Industries of Great Britain (SIGB) lays on a test of next season's skis, ably organised by Rare Management; and a small army of retailers, journalists and testers descend on a lucky ski resort to try them. For anyone with even the slightest interest in ski hardware, it's like being locked in a sweet shop for a week. You can try anything, and every ski you jump onto is brand-new, and pimped to within an inch of its life. All the big brands are here, and a few small ones. For example, Scott skis...
And Salomon...
And Atomic...
Plus Dynastar, Volkl, Head, Line, Zag, Blizzard, Movement, Nordica, etc, etc, the list just goes on and on. There are - get this - 674 pairs of skis on the mountain this week. Mike Jardine of Rare Management was tapping away on a calculator this afternoon, and sat back a little stunned when he worked out that there might be £270,000-worth of skis on the mountain..."That can't be right - can it?" he said. Then he did the sums again, and worked out that actually it was more like £300,000. Shhhhh. No-one tell the mafia... This year, the test has relocated to Bormio in Italy, which is home to one of the classic World Cup downhill race courses, the Stelvio. Bormio also enjoys one of the longest vertical drops in the Alps, from the top of the 3012m Cima Bianca down to the town at the base at 1225m. The test is up at Bormio 2000, which is the mid-station, and it needs to be up there, because it's been pretty warm lately, and there's lots of sugary snow and ice about lower down. However the snowpack is deep, and it's been snowing, on and off, for the last couple of days as well. This morning there was 5-10cm of powder on the upper slopes. This wasn't quite enough to cover the crust and crud underneath, and you needed a powerful, stiff pair of skis to get the best of the off-piste. Actually, you needed the same kind of ski on-piste, too, 'cos the groomers cut up very easily in the mild conditions, and by mid-afternoon there was a bit of everything to contend with - ice, bumps, patches of powder, cruddy lumps. You name it, we skied it. As a result, the ski of the day for me was the Scott Crusade, which will be largely unchanged from this year's model in 2009-10. It blasted through everything and kept whispering in my ear go faster, you moron. I had a smile a mile wide on my face by the end of just one run. (Strangely, the Crusade's graphics are very muted - which can't be said about Scott's park and pipe ski, pictured at the top of this blog. Everybody loves the way they look!) I also had lots of fun on the Rossignol SC 86, which is the latest version of the Bandit B3. Bandits have been going for ten years now, and they're still a lovely, smooth ski. They felt very comfortable in the decidedly mixed conditions.
The big problem today was visibility. It looks as though it will be a big problem tomorrow, too, when heavy snow is forecast. We're all hoping it snows heavily anyway. If we can't see anything then we might at least have some powder! One final point - you'd expect the UK retailers to have been suffering this winter from poor sales, but actually they've had an excellent season. Everyone's been buying in Britain, because they know the strong Euro will make the skis significantly more expensive abroad. However, next season, new contracts will be negotiated, and the strong Euro will make itself felt in prices in UK shops as well as abroad. So...if you're in the market for a new pair of skis, and your budget is tight, buy them now, and buy them in Britain! The future of weekend skiing for Brits? - 5/2/2009 19:49by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog
Welove2ski editor Sean Newsom reports - February 5, 2009 The Kandahar was due to be skied at the weekend by the latest generation of World Cup stars, but fog caused the race to be cancelled. All the same, the side-netting was still up (see picture, above), and in places we could still see the blue-stained track markings. We hit the occasional patch of World Cup ice too... It's on this slope that the next World Championships will be held, in 2011, and in preparation they've cut a second, tougher course through the trees alongside the old Kandahar. The men will ski the new course, and the women the old one. We did a little of both, because they cross at a couple of points. Man, they were STEEP! And they include some wicked doglegs too. Each time I ski a downhill course, I'm more convinced than ever that downhill skiers are cut from different cloth to the rest of us. You need balls the size of basketballs to point yourself down a slope like that, covered in ice, and let yourself go. Just looking at the height of the netting they put up, to catch the unlucky ones who fall, is a sobering experience.
The Kandahar was actually a lot more fun to ski than most race tracks I've tried - chiefly because it's so sinuous: with each turn you seem to get an entirely new perspective on the slope. But it wasn't nearly so much fun as the 1936 Olympic downhill (pictured, above). Of course, 1936 was year of the Nazi Olympics, so the course has an extra, darker, fascination. It also features the same kind of dog-leg turns at the bottom of its steeper sections as the Kandahar - which would have forced competitors into the same kind of compression turns. But crucially, it's about half as steep - maybe less - and, history aside, that makes it a lot more enjoyable for an Ordinary Joe like me. It too twists and turns down the slope, but in many places it also gives you a straight run at the fall-line, and features lots of nice little rollers.
Add to that another sweet red down into the valley from the Hausberg (see above), and you've got three classic pistes. That's a great strike rate for an area which totals a modest 71km of groomed trails. And there are plenty more pleasing runs to ski higher up (see pic, below).
All in all, I'm really glad I came (courtesy of Amin Momen of Momentum Travel). The town itself is rather spread out, and you've got to catch a bus or drive your car up to the lifts, but there's good skiing here, and a nice, unpretentious atmosphere. Prices are noticeably lower than they are in France, Switzerland or Austria, and communications with Munich are excellent. If you prefer skiing pistes to powder and/or bumps, you'll have a lot more fun on a weekend trip here than you will in Chamonix.
Plus, there's an awesome Bavarian dining room here - the Gasthof Fraundorfer, which serves proper Bavarian nosh, to an accompaniment of dirndl-dressed waitresses and happy-slappy-lederhosen-clad dancers. Everyone who comes here seems to love it - and the fact you can eat yourself to a complete standstill for under a tenner helps the atmosphere no end.
The only downside is the occasional a*se who insists on getting dressed up like the natives...
Decent skiing, on-piste, in Bavaria - but no powder - 4/2/2009 18:18by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog
Welove2ski editor Sean Newsom reports from Garmisch Partenkirchen - February 4, 2009 It's two weeks since the last snow here, and before that they had a six-week snow drought. It's actually fairly typical of the snow record in this part of the Alps, which has missed out on the big dumps seen in France and Italy. What's worse, they've been suffering - as have all the northern Alps - from the unloved wind called the Foehn. It blows over from Italy when it's snowing there, but brings very little of that snow with it. Instead, it just raises the temperature, and spoils the snow on the lower slopes.
But that's no reason to be down-hearted. I've never skied in Germany (how many Brits have?) And it's a very interesting trip. Amin Momen of Momentum Travel has organised it, because he's convinced Garmisch-Partenkirch is the future of British ski weekends. Well, part of the future anyway, and he's got a point. Munich airport has great connections with the UK, and it's an hour and a half from there to G-P by car (the train takes about an hour more). More importantly, everything here is cheaper than it is in the big-name resorts of France: a pint of beer is 3.80 euros, a cup of coffee two euros, and a really good three-star hotel about 94 euros a night for two people, including breakfast.
What's the skiing like? Well - one reason I wasn't too fussed by the recent thaw is the fact that G-P has its own glacier. It lies in the shadow of the mighty Zugspitze, and offers skiing between 2000m and 2700m. That's not especially high, and in fact the glacier doesn't cover much of the terrain anymore. But it seems to hold its snow pretty well, and the pistes up there are fun. There are a few of those wide, bland glacier cruisers (see picture above), but also a nice piste to one side called Super-G, which swoops and rolls over the terrain and gives you plenty to think about. You could have a good day here in the sunshine - we did - and if there's fresh snow, there's a bowl beyond the Super-G piste for off-piste skiing and riding, too.
The snow was generally in good shape, as you can see, above. It was hard-packed in places (you had to work hard to hold your line on the steeper stuff), but we saw no ice.
Oh yes, and there's also a strange but beautiful little piste which runs from the Riffelriss station on the funicular railway, back down to the cable car station, on the Eibsee. The views up to the cable car, far above, are eye-popping. Tomorrow we ski the World Cup downhill course, the Kandahar, which will also be the scene of the 2011 World Championships. Our only concern is that the runs in this sector, though mostly on north-facing slopes, and backed up by snow-cannons, are very low. The top station is only 2000m. We expect an icy start to the day...
Little racers in Flaine - 30/1/2009 12:32by Felice Hardy, editor Felice Hardy captains her daughter's ski team in Flaine. I'm just back from three days in Flaine where I took my daughter, Izzi, and her team of 12 and 13 year olds from St Swithun's school in Winchester to compete in the British Schoolgirls ski championships. It had been raining all day Friday, but when we arrived on Saturday it was snowing heavily. On the way up to the resort the minibus skidded a bit and the driver stopped to put on snow chains - I was slightly worried when he laid out a full set of instructions on the car bonnet, but he did manage to get the vehicle up to the resort in the end! On Sunday we woke to fresh snow and sunshine. The girls went off with their ESF trainer while I skied the powder with friends. Flaine's ski area is bowl shaped, making it a real snow trap - and after a new snowfall you can ski absolutely everywhere on the mountain and between every piste.
Izzi, far right The next two days were spent watching the girls compete, and I acted as 'dresser' carrying their jackets and trousers down the side of the course while they raced. The slalom course was so technical that 39 girls (including 10 registered racers) either missed a gate or fell, disqualifying them from the competition - fortunately Izzi wasn't one of them! On Tuesday after the racing had finished I went to look at the new ski-in ski-out Flaine Montsoleil apartments, which opened this season. They were built by Intrawest (of Whistler fame) and certainly look a lot more attractive than the average Flaine architecture.
It was fairly tricky reaching the building from the piste, and as for the 'ski-in' bit, I thought it was distinctly uphill in places. The inside is as attractive as the exterior, with a great indoor-outdoor swimming-pool, but the only 'ski-out'I could find was on a gritted path, so I ended up having to take my skis off and walk back down to Flaine Foret. Personally, I'll be staying at the P&V Residence La Foret again next year, which is incredibly convenient, with friendly staff and good sized apartments. My only grouse is the snail-paced people-carrier lift that runs between the main Flaine Forum and Foret - it's ancient and there's usually a queue for it. Click here for our Flaine resort report. Yet more snow - 21/1/2009 23:27by Felice Hardy, editor  Felice Hardy reports from Les Houches, Wednesday 21 January. Another 10cm of snow fell overnight and by 9am the cloud was lifting for another day in paradise. This time we drove over to the Brevent-Flégère area in Chamonix, which is about 10 minutes' drive from Les Houches. The powder was sensational and, although there were a few more people on the slopes than in Les Houches, our excellent mountain guide Serge Obert from the ESF still managed to find plenty of untouched stuff. More is expected tomorrow, but sadly I'll be back in Britain by then. Horses for courses - 20/1/2009 20:25by Felice Hardy, editor
Felice Hardy reports from Les Houches, Tuesday January 20 When I arrived in Les Houches in the Chamonix Valley yesterday afternoon it was grey and rainy, but during the evening the temperature dropped and the rain turned to snow. And it carried on snowing all night. In the morning I woke to 35cm of new snow and the promise of some fantastic skiing. We headed for Les Houches' sheltered fir-lined slopes, as Chamonix was closed for most of the morning. At first it was a complete white-out, but gradually the cloud lifted and we wallowed in knee-deep powder between the trees, to the sides of the pistes under the lifts, and almost everywhere. Lower down, the snow was a bit sticky - or savon (soap) as the locals call it. We stopped at a gorgeous little mountain hut called La Tanière, hidden between the trees on the St Gervais side of the mountain. It is owned by Luisa who is Argentinian and the food is alpine spiced up with South American influences - it's also very reasonably priced. A beer costs 4 euros here and it's 6 euros for a steak haché - roughly half of what we paid in Val d'Isère at Christmas. The prices are typical of all the mountain restaurants here. I am staying in the lovely (new last season) Granges d'En Haut, courtesy of Made to Measure - it's a boutique hotel with 14 chalets in its grounds. Each chalet has four bedrooms, a kitchen and sauna, and there's a great little spa in the main hotel - much needed after the hour's skijoring when the lifts closed. Skijoring, in case you didn't know, is skiing behind a horse while holding on to its reins - in today's deep snow it was a bit like waterskiing in a very choppy sea with speeds of up to 30kph.
Highway to Heaven in Verbier - 14/1/2009 08:55by Felice Hardy, editor Felice Hardy reports - January 14, 2009 I was skiing in a group with Verbier's very own ski guru, Warren Smith, who concentrated on perfecting the sort of turns that come in useful in Verbier's couloirs - pivoting your skis on the spot to make the shortest possible turns.
Lunch was at the new Cristal restaurant up at Les Ruinettes, a very welcome addition to Verbier's on-mountain eating, with lots of unbleached wood, suede and cowskin upholstery. The food was good too, though not cheap: ranging from a mixed salad at 12CHF, a rack of lamb at 48CHF to lobster flambeed in whisky for 98CHF. All very filling before returning to Ski Verbier's lovely new chalet, Treize Etoiles, for what's certain to be a gourmet dinner. Click for our Verbier resort report. More snow needed in Méribel - 10/1/2009 21:12by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog
Welove2ski editor Sean Newsom reports - January 8 and 9, 2009 Here at welove2ski we've been reporting for some time that the snow cover in the Three Valleys (home to Méribel, among others), isn't nearly as good as it is in the Espace Killy (home to the resorts of Tignes and Val d'Isère). But all the same it was surprising just how much scree and rubble was still uncovered here. The picture, above was taken at the top of Mont Vallon, at the start of the iconic Combe Vallon red. The piste itself is not bad, though I wouldn't advise skiing it after lunch - because by then the groomed snow has been scraped back to reveal lots of ice. Only on the lower, straighter section (below) was there any soft snow left by the time I skied it, at 3pm on January 8.
As for the off-piste - forget it. It's been blasted by several gales, and not even the campagnol red, which is the starting point for many of the best lines, has enough snow to be open. We saw one nutter setting off down there, and all agreed that sooner or later he'd had to take his skis off and walk. Below is a picture of the mass of rocks he was about to tackle...
I can't claim to have more than nibbled at the 600km of pistes in the combined Three Valleys area, but it was pretty clear that the best skiing was on the pistes which had the most snow cannons. Many of these are lower down the slopes too, and often sheltered from the wind, which has helped too. Later in the season, the snow can be iffy on these pistes, but they provided an excellent carving surface in the frigid conditions that prevailed this week. The pistes at the top of the Tougnette 1 gondola were a case in point - much more enjoyable than those that were higher, under the Tougnette 2 chairlift.
Above is how the snow was looking on Blaireau, one of these higher pistes. Up there, it was a question of playing marker-pole slalom. This is a great strategy all over the valley right now in fact. On many pistes the snow snow has been working over to the edges of the runs, forming small, soft bumps. You'd hardly call them moguls and they're a lot of fun to ski.
Above you can see the bumps at the edge of the Aigle red, coming down from the ridge that separates Méribel from Courchevel, next door. Those moguls look wicked - but actually that's where the best, softest snow is right now! Fingers crossed that more snow comes soon, and that there's no sudden thaw. If it stays snowless, and the temperatures start to rise then they'll be struggling here.
Meanwhile, away from the snow, Ronny's, aka Le Rond Point was in cracking form on Thursday night. No photograph can do justice to the atmosphere in there, which was electric - all I can do is give you an idea of how many empties were being generated ever quarter of an hour. They were body-surfing by 6pm. By the way, if you want to dress to impress there, wear a really big beanie. By contrast, Dick's Tea Bar, was dead at midnight. There are rumours it's lost its mojo... Not that there was much going on elsewhere late on Thursday - though I liked the look of La Poste, below.
Click here for our Méribel resort report. It was just a dusting, I'm afraid - 7/1/2009 07:22by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog
Welove2ski editor Sean Newsom, reports - January 6, 2009 We could do with an end to this long spell of very cold and mainly dry weather in the northern Alps - though according to the weather maps it looks as though parts of Italy will be getting quite heavy snow today.
Click here for our Tignes resort report. A beautiful day in Tignes - 4/1/2009 18:26by Sean Newsom, editor's Snog
Welove2ski editor Sean Newsom, reports - January 4, 2009 Thank heavens for skiing and snowboarding, huh? Without 'em winter would be unbearable. Admittedly there was precious little powder left to ski today, but courtesy of my guide, Tino, from Evolution 2, we found some wonderfully soft snow on the usual stash under the Merles chair (see the picture below).
The slopes here get very little sun, and for some reason the powder-hungry pack miss them. It's a favourite spot for the local guides.
Elsewhere, the pistes were in great shape - with soft and grippy snow just about everywhere. As the picture above shows, the off-piste slopes really have been skied hard, though. The big event in Tignes this week is the Tignes Airwaves - a five-day fest of freestyle events, most of which are sensibly being held at night under floodlights, when there are plenty of spectators. During the day, with the conditions as they are, no-one would be watching! Still, the resort has put a lot of work into the event, which in part is designed to fill beds in one of the quietest weeks of the season. As an extra incentive, they've been offering free studio apartments to groups of four who each buy a lift pass! They'll be doing the same in the weeks of March 21-28 and March 28 - April 4: check out www.tignesreservation.net for details. Click here for our |
Ryanair 40, Newsom 0
