Skiing
Archived posts from this Category
Tuesday, 15th February 2011
Posted by Geoff on 15 Feb 2011 | Tagged as: Skiing
Geoff writes: today we drove into France to ski at Formigueres. We’ve been there once before, and it seemed ok. This time though, the snow was thin, and most of the time on the pistes we spent skiing fairly slowly to dodge all the stones. The two chair lifts are also very slow, and don’t go up very steeply, so you spend a long time sitting in them, for a relatively short vertical descent. We did have an educational time though, when we spent the 14 minutes on one lift with seven year old twins, trying to muddle through chatting in our non-existent French and their school English. With pointing we collectively managed to name the colours, ski equipment, and surroundings in both French and English. They were in fits of laughter at the English word ‘goggles’.
Judith did manage to fall and has a few bruises now and a sore arm. For once, she wasn’t skiing at 80km/h down the piste; she was walking across the cafe terrace to buy the coffee and slipped on the wet decking. Fortunately, the French army were there to help her up, since I didn’t hear her pathetic whimpering.
After coffee, we found a piste which wasn’t covered in stones, and was a nice red run, so we did that a few times, then finished, heading off to a hotel in Andorra.
The weather was better than we expected – sunny a lot of the day, and quite warm, when we had been expecting snow. Tomorrow should be good in Arinsal.
See photos of today.
Monday, 14th February 2011
Posted by Geoff on 14 Feb 2011 | Tagged as: Skiing
Geoff writes: after I opened the hundred or so Valentine’s Day cards I received from all my ex’s (and zip from Judith), we set off on our skiing trip – four days away using up some of the free passes for other resorts which we get with our season ticket. Being the first day of our holiday, it was, of course, raining at home. Normally, we never go skiing on a bad forecast, but we’ve got hotels booked, and it was easier to go than to cancel them, and the forecast wasn’t too bad for later on in the week.
When we arrived at La Molina it was snowing lightly, but visibility wasn’t too bad. I was trying out my newly serviced skis. Whenever they are serviced, they end up worse, and I spend ages taking them back to be redone, and it seemed like that was the case this time too. They just wouldn’t turn as well as before. Judith had a go, didn’t like them at first, but then decided they were ok – as, eventually, did I. It was probably just a combination of skiing in fresh, ungroomed snow, and not being used to them. But it got better, and we were skiing in powder at the end, on the edges of the pistes. But I think maybe I need some new ones soon.
For a while, the snow stopped, but then towards the end of the day, the cloud came in, so we finally stopped skiing, just before the ski lifts closed. In the end, a good day.
At the hotel, we had (and have) loads of work to do in terms of follow up from the conference. Followed by one of the best, and cheapest, menus we have had for a while. Four courses, plus wine, for 11 euros. Incredible value (especially since the restaurant usually only offered it at lunch time, but gave it us because we were about to go elsewhere).
Tuesday, 8th February 2011
Posted by Geoff on 08 Feb 2011 | Tagged as: Skiing
Geoff writes: last day before the conference opens tomorrow, at which point we will be glued to the computers for the next four days. So we took a few hours off to go skiing with Debi. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the snow was excellent, at least in the morning, until the sun got quite hot. Having tried to persuade Judith to ski carefully – a broken leg the day before the conference would be a bad thing – I got a bit carried away, and skied faster than I usually do. At one point I was passing a group of beginners who were taking up most of the piste, and I decided to go behind the snow cannon to avoid them. This was a mistake, since there was a shelf of snow behind it, meaning I did a very unexpected jump. I almost made it, landing back on both skis, but then lost it, and had a spectacular fall, losing both skis, but fortunately not hurting myself (or the skis).
Later on, we took a less well used piste, and there I did manage to damage my skis, going over some stones, and putting some deep gashes in them. I could still ski on them, but they didn’t turn as easily, so we’ve had to leave them to be fixed – something I hate doing, they always seem to come back worse.
As we were having sandwiches in the car park, we could see people thermalling up at Targasonne on the other side of the valley. Any other day, we would have been able to go over and fly too, but today we had to get back for the conference (and to do some publicity for the latest podcast on wave flying).
Thursday, 3rd February 2011
Posted by Geoff on 03 Feb 2011 | Tagged as: Skiing
Geoff writes: since it’s only the reading week for the conference, we can take the odd day off, so decided to go skiing. It started off really nice and sunny, but soon clouded over, with massive wave bars. The skiing was still good, but we much prefer to ski when it’s sunny, rather than in the shade – we find it much harder to read the snow. Though my spectacular fall today was whilst it was still sunny. We were skiing the black double diamond run, one we’ve done before. It is narrow, and you have to do a steep turn within about four metres of setting off, and today it was hard ice exactly where you make the turn. I managed the turn, but fell over immediately afterwards, losing both poles and one ski, and managed to slide most of the rest of the way down the slope, before stopping – I probably got down faster without my skis, than I usually do with them. Judith thought this was very funny.
Until a little later we went right to the top of the resort, where it was howling. You have to cross the path of a button lift, and dodging behind one of them, she hit two small snow drifts, one after the other, which made her splat on her face. Payback for laughing at me.
We left fairly early, partly because of the work, but also because it’s not as much fun when it’s cold and cloudy.
Tuesday, 1st February 2011
Posted by Judith on 01 Feb 2011 | Tagged as: Skiing
Finally the bad weather is over. Wall-to-wall sunshine is now forecast for the foreseeable future. The four days of snow in the mountains have produced excellent conditions. We went to ski with Debi, and Masella and the Cerdanya valley actually look like they should… mostly snow covered!
We had a lovely day out… the skiing was great, lovely views, nice chat and great to get out before the conference opens for reading tomorrow. We’re restricted for time from then, so things need to be fitted around the work. Shame really that the bad weather wasn’t next week.
Tuesday, 25th January 2011
Posted by Judith on 25 Jan 2011 | Tagged as: Skiing
Skiing today with our friend Debi. We got to Masella at a reasonable time and hit the slopes at 10.15am. Debbi was working in the afternoon, so we only had 5 hours at the resort. With the cold temperatures they have made loads of new snow and we skied basically all of the 50km that is open. Snow quality was excellent – best so far this season.
Nice and sunny day too. Nice to be out.
Thursday, 20th January 2011
Posted by Judith on 20 Jan 2011 | Tagged as: Skiing
We had the choice today of going flying or skiing. With tramuntana wind forecast, the chances were it was going to be good at Santa Brigida. On looking at the forecast more closely, we have a strong wind warning for tomorrow and according to the Catalan Met office “winter will return on Friday”. The Snowforecast is giving windchill temperatures at Masella tomorrow as -23C in the middle of the resort. That sealed it – we were going skiing today, flying tomorrow.
With the snowboarding world championships on at La Molina, it took a while to get up to Masella. Once there, conditions were really good. The termperatures were cold, but acceptable, and although the wind was increasing throughout the day, it was never so windy that they closed any lifts. There was a dusting of new snow and they have made a lot more artificial snow, so there were more good runs, and the cold meant nothing got slushy. We skied for five hours and even saw a sail plane being towed up from Cerdanya. First one we’ve seen this season.
Report from Mike this evening was that Santa Brigida was really good. Very thermic with max height gains 450m ATO. Here’s hoping we get similar tomorrow and Saturday.