J2Ski group holiday to Tignes January 13th 2013

My daughter took this photo when we were in Les Brevieres at the end of April, and I was rather puzzled about the railway-like construction in the background.

I know there is supposed to be a new lift to get up to the chalets above Les Brevieres, and I'm wondering if this is it.



And if anyone else is thinking of joining us on this holiday there are still 3 rooms available in the chalet Bonjour Bonjour. The total price including flights/transfers/catered chalet/ski hire and lift pass works out at about £850



http://www.skibonjour.co.uk/chalet-tigneslesbrevieres.cfm

Was going to join you with the GOAT. But then realised it was in Jan :cry:

Iceman wrote:Was going to join you with the GOAT. But then realised it was in Jan :cry:

aaaaah pity.

I went for my pre-ski holiday coaching day in the Hemel Hempstead snow dome, on Monday, with Inside Out Skiing. It was a skills clinic for 'short turns and steep terrain'. It was supposed to cost £100 for the day including ski hire and the use of the snow dome, but I got it at the discounted price of £50

I really enjoyed the day, and it was challenging and exhausting, which is fairly surprising for a day spent in a snow dome! They were good at thinking of inventive ways to improve our ski-ing and show us our good and bad points.

The day was made up of three 90 minute coaching sessions with elevenses and lunch to split up the sessions. And during the breaks the instructor went over our videos with each of us individually, freezing them and running them backwards etc. to emphasize what he was saying. And he was pretty nice about it - not too rude and critical :lol:

So - the drills we had to do were as follows:

1.Ski down a very narrow route at the side of the dome at the top (where it's steepest) marked out on one side by the instructor with short peg markers , and on the other side we were limited by the return of the drag lift. On the video you can see me ski-ing close to the markers, but not quite hitting any of them :D

2. Divide into pairs and ski straight down the slope with one person towing the other one, using 2 pairs of ski sticks tied together to simulate 2 tow ropes. This was extremely difficult and I made a real hash of it. It was basically like being dragged down a couloir about 5 feet wide and having to do multiple very short turns. But at least I didn't fall over. The couple in front of us did. And when we swapped places and I had to drag my partner it was even more scary because I couldn't see what he was doing behind me. I had to ski straight down, with skis parallel, relying on him to slow me down, and sometimes this resulted in a very sharp braking action and at other times it felt like I was free-wheeling and accelerating out of control.

3. Side-slipping. First of all we just side-slipped like normal down the slope, changing sides every now and then as we went. Then we had to do it on one leg, and change sides again. And finally we went into pairs again and had to drag each other down the slope in a side-slip holding onto the ski poles tied together. I found I could do it reasonably OK on one side, but not on the other. So obviously I need to practise this.

4. The instructor set out a course for us so that we had to ski parallel through 2 markers put very close together, and then do a hockey stop/emergency stop before the next 2 widely spaced markers. This was the only thing I did perfectly all day, and it was only because I cheated at the beginning and cut my speed down with a snow-plough before I went parallel to go throught the first set of markers. And after that the instructor made it even harder by setting up a second set of markers so that we had to nearly stop and then continue through a repeat of the same course.

5. The instructor asked us to do several runs using the up and down movements to make lots of very short turns as slowly as we could, pretending the slope was a really scary black one.

6. In pairs, we had to criticize each others ski-ing, and I discovered I am really talented at being critical :wink:

I brought a memory stick with me and the instructor saved my videos onto it, and then a friend posted them up on YouTube for me. There were 6 altogether, but we only managed to get 5 of them up.
Number 1 is me ski-ing down the narrow route, and I'm ski-ing as I normally do. Number 5 is the one of me being dragged down the slope and it's a good example of what I think might be called 'survival ski-ing' as in I didn't fall over but I'm not really doing what I was supposed to! The other ones show what happens when you try to change your ski-ing. The instructor told us to emphasize our up and down movements, pivot our skis, and make very short slow turns without pushing out our heels. He seemed happy enough with my efforts (because I did do what he asked) but it resulted in some really awful body rotation movements which is a problem I have been struggling with for years.

Anyway - I know what I have to work on during our group holiday in Tignes. I need to work out how to stop my body rotating. I am thinking of asking the others to take turns dragging me about the slopes with ski poles, like in the video, because I certainly couldn't rotate my upper body when I was being dragged :lol:
And also I need to get much fitter because my legs ached the next day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-TXHBLByFs

If you click on the link above then you can find all 5 videos, labelled 1 to 5.

Edit
If anyone else is thinking of going to the Hemel Hempstead snow dome by train from London, then they may be interested to know that a return ticket from Euston costs £12-50 off-peak, or £17-90 anytime, and the taxi from the station to the dome cost me about £6 (it's quite a long way to walk). There are 2 sorts of train from London Euston running fairly frequently. The fast one takes 24 minutes, and the slow one 32 minutes.

Never been to a snowdome - they look quite good fun :D

I forgot to say that at the end of the 5th video in the snow dome, the one with me being dragged down the slope, you can see one of the Inside Out instructors (dressed in blue) ski-ing down behind me - showing how it should be done :D

OldAndy wrote:Never been to a snowdome - they look quite good fun :D

Andy - it was fun :D

But I think if you went ski-ing in one with no particular aim/task/challenge in mind, you'd get bored quite soon. I've been twice to the one in Milton Keynes and once to the one in Manchester. I went to the one in Milton Keynes a few years ago to try out my new ski boots and I skied in the 'Ladies morning' session. I wrote a report on my boot buying experience here:
http://www.j2ski.com/ski-chat-forum/posts/list/8320.page

I decided to go back to Profeet, seeing that I was in London, and ask them to check my ski boots, before the group holiday in January. I wasn't having a problem with them but they have a life-time guarantee on them, so it wouldn't cost me anything, and I thought there might be something wrong that I hadn't noticed.

So - I made an appointment and went. I was quite surprised how thorough they were. I got a boot technician all to myself again and he checked the fitting of the boot (by taking out the liners and doing a shell check with my feet in them)and had a careful look at my feet and legs up to my knees. He said I am between boot sizes but mine are fine, unless one day I decide to upgrade to very tight fitting boots and then I could have a smaller size (which I'm not very keen on because mine are very comfortable).

And he gave the boots a thorough examination for wear. They do have slight wear on the soles and tips, from walking up metal gondola steps etc. I suspect, but he said it would be another couple of years before any part of this would need to be replaced. So I must remember to go back there in a couple of years.

And he very kindly dried the liners out for me, as they were a bit wet from ski-ing in the snow dome. He said I mustn't put the boots on the boot heaters in the chalet in Tignes, because the heaters would damage the special insoles I have.

I told him I would like to be able to tighten up my right boot more than I can at the moment, because there isn't space on the clip. So he moved the clip over for me, which was very kind of him. And he checked to see exactly how tight I normally do up my boots, and said I should really do them up tighter. I told him I only do them up really tight like he did if I'm going down a scary, icy, black slope and then slacken them off again afterwards to go down the easier slopes. And he said I should slacken them off at lunch time etc. - which I do.

And he put me on the pressure testing plate, like last time, to see how I distribute my weight. It was just as bad as last time, until I put my ski boots on, when it improved. And once I started flexing like I was ski-ing it was fine. He showed the pressure scans to me afterwards. It's very clever the way they managed to fix the way I stand and move by altering the insoles in my boots.

And there was no charge at the end of this :D

So - my ski boots are ready for the group holiday! :D

AllyG wrote:
So - my ski boots are ready for the group holiday! :D

Just you to worry about now then Ally??
:roll:

OldAndy wrote:

AllyG wrote:
So - my ski boots are ready for the group holiday! :D

Just you to worry about now then Ally??
:roll:

Yes Andy :D

My day in the snow dome showed me I'm not fit enough yet for the group holiday. I'm trying to get fit, but if I don't manage it by 12th January you can always just take my ski boots for a holiday :cry: