J2Ski group holiday to Tignes January 13th 2013

Oh dear, I hope Pavel gets well soon, best wishes chap.

Great to hear the Trip is going well, so jealous now, get some pics on guys.

TP

all the best to Pavel - one of the good guys

Shame to hear that Pavel is unwell; as Dave says, always full of interesting insight and generous in his advice and comments. Get well soon Mr P :)

Hi guys, there are pictures being taken but not as many as we would like due to the appalling light. Hope to post some later in the week.

Yesterday was a real trial with the flat light and slow steady snow which pretty much wiped out visibility beyond the bottom of the slope we were on and sometimes not even that far.

Ally and a few very keen others went off with the ski host and roared about all over the place again. The rest of us (not in lessons) took it easier and cruised the blues all day. We went over to the Val area and managed not to get lost.

We got down to La Daille to pick up the Funival to meet up with the others for lunch up near the snow park and came across a horrible blue run which suddenly went very narrow a bit like a half pipe and was steep and icy. There were bodies everywhere. We all agreed that was no way a blue but with virtually all of us side slipping the whole way down, we made it! I have been trying to identify it on the map to put a big beware sticker on it for future reference but I am not 100% sure which one it is. I will ask the others before I post the wrong one!

Tignes Les Brevieres is a lovely little village but it is such a long way home from the rest of the resort, so you have to allow a bit of extra left in your legs at the end of the day to make it back. There is always the option to cheat and take the bubble back once you have made it back across to Tignes Le Lac and then up over into the next valley where you can cheat on the Sache bubble or ski down red or blue back to Les Brev.

We don't get much sun down here in the village either and there is little to do. So if you like it quiet it is great but otherwise a bit of a backwater. The chalet is very good though, clean and friendly with good food.

I am cheating today and taking it easy (mainly because I overdid it on Sunday and have a hurty leg for my troubles). I hope that this will mean I can go back to skiing on two legs tomorrow. More snow predicted this week but not as much as in the UK!

Dear Felthorpe and other Tignes groupers

If by any chance you are near (how could you not be in Brevieres?) the chalet owned by Mme Dominique Maugrain on the main road through the village, please say "hello" from the English guy (me that is) who stayed with her a couple of years ago and who cancelled last May due to a car breakdown on the M25 :( Apparently her husband is also a ski-guide / instructor, having appeared, so I was told, in an episode of Ab-Fab when the two ladies went off to VdI to learn to ski.

Take care and best wishes to you all.

Sunshine today and everyone is enjoying themselves but it's COLD ...the weather today was ideal ..clear ,sunshine and no wind but as I sad COLD a few photos have been taken and will be posted i am sure..

I have had a brilliant day today but I am so tired I can hardly type. I couldn't even make it upstairs to my room so I ate my tea dressed in full ski gear :oops:

6 of us went with the Bonjour ski host and skied miles incredibly fast (at least I could see today because it was sunny!) including the Face run, an unpisted red run (twice), an itinerary route (also unpisted), and the black Sache run on the way home :)

One of the guys has taken a lovely photo of me drinking tea out of a flask, sitting in the snow outside the Tete de Solaise cafe. I'd already paid 6 euros for one large hot chocolate so I wasn't going to pay any more! I've been filling up my thermos each day in the chalet so that I can get 3 free cups of tea.

The Espace Killy is a fantastic ski area but most of the mountain restaurants are extremely expensive!

Up until today the only fall I'd had was in the cafe at the Grande Motte, but today I fell once in the powder snow on the unpisted red Cugnai (which I believe is on camera!), the second time we went down in it, and then someone crashed into me and totally flattened me from behind :cry:

I was surprised how easy the Sache run was, but I believe that sometimes it is much harder. There were moguls, and icy stretches, but they weren't too bad and I managed them OK even though it was the end of a very long day, and it's a 10Km run. Our Bonjour host said it should have taken us about 20 minutes to ski down it, although I didn't actually time it. And our ski host is very pleased with our little group of 6 because he says he's been out here since September and we're the first group that he thought were good enough to take down that red Cugnai piste, and he'd been desperate to do it for ages :)

Only 3 of us managed to do the avalanche training last night, learning how to find a buried beacon, because several members of the group had spent the afternoon in Vincent's bar next to the chalet (because the light was too bad on the slopes) and the ones that had been out all day were too tired. So I explained to the ESF instructor that the French alcohol was too strong for us Brits :lol:

It was surprisingly difficult to locate the buried beacon - I should think it took me about 10 minutes - even though I had a fairly good idea where it was! And it was quite complicated to learn how to put the probe together and operate the beacon.

Tomorrow there is no ski hosting because the chalet staff have a day off so I have booked a private group lesson with the ESF on 'off-piste initiation' for up to 5 of us in the morning. However, the instructor has just phoned me to tell me that he wants to pick us up in his car from the chalet at 8-30 a.m. and I am rather worried that no-one will be able to get up in time! We are all so tired! I will have to give the others this bad news at dinner :cry:

Our 2 beginners seem to be having a great time and have really got the bug now :D
And I have very much enjoyed ski-ing with our one snowboarder, especially overtaking him on the flat bits :lol:

Got to go for supper now ...

Sorry to hear Pavel has been ill, and hope everyone else is well, and if I get a chance I will do another update tomorrow on how the off-piste lesson has gone :D

Great to hear from you there in Tignes and the fact that
it was sunny today.Think I would definately have been skiing with Felthorpe though.
Hope tomorrow is another good day. Thanks for the update