MegèveSki

XScape - Milton Keynes

We went to the indoor snow slope at XScape, Milton Keynes, on Sunday for some more practice. As I said in the other place, when we were on our Warren Smith ski course in Saas Fee in September Warren said that he didn't want to see us again until we'd worked on the ski pivoting drills that we'd been doing on the course.

We're off to Verbier with Warren in December for another course so we thought we'd better get working on the drills.

This was our second visit to XScape and it was more fun than the first visit, even though it was busier. This time we took our own skis and I made sure I waxed them well before we went. It's real snow at XScape but it needs a little help... The snow conditions are slightly "spring like", by the middle of the day the snow can be pretty chopped up and the soft, mad made snow is quite slow. The first time we went we hired skis there and they were pretty typical of UK hire equipment - barely passable for the job ;) They were very slow, but the main problem was that they were sticky and the skiing wasn’t as fluid as it could have been.

If you actually ski the slope then it's all over in seconds; it may be the largest indoor snow slope in the UK but it's not big... It's ideal for drill practice though, so after we warmed up a little we started work on the one foot pivot drills that Warren had been teaching us. We spent around 2 hrs there in total and it was useful exercise; the pivot drills were working well by the end of it.