MegèveSki

Drills and bumps on Mt Joux

We caught the first lift up and made our way over to Mt Joux. Miche fancied skiing some of the bumps and Lucy had recommended we try the ones directly under the Mont Joly lift as the snow was still good there and the bumps under the lift were less skied and friendlier than the easier to get to bumps on Mont Joly. The only problem with that idea is that the bump run is very long and once you're on it there's no easy out.

We decided to start off by working on some of the drills that we were doing on the Warren Smith courses. We skied down by the Mt Joux chair on the steepest section doing braquage. This is a Warren exercise that involves travelling straight down the fall line with your skis facing directly across the slope (as if you were traversing) and your body facing down the slope. You side slip down with flat skis and then pivot your skis around so that they face the other way - repeat until you get to the bottom. It's basically a ski pivioting exercise, the idea being that you should have both skis in contact with the snow the entire time, not use the edges, and that you should control your speed and be able to travel down the slope in a very narrow corridor. This is useful in narrow, steep terrain and also as a way of getting you to get used to pivoting and skidding the skis which is useful in the bumps - you dont want to be engaging those edges and going off on some monster carve across the bumps...

Once we'd worked on our pivoting and steering skills we moved onto the bumps. Miche decided that the bumps right under the Mt Joux lift also looked too big so we started with the bumps off to the right as you rode up on the lift. These had the advantage of being on the edge of the piste and were easy to drop into and get out of. We played around in these for a while until our knees started to ache and our stomachs began to rumble.

We took our own food with us today; you can only eat so much restaurant food. We sat at the top on the benches near to the L'Igloo restaurant and had our food and then skied down the red to the mid station of the Princess lift. The slopes were nice and quiet by this point as everyone else was still at lunch so we skied down Pylones and then, as Miche's legs were pretty tired and we'd had quite a good day, we headed back to Rochebrune and did one last run down the slalom course under Caboche and then headed for home.

I was pretty pleased with my performance today. The braquage went well and I kept my speed nicely under control in the bumps. Ok, they were easy bumps and I've skied my worse but I felt completely in control and able to take whatever line I wanted and my speed was under control the whole time (which is new for me ;) ). I expect we'll do some more bumps tomorrow, the ones under the Mt Joux chair looked interesting...

Does anyone have any tips for aspiring bumps skiers?