MegèveSki

Mostly off piste

So much for our easy, early Sunday. We had a call last night from Lucy so we skied with her today. She asked what we wanted to do and, since we've had a pretty easy time for the last few days, I said I'd like something challenging. I expect that next time I say something like that Miche will add some provisos...

Lucy said to bring our transceivers and shovels etc as she didn't quite know what kind of challenge she was planning. Today was the first day we actually skied fully kitted out. The shovels aren't really that heavy and I didn't really notice that I had it in the pack. The transceiver was pretty comfortable, though it was harder for Miche to get it comfortable as her chest got in the way ;)

We started out on Rochebrune; a warm-up down from the top and down the blue between the trees, dropping right on a small, hidden, path to emerge just above the La Tour drag (a useful shortcut that we didn't know about). At this point I decided that I was skiing too lazily and that I needed to put a little more effort in or I'd be told that I was still as crap as last time that I skied with Lucy... So I put more effort in and had a wonderful stack on the beautifully groomed green on the way down to the La Tour drag. I applied too much pressure for the nice soft snow conditions, my skis reacted quickly to the build up of pressure and soft snow and pretty much stopped under me. I remember looking at the tips of my skis and thinking that it was odd that only the tips were on the ground and then I went head over heels over the fronts of them and landed in a heap; apparently the trick is to go with it when this happens and flick your hips into the roll and, perhaps, if you're going fast enough when you start, you can end up back on your feet having flicked yourself over on your head... Anyway, no harm done to me, but I broke the strap on the other pole so that now needed cable tie surgery. After the laughter subsided we took the drag and then the Super Meève chair and headed down towards the Ravette lift and up to Alpette.

From Alpette we took the black itinerary run Emile Allais. Named after a local hero, this used to be the local down-hill course. It's an interesting run and had great snow on it. The run cuts down between the wooded section next to Alpette and then across one of the blues and disappears through the fence next to the Forestier restaurant, halfway down Thurn.

Miche had a fall just before the restaurant. As you drop back onto the piste and head down the blue towards the restaurant there was a section where it was advisable to go straight and fast (the blue was a bit uphill from where the off piste section joined). I dropped into a tuck behind Lucy and made it up to the flat section. Miche hit a small lip just when she thought she'd made it through the fast section and managed to eject from both skis and land on her head some distance lower down. She exploded her goggles and winded herself quite badly so it took a while to pick up the pieces - we stopped for a coffee at the restaurant and fixed the goggles and cable tied my pole before continuing.

From the restaurant the Emile Allais is a narrow, steep, and bumpy, off piste run that takes you down the right hand side of Rochebrune where no other runs go. After a long, narrow (10' wide?), bumpy section with a drop off to the left and a steep bank to the right you come around a corner to a wider, steeper section. The race course up at Cote 2000 is tame in comparison, especially given that when this was used as a down-hill people skied on straight wooden skis with leather boots. After the final face it opened out into a field and we skied down to the road, hiked a little way and caught the ski bus back up to the Rochebrune lifts. The run continued on across the road and there is a special bus that will pick you up if you go all the way down to the finish.

It was a good run and a very quiet, we only saw 2 other skiers coming down it and 4 going up (these Randonnée types are a weird lot).

Once at the bottom again we headed up and came down under Caboche practicing some bump skiing techniques on the flat piste. We were allowing our knees to rise up in front of us and our skis to skip forward a fraction during the turn so that we could pivot on the heels for a very fast skidded turn and then push the feet down (the back of the non existent bump) and back under us so that our weight was central again; a bit like a compression turn where your knees come forward and up rather than stay directly below you. It was easier when we took it into the bumps later on as the bump gave you something to absorb with your knees...

Across the Rocharbois and up to the top of Mont d'Arbois and down towards the Arbois chair doing a drill to speed up our short swings; pretty much the opposite of the earlier exercise, fast pivoting on the toes. From the top of the Arbois chair we skied the bumps down the side of the Freddy drag lift; finally putting the exercises to work on the bumps. After this we took a run down the bumps to the right of the Mt Joux chair between the Chaillettes and Valamonts reds. These were the bumps that we'd been practicing on earlier in the month. Miche skied them really well, a marked improvement on the earlier practice sessions.

From there we took the Etudiants drag, turned right at the top onto Etudiants and then cut into the trees... The trees continued and eventually Lucy stopped and announced that now we would do some beginner tree skiing. We skied down between the trees in lovely soft powder. The trees here were closer together than my last bit of tree skiing in Mott and Killibrew canyons in Tahoe but the pitch was less steep and the snow much better. Miche had never skied trees before and her view on it was something along the lines of "bloody madness" but she did well and it was good fun - handy to know that the trees just off of Etudiants are suitable for practicing this kind of thing too... The trees finally opened out into an field that dropped gently towards the end of the race course at the bottom of Etudiants, we cut across this, dropped down the end of Etudiants and cut across to the Ideal chair. From there we took the red down to the mid station of the Princesse lift and had a late lunch at the restaurant there (Chez Luc). There were other people on the red run, the cheek of it; we'd seen practically nobody all morning up to that point, though we'd hardly needed to use the ski school priority lanes as the lifts weren't that busy either.

The food at the restaurant was very good; we'll definitely be going back there. After lunch we headed up to the top of Mont d'Arbois where the weather had closed in and visibility was poor. Once down Bridans, an icy black that we hadn't skied before but that was likely to have better visibility than Voltigeurs. Vis was good and our skis held well on the ice (looks like I sorted Miche's edges properly this time). Up the Grande Vorasset drag and then down the Belle d'Arbois red, cutting left half way down to do some more off piste, slightly cruddy powder down towards the flat section of the Mandarines green run. Down the green to the Mont d'Arbois base and then back up in the bubble for a final run down Pylones, cutting left at the race course to finish up with some nice lazy turns on the soft, untouched snow beside the slalom course.

I think I got my challenging day...