MegèveSki

Telemark lesson in Les Contamines

We had another telemark lesson with Lucy today and decided to head over to Les Contamines to see what the snow was like there. We have some guests coming out for the weekend so thought it would be useful to have experienced the snow at both of the easy to get to local resorts that still have plentiful white stuff.

The snow in Les Contamines isn't quite as good as Les Saisies but it's still pretty good. We ignored the lower slopes and concentrated on the stuff around the top of the Signal bubble at 1900m. The landscape looks less wintery than in Les Saisies, there's brown and green patches, but the snow, where there is snow, is still pretty good. Les Contamines seemed busier than Les Saisies but it was still pretty quiet. Apparantly there had been a big queue when the main bubble first opened but we had decided to start a little later to allow the snow to soften a little and when we got the lift at 9.30 it was reasonably quiet.

The good news for this morning was that I could telemark without the aid of beer. Bonus! We started on the Coins blue run which had nice snow and a good pitch and I discovered that yesterday's "bad" turn was today's "good" turn... Still, today's "bad" turn was still pretty good by yesterday's standards. Miche was doing well today as well, which is cool, she really seems to have taken to telemark.

We did a little off-piste which was pretty easy, due entirely to the niceness of the snow involved rather than any amazing abilities on our part. We then headed up again and took the Nant Rouge and Besoens reds down, practicing shorter, faster, turns. Up the Roselette chair and down the Tobogan black run, which was fun, though the steeper sections showed up our lack of commitment to lunging down the slope in difficult situations... A couple of runs down the Buche red and it was 1.45 and the snow was starting to get very soft and our legs were tired so we called it a day.

Another good day's telemarking. The balance and control are coming along nicely and when the turns are good the feeling is very good.