MegèveSki

Free ski and practice - Day 4

Today was our last day of free skiing and practice. It was another bright sunny, wind-free day but it was colder than yesterday and the snow was more compact for longer. I guess that's good for the long term condition of the snow but it made for a slightly tougher morning than yesterday.

I skied with Neil again and we started with a warm up on the red under the quad and then some carving practice on the blue to skiers left of the quad. The carving went well, I kept my inside leg in line with my outside leg much more and varied the pressure to adjust the turn shape. Once it started to get busy we headed over towards Condor via Viento Cero and Militares. The paths were shady and very hard work, covered in frozen lumps of snow and very choppy.

Once over at Condor II we did a couple of runs down under the lift, working on short turns where the pitch was too steep to carve and carving lower down. Then we took the T-bar and Condor III and did the off-piste that we'd skied yesterday. This was harder, more frozen and lumpy than yesterday but it wasn't too bad and there was some nice snow to be had. We cut down through the trees and through to the area where we'd done the avalanche training and then down on the smooth run to skiers left of the T-bar; this was choppier than yesterday and, again, more solid, this made it much harder work due to the vibrations on the legs and the chunky stuff pulling your skis about. We took the T-bar again and then stopped for a coffee.

During our coffee break Joe turned up and we chatted for a while and then all did the off-piste again. The snow conditions were better than the first time, it was softening pretty quickly even though it didn't feel that warm and the sun was now behind the clouds. Back up the T-bar once more and we cut across the off-piste to lunch at Viento Cero; similar to yesterday the snow was good at the top and down through the gulley but got hard and lumpy once we were on the last face above the restaurant.

After lunch Neil and I headed over to the drag lifts via Militares and the quad. Once there we skied the steep off-piste to skiers right of the long drag. We did the usual route twice, the snow was good, it didn't seem steep anymore and my turns flowed more smoothly than the last time I did it. On our last run down we scoped out a route through to the next gulley, we'd realised that you could get across to it from where we were when we saw a guy fall at the top of it and roll all the way down; he was fine, even though he bounced over the rocks at the bottom and he didn't have a helmet on, but I expect his partner had a few choice words for him as he had to carry one of his skis down the whole of the gulley. Anyway, we continued our traverse across the top of the normal route and picked our way through the rocks and then traversed out into the second gulley. The snow here was better and it was a little steeper. Lots of fun. We did this twice and then continued our traverse above a few more rocks and into the third gulley. Some guys dropped in on us from higher up, but we were happy enough to start a couple of turns lower down and not have had to hike at all. The snow in the third gulley was the best so far and it was also marginally steeper. We did this one twice and then headed home via Princessa III, the off-piste to skiers left of the triple chair and the bumps on Pista 6.

Once again a day which consisted mostly of steep, variable and bumps. The real work starts again on Monday...