J2Ski Holiday 11th January 2015 Sauze d'Oulx

This is one of Piste Pauls' videos of us in Sauze d'Oulx. I think it's got 13 of us in it, although only small bits of each of us, and I'm sure Brooksy is there somewhere with the large group, which would make it 14 of us.

Piste Paul's son is the one ski-ing without poles, because he's holding the camera.

If you put the sound on it's quite funny, because J2Skier friend Simon, and I, just happen to ski past the group that Piste Paul is with and he tells the others to try and catch up with us and Far Queue races off. Mind you, Simon and I weren't really racing - we just like going fast and not stopping as we go down. He's a much better skier than I am so I have to try and catch him up on the easy bits! ;)

Simon gets down to the lift first, followed by FQ, then me - but I think I slowed down to let Billip1 and Davidsa2 know which lift we're going to as you can see them waiting on the piste for us on the left at the bottom. Oh, and that very odd thing I do at the end I think was because there was a nasty hole just before the turnstile for the lift and I was avoiding it!

Other people in it are Ian and his wife and daughter, Bald-Eagleman, Felthorpe and her husband, and I'm not sure but it might be Brooksy standing on the left of their line-up at the side of the piste as I go past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y2svpROmuk

People in the video 064

Yellow jacket plus bobble hat = Ian W
Green jacket = Mrs W
Pink trousers = Little W
Purple onesie = Felthorpe
Green trousers + black jacket = Felthorpe's husband
Red trousers + white jacket = Bald-Eagleman
All black = Far Queue
Guy filming = Piste Paul
No ski poles = Piste Paul's son
Yellow trousers = J2Skier friend Simon
Red jacket black trousers = Me
2 standing together at bottom on left just above where piste divides (video time 2:06) = Billip1 checked jacket + grey trousers + white helmet and Davidsa2 = all black plus grey helmet

Looks like they had done a great job with pistes. Obviously we all prefer to ski powder but hard piste skiing does have it's place and is definitely rewarding when skiing fast and trying to hold everything together. Of course even in those conditions there is a golden window when the sun softens it :-).

Nice slow plough at end coming upto lift. Great to see am not alone in pulling that trick out of box on occasions. Still most valuable thing you can learn on skis.

This is a 'still' taken from the end of Piste Paul's video 064. The lift we're heading for on the right is number 5, the piste going away to the left is blue number 52 which later branches in two so you can either go down to the bottom of the Clotes piste (by our hotel) or you can turn left (as you're ski-ing) and go down to the start of the Sportinia chairlift and up that to the Sportinia level where the ski schools and restaurants etc. are.
There's also a chairlift in the centre, which is the top of the Clotes one that we came up on in the morning.
We didn't usually ski lower than the level in this photo, apart from ski-ing home, because the lower slopes got quite busy and icy.



I've cropped and annotated the paper piste map they gave us when we were there, so you can see where we are actually ski-ing in the video. I've put a red circle around where we are in the 'still' photo.

We're coming down the 2000 piste, and I think the waves on the piste map are to show the dolphin pool/reservoir. You could also go up the drag lift number 3 and ski down piste 42 past the slalom course, which is what I did in my lesson on the final Sunday.

We really liked the 2000 piste, because it wasn't crowded, the snow was good, and the slope was just steep enough so you could go pretty fast but it wasn't actually difficult :)

For the first couple of days we were limited to going up the Clotes lift number 4, then up number 5, then down to the Sportinia level and the start of number 15 chairlift and up that, and then we had several ways we could ski down from there, one of which included part of an easy short black run number 16.

The area over to the right from the top of number 15 chairlift is what they call 'the bowl' and you have to go that way to get to Sansicario and Sestriere etc.

As Ranchero said, they had done a great job with the pistes in spite of very difficult conditions (warm and no fresh snow for the first few days). The snow in Sansicario when I went there with the Ski Club of GB on Wednesday was great! :)

Any more news/photos/videos/updates Ally? I'm struggling to work out how your week went with this lack of information

We've got lots more videos and photos :)

This one is quite funny because it shows what it was like being followed everywhere by 2 camera men, whilst we were ski-ing ... ;)

Brooksy didn't really mind - he was just having a laugh ... :)

Piste Paul's 2 minute video - Felthorpe has the star role ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvJapKJuqVk

This video is of 6 of us going down the red Asters piste in Val Thorens, where I fall over at the top of it, and then do some really rubbishy defensive stem turn ski-ing.

It's 8 minutes long.

I wasn't going to post it up, but then I thought it might encourage people to see that we're not all brilliant skiers! Plus, you can see the view, and how windy it was up at the top, at 3002m.

It's also quite interesting because the difficult slope and snow conditions soon sorts out who's the best skier out of us. Simon (the best skier in our group) gets down it with very little difficulty, I fall over, Piste Paul (doing the filming) manages very well but finds it difficult, and the other 3 all have a few wobbly moments but don't actually fall over.

Anyway, you will at least be able to see why I decided to treat myself to very expensive blueberry pie afterwards! ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEBpROuOqHw

Very interesting read thru from your sauze holiday enjoyed looking at the pictures and videos looked like you all had a good time, it was a shame about the lack of snow to begin with I shrink as you say it's about luck of the draw with timings, ive been to sauze 5 times and I'm just about to go again on Sunday and out of the 5 I have been 1 has been a bit low on snow I've been January February and march and I think march has been the better month albeit early march though! They have just had a 2 feet dumping of snow on Monday and looks like more snow due! We are staying at stella alpina which we booked thru neilsens as it was cheaper this year to book a package holiday that the separate flight hotel and hired car plus we especially wanted to stay at stella alpina and could not book independently this year I think the lady Caroline has to give all her allocation to the tour operators and if they don't sell then she gets the allocation back, I know this first hand by speaking to her in the bar when I was there before. It was good reading about San sicario runs as these are our favourites and on a sunny day you are always skiing in the sun that side of the mountain we also love the sestriere more challenging. I will let you know how we get on so can't wait for Sunday it's my 50th birthday with a group of 14