Ski-ing here at Tignes

Alright smartie

AllyG wrote:

I will never complain about ice again. This green stuff is something entirely different. It's rock hard - something like marble - and you can't even get a ski pole in it, and I can hardly traverse across it and I certainly can't turn on it. The only thing I can do is look desperately for a patch of snow to turn on and then try to cross the ice without falling over.

Ally

Haha, reminds me of my first ski trip to tignes, I went in december and it litteraly was traverse the ice turn on the snow. Praying that youd complete a turn before hitting more of the green stuff!

All I can say is it tought me how to fall, I was awsome at falling by the end of the week!

£99 for 3 days testing skis, sounds a good deal very tempting.

AllyG - glad you are having a good time despite the tricky conditions. I'm going to the "camp" next week and the forecast is for cold and snow - hopefully that will be the case.

I'm not a very confident skier, one of my ski buddies has only had 1 week skiing and another busted her knee on ice a few years ago so if we are not lucky then it looks like we may need to bring several good books, lots of cash for the bar and extra swimmers for the hot tub!

I've been wondering about lessons too - especially if conditions are as tricky as you have had - can you recommend yours - how much were they?

Hi Zwee,
The chalet has an arrangement with some people called TDC for lessons. I think they have 3 teachers, although I'm not sure. We had lessons from someone called Ben. He charged 90 euros for the two of us for 3 hours, although as I said I couldn't stick 3 hours of lessons and paid him while I had a 20 minute tea break (tea, water, crisps and chocolate - very healthy!) after 2 hours before continuing.

I think it's meant to be a 'clinic' rather than ordinary lessons. They ask if there's anything you particularly want coaching on, and when we said 'no' he just picked up on the worst aspect of our ski-ing and showed us how to improve on it. He told my daughter to move more and me to lean downhill, and his tips seemed to work for both of us. I stopped sliding downhill and she looked most professional - he seemed very pleased with how much better she was ski-ing.

We had our lesson on the second day, which I think worked out very well. It meant we had a day to find our feet in a strange resort, and then a day and an afternoon to practise it.

The chalet is in the middle of nowhere. Les Boisses seems to be an outpost of Tignes and at the moment it doesn't have a shop or anything and it would be a very long walk to the main resort. So you need to make sure you bring everything you need, or buy it in Geneva airport. Some other poor guests needed batteries and they had to pay 10 euros for the chalet staff to go and buy them. There might be a few shops open in the bit where the ski-ing is, I don't know because I didn't look, but unless you brought ordinary shoes with you it would be pretty difficult walking around in ski boots.

The red slope isn't actually difficult in itself, it was only because of the ice. I'm sure if it snows before your holiday it will be fine. There was a family out there with us who had only done one week's ski-ing. I told them about the ice and the parents decided to give ski-ing a miss and went biking instead, but their teenage kids gave it a go, and I saw them at the bottom of the black run so they'd obviously managed to survive to the bottom! There was also a snowboarder who'd only been in a snow dome before, and he managed by sliding down the ice on his bottom on his board and rode standing up when he found a bit of snow that wasn't too steep.

The good thing about it was that practically everyone other than the people from the chalet were national/international level skiers and were very good at avoiding my wobbly erratic ski-ing movements - they just whizzed straight past me at about one million miles an hour.

Have a good time,

Ally

Found these words of wisdom on the net about skiing ice:

Modify your stance:
keeping your skis further apart not only enhances your balance, but also allows your inside ski to act as insurance in case your outside ski slips out from under you.

Use the whole edge of your ski:
keep your weight balanced in the middle of your skis and keep the pressure on your edges right under your feet.

Be very subtle in your skiing:
any sharp movements will result in your edges breaking their tenuous grip on the ice.

Don't over-steer your skis:
they steer very easily, and can rapidly end up across your direction of travel; once this happens, you will have little option but to slip sideways until your edges grip.
Make sure that your edges are super-sharp.

€90 for a private coach from TDC for 3 hours is amazingly cheap :shock: TDC are highly regarded and also operate in Val d'Isere, was your coach Ben Langridge?

http://www.tdcski.com/about_tdc/our_team.shtml

Ally,
Thanks for your feedback - the forecast is looking good at the moment so hopefully we wont have to deal with the same conditions as you.

I think we will leave booking of lessons until we get there to see was the situation is like and to find our ski-feet again. (Went to Hemel in September and spent the whole lesson like Bambi so couldn't really get to grips with any drills - after 90mins when lesson over I had found my feet but couldn't remember anything said in the lesson.)

As the Chalet is a long way from anywhere does that mean Apres ski is confined to the Chalet itself?
We were hoping to go to a club at some point - the highlight of our social lives this year was my daughter's 13th birthday party so we were hoping we could rectify this at the weekend!
Thanks,
Zwee