J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ise

Gimmecredit wrote:just back from morzine/avoriaz. Bad news I'm afraid, rained last 4 days of the week at all levels. Constant drizzle. OK base at top but even up there starting to turn slushy. Needed windscreen wipers on goggles. Toured the whole area - Swiss side of Porte du soleil just as bad. Avoriaz a bit better but really really packed with skiers as a result. Best skiing was in la linga area. Claim they're to get snow next week but seems to warm to me. Going higher next time. Cross your fingers and best of luck.

Interesting, bad news for you but I'm reassured that my eyes weren't actually deceiving me, I thought it looked fairly poor over that way and then I read some stuff claiming it was just fine which surprised me.

Looking at the forecasts that snow forecast this week seems to have vanished as well.

It's a pretty old ski the P40, IIRC they cam in different styles, slalom, gs etc

honestly, I can't see them being worth 31 quid plus your time and petrol, do you have any more details?

souldrive wrote:
I assume that by "turn longer" they mean the "racing line" of the turn from heading in one direction to the other, this would be a good way to "ski" the slope using the edges of the skis but will be a bit quicker than the diagonals with quick turns.

No, they mean finish the turn. The reason most people just keep accelerating is that they never finish turning, they accelerate out of one turn and before the momentum is spent try to turn again, cumulatively building speed on each aborted turn, a lower level skier manages half a dozen or a dozen turns before having to pull up or breaking away somehow. The self styled expert just learns to hang on longer and longer and assumes they're progressing.

More precisely as you exit a turn you're building momentum which will be converted to acceleration and then increased speed, as the skis runs out the turn we let then dump the momentum without accelerating or adding speed and then initiate a new turn at a consistent speed.

hermanmunster wrote:I've also heard that you take quicker, shorter turns. These seem contradictory to me.

No contradiction, a different technique for a different slope, loads of edge check, tending to hockey-stops on each turn deflecting force back into the slope. We'd try that on very steep and/or very narrow slopes.

Admin wrote:

ise wrote:we're seeing full depth glide avalanches and fractures are appearing all over the place.

Nasty... that sounds like Spring!

Hopefully the forecast dip in temperature will stabilise things again, though I guess the cold needs to be sustained to penetrate the snowpack? Otherwise a thick frozen crust on top of a wet base could be extremely treacherous...

Definitely a time for caution - digging the odd pit or two could be interesting to see how the layers develop; did you fancy some spade-work next Wednesday? 8)

Wednesday?

Just for interest and to tie my previous two comments together, the ground temperature outside is around +1.6' under about 40cms of snow at 1600m, that's on snow density at over 250kg/m3. That means increased risk of glide avalanches and for those lower stations, the exposed ground's now becoming warm enough that snow settling on it is going to be an issue.

On many slopes the stability of the last few weeks is locked in for a while and when temperatures stabilise again we'll have more good conditions. That said, ultimately the trend of any snow-pack is to stabilise so it's generally always optimistic anyway. Some of the north slopes (ie here) have had large facetted crystals, they skied well but might be issue if they get buried.

jclegg19 wrote:Liking this alot looks like a snowy week for me in Morzine.

Cheers for the info.

sadly I think the odd's of enough snow falling to rescue lower sections of the portes du soleil are pretty low. They're down to grass near the stations and I doubt many of those return runs will last the week. :(

The weather here is unsettled, it's 6' outside but cloud is rolling in and out although it doesn't really seem likely to snow soon. Until this week or so conditions were quite good off-piste, some reasonable snow but very, very stable and some routes were in good condition.

But, avalanche danger has suddenly gone up hugely due to the increased humidity and temperatures, we're seeing full depth glide avalanches and fractures are appearing all over the place. The local forecast suggests that we're seeing risk level one in the mornings going to level three during the day, the window of low risk is too small to do too much sadly.

Hopefully next week as the final Feb' half term people leave the snow will arrive and we'll get a good run through the month of March.

bandit wrote:
Many UK skiers still use Tour Op packages, I would suggest most. With that, comes the package ski school class, the package hire kit etc. I would suggest that most beginner and lower intermediate improvers, don't ask why particular exercises are done, and don't really care until sometime after they have stopped taking resort ski school lessons.
Receiving different methods and styles of teaching is only part of the bigger picture when trying to explain why holidaymakers stop learning after they master the basics. I'm really not surprised that many skiers don't know how to use their poles.

I'm not so sure, think back to the 80's and early 90's people used to embark on their trips not even knowing what the weather was like at the other end, the first you'd hear was some rubbish from a the tour company rep'. Nowadays, we've the internet and people are way better informed about every aspect of their trip and it makes them much more critical consumers, or at least some of them :D

Maybe most people turning up this weekend at the airport and boarding their coaches are to my cynical eyes woefully naive but that proportion that are more informed is going up all the time, from around zero in the 80's and early 90's to something more significant nowadays.

Obviously the internets not a perfect mechanism to inform people and it's incredibly difficult for the average person to see what's well-intentioned but ill-informed nonsense in stuff posted on sites but that's pretty much true of much of life anyway.

The vast majority of think themselves much more informed consumers nowadys, it's largely untrue but again that proportion of genuinely informed consumers is going up, I think most instructors and ski schools (getting back to skiing) are really aware that heading down the hill and shouting "bend the knees" from time to time just won't cut it any more. The irony is that "bend the knees" is still pretty good advice for most of us :D

The downside is that there's been this explosion in unintelligible nonsense speak, again like much of the rest of life I suppose, I read stuff that really I ought to understand and I've not the faintest idea what they're talking about and people build entire teaching methods around it.

Your observation that this questioning of instructors and technique is something that grows with your experience must be true as well, that sounds like a natural progression though. Sadly most people abandon lessons just as soon as they can stem turn and never progress significantly, in part that's because ski schools and instructors are so woeful commercially, ski manufactures and retail outlets have always been way more successful at extracting money for new skis than ski schools have at selling tuition. People are far more willing to buy skis to make something easier than actually learn to do it properly sadly.

bandit wrote: Yes, you've skied with me, but you're always in front, so unless you have eyes in the back of your head??? Also, since you're not teaching, and have not taught me, you won't know how I learn as a skier. Lots of folks now ski more than a couple of times a year, and read forums for ideas, so I'm not convinced on that.
Anyway, I let you go ahead, so that if I see you make a hash of things, I know it's a tough run. Maybe that's what you are using as an indicator? :D

BTW 6 minutes is pretty good IMV 8) how shiny was the netted "catch" area?

I try to keep and eye on what's going on behind :D I agree though, most people now match that profile, skiing's come a long way from the package tour mentality of the 80's. The wider public has changed as well so people question more as well. It really wasn't any kind of good guess or insight at all :D

6mins.... a piste day, slalom skis with very sharp edges :D It was very icy at the bottom, but those Lasers can hold an edge on glass so it's hardly even noticeable.