J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by admin

bandit wrote:Seems the Rating system could be open to abuse

Fair point... I've removed the lower ratings now; so the only purpose of the stars is to rate "good" posts.

one of bambi's relatives wrote:If you can't say something nice... don't say nothing at all

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bandit wrote:those who feel disenfranchised/spiteful/mischievous/abusive/mad

That's 99% of us accounted for... :lol:

Well spotted, but it is deliberate; see our latest Forum Tweaks.

We've just published some tweaks to the forum, the most important of which are...

- Post Rating is back! You can now give every Post you read a rating, which will result in a number of stars being shown to indicate the average score for that post. The ratings will only be shown for Posts (i.e. not for Users) to avoid the silliness we had before... 8) ...and you get one vote per post!

- Signature Trimming is now in place... there has been an outbreak of huge signatures in recent weeks. They do tend to break up the flow of threads so we're now imposing a strict 100-character limit; if your signature exceeds that length then it will no longer be displayed. You can edit/trim your signatures from Your Profile. TVM.

We'll be using the Post Rating feature in some competitions we'll be starting shortly... so if you read something you like or find useful, then give it a rating!

Carry on...

For reasons currently best known to itself (although we are interrogating it), our Primary Server decided to throw a few toys around at about 01:40 this morning.

Our standby server kicked in, as it should, and most of the site remained accessible. We do take the forum offline when this happens - as it's one less thing to worry about - but we're all hunky-dory again now.

Anyone experiencing withdrawal symptoms may now log in... welcome back!

What bandit said... most Blacks in the area will be hard (as in hard snow) and mogulled to hell at the moment, so not ideal for your first one. Snow condition matters more than steepness right now.

Not sure about Les Gets, but I do know La Clusaz well and was there last weekend. The most straightforward (and shortest?) Black in La Clusaz is probably Choucas - just above the mid station at La Balme. The entry is deceptively shallow before it narrows slightly onto the main pitch; it is moderately steep although the moguls don't usually get too huge, and you can see the end of it which you might find reassuring once you're in... 8)

TBH, the other Blacks there are all big, *steep* and mogully and not places to discover that your edges and/or technique aren't as good as you thought they were. Save them for another day.

HTH.

What have I got from J2Ski?

- 60,000 virtual "friends" (just like Facebook really)
- an ever-growing list of people I hope to ski with one day!

8)

Judging by the length of some of the replies to this thread, some of you are way too wibbly... now, where's my axe?

There's a lot of detail in this write-up from SkiPad...

http://www.skipad.co.uk/blog/snow-escape-for-british-ski-company-update-on-the-les-menuires-7/

Loving the power of Photoshop in getting the Mayor mobilised :-

The local mayor began to take a keen interest in the developments when a Facebook supporter, Jim Dunscombe, mocked up a photograph of Chalet Georgina with lots of tents in the foreground and posted it on the group's page. The Les Menuires mayor's office, believing that there were hoards of supporters all camped outside the chalet, sent the local police down to remove the tents and French media wanted to use the image in newspapers.

:lol: :lol:

panda_girl wrote:Is it worthwhile going in October?

If you need guaranteed snow, and "easy" conditions then - probably - no.

There is just no way of knowing what snow there will be in The Alps in 8 months time.

...but if you're happy to roll the dice a little... DO IT!

You might end up walking grassy Alpine meadows, or you might be up to your knees in powder. TBH, you won't know which until the week before.

Warren Smith runs his ski academy courses in Saas Fee every summer and they regularly seem to get good conditions. This is a video taken in July 2011 ...



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