J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by Wanderer

If you are hiring a car, Mietski.com have a shop on the way into the valley and their hire rates can be way cheaper than in resort.

Haven't been there but it is high on my possibilities list for future trips.

Just be careful when going over to Zermatt. I read an hilarious article in one of the papers a couple of years ago about a journalist and his son who missed the last lift back onto the Cervinia side on New Years Eve. The son had gone ahead and had missed a turn they needed to take to get a particular lift up to the top. By the time, they skied down to the bottom and tried to get back up, the link was closed. They skied down into Zermatt to discover that a taxi back to Cervinia would take hours and cost several hundred pounds. Faced with this information, they decided to stay overnight but it being New Year's Eve everywhere was full. Eventually some hotel manager took pity on them and found them a bed in the staff quarters :oops: . Meanwhile, his wife and daughter were on their own in Cervinia. I don't think she was very pleased with them :shock:.

Obviously, they would have had no clothes or shoes with them. Don't remember how they managed that problem - would have been very expensive to buy anything in Zermatt.

Anyway, enjoy your trip. I look forward to reading your report and seeing your photos which I am sure will be up to your usual standard :wink:. Just watch out for lift closures on your trips over to Zermatt :roll:.

A real tragedy and horrible for the families of the victims. Rescue response appears to have been fantastic with several kids dug out of the snow - it was reported that 2 of them in cardiac arrest when rescued and are now in hospital. It could have been much worse.

From what I have read, the group was a school group from Lyons. Apparently, it is a regular thing for the school(s) to do day trips to the slopes. Effectively, this would have been their PE class. I would expect that the teacher(s) and pupils would have been very experienced skiers and would have known the resort very well. One of the teachers is critically ill in hospital so the kids would appear to have been accompanied on the slope.

I don't really do "off-piste" but only because my knees are too old :oops:. The rest of me is much younger than my knees for some strange reason:lol:. However, I will occasionally head into fresh snow on the fringes of the marked piste or take on the odd "ski-route" if conditions seem reasonable. Like most recreational skiers, I do this casually without any avi, shovels, probes or any other avalanche equipment. I suppose I work on the assumption that avalanches won't happen on such slopes. This is probably true in nearly all cases but you only need to be wrong once :!:.

Certainly, if I was thinking about going "properly" off piste, I would only do so with a guide and would expect that they would provide the basic essential equipment, as well as keeping me to areas that are reasonably safe. Venturing out without knowing the area and having proper equipment is bordering on reckless.

Unfortunately, if you are looking at half term for this year, as indicated on your other thread, you might have to settle for whatever is available :cry:.

If you have back issues, I would forget about sledging :wink:. You can get knocked about on those things :roll:

Ranchero_1979 wrote:Just to be clear skier was offpiste, Val did not have an onpiste avalanche fatality.

Is interesting how resorts grade their runs, there seems to be two main issues:
The battle for piste KM has resulted in so many off camber narrow green and blue paths in the Alps is ridiculous. Perhaps what is needed is a real definition of a piste vs. just being pisted. I would suggest something like does not deviate from the natural fall line of a mountain by more than 25 deg. That way people ski terrain vs. paths which is far more enjoyable and stops resorts engineering mountains.
Countries are very inconsistent. Italy is far too conservative and the North Americans felt the need to add a grade, so no wonder people are confused.
Probably best people chose their resort by fatmap to really understand where they are heading and the likely quality of the skiing.

It would be great if some universal standard could be agreed upon but I don't see it happening anytime soon :twisted: .

It seems to me that the classification is as much determined by the marketing department as the health and safety department. Most resorts aim for what they consider the optimum mix of slopes to attract the greatest number of visitors - this seems to be to get as close to 40:40:20 (Blue, Red, Black)as you can :shock:. The 2nd element is perhaps even more worrying - the absolute need for a Blue home run. Again, the marketeers will pretty much insist on this no matter what the terrain.

Unfortunately lots of mountains are shaped like an inverted bowl which can mean that the slopes lower down are steeper than those higher up. This can mean very tricky home runs :x. This is fine if they are properly marked but disastrous if not. As the poster has indicated, it is common in many resorts to find relatively difficult home runs which are full of tired, inexperienced skiers, who definitely do not enjoy the experience and can be a danger to themselves and to others.

Good news that cameras do not compromise the effectiveness of the helmet. However, I wonder whether wearing a camera encourages the wearer to ski more aggressively in order to get "better" shots :?:. At a minimum, I suspect that many users will attempt to ski runs from top to bottom without stopping when filming. This could leave them dangerously fatigued by the end of the run. I confess I have no evidence for these views so this is pure speculation on my part:oops: .