J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by SwingBeep

Surprisingly perhaps Zermatt (with the continent's highest slopes, open year round) has one of the thinnest bases on their lower slopes – just 3cm,

Zermatt has a lot more than 3cm on the lower slopes. The depth you have reported is measured at the SLF snow depth measurement station in the village, as it has been on a daily basis for the last 72 seasons http://www.slf.ch/fragment/chart.html?station=4ZE0&type=beob&lang=en

This is clearly stated on the lift company web site http://www.matterhornparadise.ch/en/current/snow-report

The "base" on the lower slopes is about 30 - 40cm thick and was put down by the snow cannons in December.

It would be a really good idea if you checked the information before publishing it.

Ski bindings were designed to protect the tibia, not the knee. There have been no appreciable changes to the design of the mechanisms since 1980. So reducing the release setting will have little or no effect on protecting your knee, but could lead to serious injury due to inadvertent release.

It's very important to know what your release setting should be and how to check that the forward pressure has been set correctly, as ski shops often make mistakes. It's reckoned that about 50% of skiers ski with incorrectly adjusted or defective bindings.

In France they tend to adjust them in accordance with the AFNOR FD S 52-748 standard, which is a modification of ISO 11088 specifically designed to reduce binding release values particularly for women and for individuals with a body weight of less than 55 kg. http://inpes.santepubliquefrance.fr/CFESBases/catalogue/pdf/Ski-Dep_Fix.pdf as you can see there are lots of permutations so it's easy to make a mistake.
To make the setting easier to work out somebody has produced an online calculator http://www.reglagefixation.fr/index.php?lang=eng

The rest of the skiing world adjusts the release settings in accordance with ISO 11088 (Assembly, adjustment and inspection of an alpine ski/binding/boot (S-B-B) system) and ISO 8061(Alpine ski-bindings - Selection of release torque values) All the manufactures produce charts to assist with the selection of the correct settings http://www.salomoncertification.com/manuals3/EN_ADJ_CHART_17.pdf and guides on how to select the correct skier type http://www.salomoncertification.com/manuals3/EN_SKIER_TYPE_17.pdf Again there are online calculators http://www.dinsetting.com/#

Bear in mind that the release setting indicator is just an indicator and there is an allowable tolerance of 15% and that the only way to check whether the bindings are functioning correctly is to test them on a torque-measuring binding test machine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpyWsocjEEM

As well as the UK airports they are also planning to fly to Brussels and Rotterdam. In the first year they are going to use a 25 year old Fokker 100 wet leased from the Croatian airline Trade Air. Sion is a very tricky place to fly into, because of a bend in the valley the last 5 miles have to be flown visually unless the aircraft is fitted with a GPS based instrument landing system. As the aircraft is so old I doubt if it is fitted with one.

Interestingly the company is only registered as Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) limited company in the UK at the moment, as they say they will have to set a company in the EU to avoid problems with the European Aviation Safety Agency after Brexit.

If you can get a lift to Albertville there is a bus service from there to Annecy (line 51 hourly) and from Annecy there are frequent trains to Saint-Gervais-les-Bains.

I thought it was common knowledge that all these snowfall forecasts are generated by computer based weather forecasting models, such as the Global Forecast System (GFS), European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) etc. I presume that J2Ski uses the precipitation data generated by the GFS as they are not copyrighted and are available for free, whereas the data from the other models has to be paid for. The price for a maximum charge commercial ECMWF licence is 140,000 EUR/Year (+ delivery charges).

Unfortunately the modelling of precipitation is still not very reliable. If you compare the modelled results with observed values you will see that the model is nothing better than a computer generated guess. The GFS model is run in two parts: the first part has a higher resolution and goes out to 180 hours (7 days) in the future, the second part runs from 180 to 384 hours (16 days) at a lower resolution. The resolution of the model varies in each part of the model: horizontally, it divides the surface of the earth into 35 or 70 kilometre grid squares; vertically, it divides the atmosphere into 64 layers and temporally, it produces a forecast for every 3rd hour for the first 180 hours, after that they are produced for every 12th hour. Because of the low resolution the model can't see the complex terrain of the Alps, Pyrenees. and other mountainous areas very well. The precipitation data has to be multiplied by a factor to get the predicted amount of snowfall which is another source of error.

J2Ski's forecast for Zermatt last Thursday



Reality on Monday



Zermatt claims that there is 20cm of snow at village level! After a personal inspection yesterday I reckon about 10-15cm fell on the slopes over the weekend.

I once forgot to put the boot board back in before putting the liner back in, felt very strange. To make it easier to put the boots on I warm the front of the boots up using a hot water bottle, I hold it against the cuff and the top of the shell with an elastic luggage cord. It softens the plastic making it a lot easier to prise the boots open. Don't try it if your boots have low temperature mouldable shells.

The snowboard market peaked at 1.6 million boards in 2000 and has since decreased to 0.8 million. Hardly any of the kids here are taking it up these days, as it's viewed as being about as cool as going to the supermarket in your pyjamas.

Listed on their UK website at £99.99
https://www.wedze.co.uk/archtec-boost-300-mens-groomed-slope-skis-red-id_8370478