J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by live_Ade

Edel, sorry to hear of your incident and do hope that you are on the road to recovery. It's my belief that the ESF have a duty of care. I think there was a post wrt to this earlier in the year.. my understanding is that this involved children and the ESF lost a court case with implications for all ski schools.
It seems to me (from your post) that you need to get a response from the ESF and may indeed need to contact the local Gendarmes... it seeming that legal advice is likely your way forward.. I'm not sure how you go about this as it is likely complicated by the incident having been in France. It does not seem to have been handled properly at the time.. It should have been treated in the same way as if it were a car accident.

I've had the odd small group (private) lesson or so and have noted that the instructors like to hand out a business card these days. this suggests to me that they may be self employed under the umbrella of ESF (or other). I have been able to book a specific instructor - although this was actually to re-arrange an hour lunchtime to be a whole afternoon.

we've managed to get a couple of good deals in the last 2 years. Arc2000 - plenty of snow, even possily to get down to Villaroger (1300m ?), peissey side was a bit patchier though. St Anton - runs were kept open all the way to the village. It's nice for the kids that it's not so cold. I would suspect that the other 2 resorts mentioned would also be good.

frosbite - roughly what is your current level /ability and what areas are you looking to improve the most... eg if it's off-piste skiing you might want to go to a different place than if you have , say 1 weeks skiing

The recco (as has been said) is a passive device. It works the same as the anti theft stuff in shops and the same as the microchips buried in the a dogs neck. It needs a decent signal to bounce back. That said it's in a lot of resorts and clothes..so there is some chance of being located. You should get/hire transceivers if you're doing any serious off-piste skiing and ideally hire an experienced guide also. The number of tales of good guides & instructors getting caught in avalances should tell you something of the risk.... Prince Charles was caught out a few years back and you can't tell me that his guide was inexperienced ! If you want a bit more you could try browsing the pistehors site.

Have your schools switched to the fixed Easter break yet ? Have skii'd the last 2 years in Easter break (1st week April) and have found the weather / conditions very pleasant..and significantly cheaper than the weeks around 1/2 term.

Cool, Your English totally correct... I wish I could say the same. If this volcano keeps going, maybe it'll get colder earlier than you expect.
Backwards..it's the way forward :-)

can I throw another ski into the pot (but, I don't know how they theoretically compare with the skiis you have mentioned)... K2 Apache recon. I certainly rate them much better than the tornado's (based on 1 week hire of each). They were excellent off piste and had terrific (possibly too much ?) rebound in soft slush moguls. Took a day to get used to the feeling of them being a little wider under the boot. I'm 184cm, 84kg, 7/8 ability (based on snow& rock 10 scale) and ski quite energetically..oh and you can ski these backwards much better than the tornados... oh course this might just be annoying because it's another choice..sorry !