J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by AllyG

I have been to 3 high snow-sure resorts, all of which were great:

Obergurgl in Austria
Tignes in France
Val Thorens in France

There are plenty more in Europe. What level skiers are you? And are you looking for short transfers and child care on account of your 2 year old?

High resorts do have their own problems though - like no trees, windy and cold, fog, and the gondolas are prone to shutting when it gets very windy.

Ally

I hate coffee as well, Nelly.

I will be ski-ing past those very expensive cafes and heading for my apartment and a baguette with salad and French cheese, and a cup of tea.

I don't know how many weeks away my holiday is. I'm not very good at counting weeks, but I think it's probably about 12, just about time to get fit if I start now.

Ally

Hi Simon,
I don't think anyone knows the answer to that one.

We are all hoping that there will be plenty of snow in the various resorts we are heading for. If you want to pick a more snow-sure resort have a look at some snow histories, or go very high, or pick a resort with a glacier. It is very much a case of pot luck with ski-ing, but generally you have to pay more to go to a snow-sure resort.

Ally

Ian,
I'm 48, well into middle-age, with a 21 year old elder daughter. I like to pretend I'm a teenager again when I'm ski-ing, but unfortunately it's not actually true.

I first skied at the age of 8, then again at 11, and then not at all for 30 years.

Ally

Trencher,
I don't know but I think my skis are pretty flat normally, because when we schuss I can beat most people. But I'm no good at doing that ant squashing movement (foot pivot) on very narrow blue runs - I usually fall over unless I snow-plough.

I'm not really very good at ski-ing. Although I have, technically, been on 7 ski holidays now, 2 of them were when I was a child, then I didn't ski for about 30 years, and since then I've only had 3 weeks of lessons.

I'm quite good at typing, but not so good at ski-ing.

Ally

I usually wear my ordinary glasses which go dark in the sun, and are vari-focal (because I'm naturally short-sighted but now I'm going long-sighted with age and I can't read the piste map unless I either take my glasses off or wear vari-focals).

But - when it's snowing I have to wear goggles over my glasses because otherwise I can't see where I'm going and when I stop they fog up (because I'm steaming with the effort of trying to ski). Goggles that don't fog up are essential. Also, goggles help when the light is 'flat' and you can only see 2-dimensions and you can't see the bumps and dips.

I hate wearing goggles because they restrict my vision so much, and I usually ski wearing my glasses with my goggles slung around my neck.

Ally

Pablo,
It was one of our instructors - can't really remember which one it was - but I rather think it was my morning one in La Rosiere.

It was very amusing, because it's so difficult to do. I seem to remember that I could actually just reach them, but not hold the position, and I skied with my hands just off them. I'm not a very flexible person at the best of times!

I think the general idea was just to get us bending etc. when we're ski-ing, and improve our balance and give us all a good laugh. You could only do it by sitting right down low almost on top of your skis and then leaning right forwards, like when you're sitting on the ground with your legs straight out and you try and touch your toes.

Pablo - I know why I can't spin all the way around - I'm not a very good skier! Maybe one day I'll improve enough so that I can do it. What's bothering me more though, at the moment, is that I realized when we were at Tignes that I can't turn right round when I'm stationary at the edge of the piste facing the wrong way :(. The TDC instructor simply stuck his pole in the snow and did a stationary type of parallel turn 180 degrees, when we were up the top of the icy black slope. I'm afraid I had to do something like a snow-plough to get round! I can do a kick turn but I didn't fancy trying one out there :shock:

Ally

Sobeuk,
Our ski instructor started us off ski-ing with our eyes shut because it was really foggy, and we were all feeling a bit nervous. We began by just doing the traverse with our eyes shut, and then we progressed to doing the turn as well. She had her eyes open, so she could tell us when we were about to collide with the person in front of us. And it was on an easy bit of a blue slope.

Actually, it did improve our ski-ing. We all found that when we were ski-ing with our eyes shut we became more aware of other things, because we were desperately searching for clues as to the direction we were heading in, speed etc. So we started listening to the sound of our skis on the snow, and became much more aware of the feeling of the snow under our skis, the wind on our face etc.

At the end of it, the instructor said we should always ski as though we had our eyes shut.

I can't spin all the way around - only about 3/4 of the way. That's very clever of you to be able to keep spinning.

Ally