J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by SwingBeep

Considering how badly you trashed your knee and how long you've been out that looks pretty good to me, give it a couple weeks and you should be up for the Pas de Chevre :D.

It's very difficult to tell for sure in that light, but it looks to me that your left leg is a bit knock-kneed. Have you had your alignment checked?

It doesn't look bad for the price but, the weight of the filling isn't given so it might not have much down in it. The filling is only 600 fill power (duck?) down and feather which will have probably been sourced in China where it might have been plucked from live birds. The better light weight down jackets are usually filled with about 130g (size L) of 750 fill power European goose down harvested from dead birds.

The warmth to weigh ratio of down really isn't necessary for lift served alpine skiing, a synthetic jacket will keep you warm enough and it will be much easier to wash. Have you tried Decathlon or Sport Conrad?

Fully qualified ski instructors are allowed to take clients off-piste for instructional purposes but they are not allowed to take people on glaciers. In order to do so they have to complete a mountain safety course as part of their training that covers:

Snow and avalanche risk assessment
Off-piste skiing technique
Equipment for touring and off piste travel i.e. skinning/snow shoeing
Map reading navigation and route selection
Objective hazards and emergency procedures
Leadership and conduct of a group in descent

There have been off-piste accidents in the past where ski instructors have been found to have been negligent, so in 2012 the Syndicat national des moniteurs du ski français in conjunction with the local judicial authorities produced a DVD detailing their responsibilities regarding off-piste instruction, which was issued to all the ESF instructors. So your man should be fully aware of where he can and cannot safely take you.

Skiing down that couloir (we use the French term http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couloir) accompanied by an instructor will have been a lot safer then skiing down the Swiss wall which is supposed to be one of the most dangerous pistes in the world. The "slab" you mentioned looks like a cornice http://www.fsavalanche.org/encyclopedia/cornice.htm you were right to be wary, but the location didn't look ideal for explaining to someone why the lip of the cornice wasn't going to break off and trigger an avalanche which would sweep you all to your deaths especially when he was giving a group lesson at the same.

Snapzzz wrote:
What he has done is give a class off off piste newbies a sense that areas that 'look' like this are perfectly safe.

All he has actually done is give some newbies some instruction in off-piste skiing technique in terrain that he considered safe on the day, next week he might make a different assessment.

The ESF doesn't have any relevant insurance, it doesn't need any. It is owned the Syndicat national des moniteurs du ski français (SNMSF) one of the French ski instructor's trade associations, it simply takes the bookings and does the paperwork, but the individual ski instructors who are self employed all have liability insurance. Because of the way it's set up it doesn't have to levy VAT or pay corporate taxes which gives it a considerable advantage over the commercial ski schools.

Most ski bases are only about 1.3mm thick so if you put them in for a full machine service every time the edges become blunt or the bases get gouged they won't last very long.

I have the bases of my piste skis ground when the structure has almost worn off (usually once or twice a season) at the same time I get the shop put a 0.7 degree bevel on the base edges and set the side edges to 87 degrees. My wider skis get their base edges set to 1 degree and side edges set to 88 degrees.

Ideally the bases should be stone ground on a machine that has the facility to cut a pattern into the stone, which will then cut the structure into the base. Diagonal (KA) or chevron (CHV) structures generally work better than plain linear structures on piste skis, although most people won't notice much difference.



Between services I just keep the side edges sharp by hand filing and polishing with diamond stones (I don't touch the base edges), fill any gouges in the base as and when and hot wax them. If you don't want to go to the trouble of diy a decent shop should be able to do it for you.

At the end of the season it's a good idea coat the edges with wax to stop them rusting.

Innsbrucker, the bindings used by the skiers that video are Kandahar bindings. They were invented in 1929 by the Swiss ski racer Guido Reuge and were in almost universal use until the early 1960s when the first safety bindings were introduced.



The heel could be locked down by fixing the cable into clips mounted on the sides of the skis. They were also known as bear trap bindings as falling often had the same result as stepping on a bear trap, you broke your leg.



Most people didn't manage quite as well as those 'Ski-Cracks' from Klosters



Perhaps the most famous of the old skiing films is the Der weisse Rausch a 1931 German skiing film directed by Arnold Fanck and starring Hannes Schneider, Leni Riefenstahl, Guzzi Lantschner, and Walter Riml, it was filmed at St Anton.

They might have got the lifts from China http://ropewaychina.com/

Doesn't seem to be a shortage of snow.



Any idea how much a beer costs?

It's almost impossible to accurately forecast the weather in the Alps for more than a few days. Forecasts stretching beyond a few days are associated with a high degree of uncertainty. It can always happen that unpredictable and chaotic weather events distort the expected mean tendency. Present forecasts have a reliability of about 70-80% for temperature, and only 55-60% for precipitation. A forecast strategy based on random guessing would yield 50%.

According to Wetter.at it might snow in Bad Gastein on Tuesday.

http://www.wetter.at/wetter/oesterreich/salzburg/bad-gastein/prognose/9-tage

Niederschlag = Precipitation

Rideralp, Bettmeralp and Fiesch-Eggishorn comprise the Aletsch Arena
http://www.aletscharena.ch/sites/en/aletscharena/index.html
http://www.j2ski.com/ski_resorts/Switzerland/Aletsch.html