J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by andymol2

snowb4ndit wrote:A piece of cod would be more fitting! :D

Would that be a "cod piste?"

Tony_H wrote:You lot are all lightweights. You want to try the drag over the back of Sauze on the link to Sestriere. Its takes about 20 minutes to haul you back up from the bottom. Its a killer. And if you do fall off, which of course I havent, there is nothing to ski onto, so you have to slide all the way back down to the bottom.

Is that the dog-leg one?

pavelski wrote:

Everyone should take lessons. Did you know that even ski school directors are required to take "refresher" courses , that are never advertised and never given in well known resorts!

That's the key point - teaching a skill to a novice is often the hardest part. There is a real skill to recognising that what your pupil thinks they are doing is often different to what they are doing and it's even harder to show or explain to them how to change what they think they are doing into what they need to do.

The skis didn't come off because she fell face first - the skis rapidly went up in the air and no significant (rotational)force was applied to them. Essentially a harmless fall - low speed soft snow. Falling on bumps is part of the learning curve.

There's a place for lessons and there's a place for self directed learning - just avoid doing the latter where it's dangerous to you or others.

The first time we ski'd our instructor ski'd into a piste marker. Never seen anyone leap to their feet (skis) as quickly in my life.

When we were recounting this tale back in the chalet who should walk into our chalet was the same ski instructor who didn't recognise us (also assuming we didn't recognise him) and tried to deny that any ESF instructor could have done this! His English suddenly became very limited when I said "take it on the chin Jacqui - just like you did the pole)

I was referring to altitude sickness in kids. (Rather than brain size & nose bleeds)

Kids get more nosebleeds for lots of reasons - usually minor nasal infections such as colds and digital trauma. Some kids are just prone to them from superficial capillaries just inside the nose.

The best way for dealing with a nose bleed is to pinch the lower fleshy part of the nose for 10 minutes. Mostly the bleeding comes from the septum (unless you've got a coke habit & destroyed it).
This is the only bit you can appy pressure to - squeeze higher up and all you do is press on the bony bits but apply no pressure to the blood vessels.

I recall one lecture I went to given by a mountaineering neurosurgeon who got voluteers to have pressure transducers inserted in their heads and monitired the effect of altitude on pressure within the skull and compared the findings to the amount of "free space" on CT scans of their heads befor the Himalayan trip. The pressure generally rose most/ most rapidly in those with least space who were the younger ones.
They didn't do the research on children (I guess it would be unethical to get minors to have transducers inserted into their heads) but kids are thought to "go off" more rapidly with head injuries than adults because they have less space to swell into so I guess the same could be applied to altitude sickess.

These days I try and minimise the risk of HACE by drinking lots of wine whilst at sea level to atrophy my brain. That and not going to altitude!

Kids are more prone to being affected by altitude this may be a gross over-simplification the higher the more the brain swells. Children tend to have less free space inside the skull for the brain to swell into compared to adults who's brains tend to shrink a little with age, alcohol etc.

Not convinced that the altitude per se was the cause of the nosebleeds - more likely your nose got dry & crusty on the flight & similarly in the relatively dry air that you get in air conditioned hotels and the dry air in cold mountains compound this. Crusty noses bleed easily.

Motion sickness can come on quickly for some although most ski lifts are fairly brief so not usually an issue on the mountain. Sometimes the lifts stop for a while but don't rock for long unless someone makes it rock but the possibility of being vomited on would dissuade most from doing this on a lift with strangers.