J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ellistine

I'm booked up for what I assumed was just glacier skiing in Tignes this November. Looking at various articles on the net it seems that Tignes infact opens for it's winter season on the 1st of October.

Does anybody know how much of the area might we expect to be open in mid November?

It's funny, I was content with just skiing on the glacier, now I want to ski to the hotel door!

Interesting. Begs the question as to who else Atomic makes skis for.

ise,

Just been looking at your blog. Do you ski tour all year round? You're so lucky to be so close to the mountains. Are the skis you use for touring that much different from conventional downhillers?

Over the weekend I looked at my two pairs of skis (Rossignol and Salomon) and did a bit of measuring to work out where the balls of my feet actualy fell on the ski.

I measured the length of the contact point of the ski bases (the length before the tips and tails start to turn up) and drew a line on the ski at the half way point. I then, as best I could, worked out where the balls of my feet were located in my boots and drew a line on them. To my surprise the new line on the skis aligned with the line on the boots exactly! This was the same on both pairs of skis.

The original article I read about this did suggest that french skis were more forward than the germanic/austrian counterparts so perhaps this is the case.

The bindings on my Salomons are moveable without tools so I might still do a bit of experimentation in November.

I remember in March I arrived in the baggage hall at Salzburg airport - picked up our bags - saw a sign saying something about picking skis up from outside the hall - left the hall - couldn't find our skis - looked back through the window in the hall and there were our skis, on the conveyor belt!! Mild panic set it very swiftly. Somehow we managed to sneak back into the baggage hall through the exit door and retrieve them.

ise wrote:just relaxing and getting on with it

I wouldn't say it's something that stresses me out. In fact, to me, understanding the various aspects of the equipment is part of the enjoyment of skiing. Chatting about it on sites like this also adds to the enjoyment.

ise wrote:It's largely a UK/US thing really, obsessing about kit in some way, in the Alpes you'll find most people just buy a pair of skis and go out and use them.

I think there's probably a reason for this (at least there is with me) - In the UK we spend probably two weeks a year actually skiing and 50 weeks thinking about skiing. That's a lot of time spent browsing the internet, reading reviews, researching techniques etc etc. When the 50 weeks of waiting finally comes to an end we want to know our gear is correct and not hindering our efforts in any way. On my bicycle I can tell if the seat height is out by a few mm. I can still ride the bike with the seat too high or too low but at the right height I save the most energy. Most people you see riding bikes do not have their seat hight set correctly and simply are unaware of the difference it can make.

On a previous thread Pavel made reference to the realskiers.com website. I spent a bit of time browsing the 'free' bits of the site and was quite intrigued by the following article;
http://www.techsupportforskiers.com/binding_placement.htm

It basically suggests that the centre marks on most modern skies are possibly too far towards the rear of the ski and in a test, all the skiers tested performed better with the bindings moved futher forward.

I remember Trencher mentioning moving the bindings forward on my Salomon Streetracers a while ago.

Any thoughts people? I think this Autumn my bindings may be visting the tips of the skis for a few runs!