J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ise

AllyG wrote:
So I would think you could get your skis re-sharpened in one of the hire shops if you think they're losing their edges.

or you can DIY ) some hand sharpeners you get in shops are pretty rubbish but some are quite good, I use this :

http://www.tooltonic.com/tuningFile.asp

small and light enough to take with me if I'm out for a few days and does a pretty good job. You can't go far wrong with their 99.- chf set, I presume someone in the UK sells them as well.

Just X10, there's a "military" version which I guess means it's in stealth colours or something :lol: I don't think they've caught on in a big way, too expensive for a mass market and just not appealing to professional users to have so many eggs in one basket. Battery life is also apparently a problem if you use it every day in GPS mode.

Another Suunto option is to get a more basic wrist top like the t3 and use the GPS pod.

Personally I'm dubious about having a GPS without some sort of display to see how accurate it is at any point.

If you don't mind the bulk you can probably pick up a proper GPS off ebay for very little. There's not a lot wrong with the Garmin etrex for example and you can get them for very little, just be wary that the bottom models don't have a data interface though. Apparently GPS chipsets are pretty cheap now, although I think the price hasn't bottomed quite yet, but you do need some sort of antenna which is what some of the small units lack.

In fact I'm dubious about the whole thing, geotagging photo's is great but as a souvenir of the day I think a camera's better :-) I do create tracks of trips but only when I need the data for something.

After two days on the GTJ (Grande Traversée du Jura français) I stopped in the small border village of La Cure. From here my plan was to hit the TJS (Traversée du Jura Suisse) and move north up the Jura range on the Swiss side. I can really recommend the hotel in La Cure, Hotel Arbez Franco-Suisse which I though was excellent, so good I'll probably go back with Mrs Ise sometime.



One option, and the one I'd recommend, would be to take that train to the next village and use the marked trails to get to the Col du Marchairuz where I was aiming to spend the next night. But, I'd decided to ski backcountry into the end of the ski area and then cut into the Col du Marchairuz from there. This obviously is somewhat challenging, you need to cross quite a big distance outside of marked trails and being able to do that safely, it goes without saying you shouldn't do that alone.

So I set off on my own picking up a raquette track for the first few km.





That worked quite well mostly but at times the steep slopes were too much for the grip on my skis and without skins I was reduced to herringbones or taking them off altogether at a couple of points.





Then I hit a forest section, this was awkward as there were no proper trails and I had to micronav through the forest. I tried to pick up forestry tracks so I could move quicker but it's a gamble that they're going the right direction, mostly my plan to cut over the summit of a minor peak and drop into a forest track worked. It's hard to tell from the map how clear the trail was going to be in the winter, I'd reasoned as the track skirted a couple of building you'd be able to get a quad bike or similar up it which meant a big enough clearing to ski reasonable quickly through.





The main alpine chain just off in the distance above there. This turned out to be demanding skiing for a couple of hours but I hit the edge of the marked ski circuit as I expected and was rewarded with a few km of track skiing more or less descending so I was able to boost out with my poles and lope through the forest pretty quickly.





Over Col du Marchairuz direction it doesn't seem they've tracked the trail for days and snow's drifted into it so it's tough skiing but I only have 25km to cover so it's not too bad.






I quite fancied a bit of cheese but it was shut, they do a great cheese here called comte which is superb.





And here's a token couple from the next day, not such a nice day, cold and damp and not nice skiing on a non-existent trail.



quite nice, a big talking lion ran past pursued by the white witch at one point which was nice



looking down at the frozen Lac Joux, I sked down to the lake to escape the weather on the ridge line and skied the lake shore, unfortunately the ice wasn't good enough to ski on the lake which would have been fun and allowed me to knock a couple of km off the run into Le Pont.

So that's the first 100km of the Jura traverse, maybe another 200km to go )

AllyG wrote:Ise,
That's great news about the dog :thumbup:.
That's the trouble with farms - the dogs tend to left loose outside (like ours) and if they get bored they're likely to follow someone, especially when they're young dogs.

Apparently he belonged to another gîte, I can see it on the map and it's some distance from where I first saw him, so he had a good wander around. The lady at the hotel was saying he was a bit of a handful until someone came and picked him up.

AllyG wrote:I think maybe in English we'd have 'visitors' on a sign like that. I'm sure I've seen signs in building yards etc. that say something like 'Visitors must report to the site office immediately on arrival'.

It's one of the problems I have when I'm trying to translate French - there are often many possible meanings to a word. I suppose it's the same in English, but I don't notice it because I'm a native English speaker.

That word chantier might come in handy to impress my French teacher at my next lesson if I said something like 'Chez moi, c'est comme un chantier!'. Do you think that sounds okay?

I'm the last person to ask about French, mine is awful :oops: I think we tend to translate word by word and it doesn't work, if you're good you take whole sentences in context. I've been watching the wonderful French crime series "Spiral" on BBC 4 and that's French in a different way to anything I ever hear.

People do pay real money for their skis and want to look after them I'm just mentioning the sort of icy surface that's common on red or even blue runs in the alps that most of us find ourself skiing on. This is the normal sort of terrain for us all I thought, it's why manufacturers ship skis at 1'/1' give or take. To suggest it's not good for carving or ice is the exact reverse of what's true.

There's heaps of stuff on the internet explaining this which I mentioned Tognar trying to avoid this sort of pointless arguing with you which always descends into you tossing insults around.

I wasn't making any veiled reference to you just a comment about terrain as an illustration, I was given to understand from your postings you were a highly experienced skier in a variety of terrain and conditions.

Please send your followup abuse by PM so I can delete it and no one else has to read it.

good news about the dog !! :D :D

I just contacted the hotel and they found the owner who came to fetch him. That's a relief, I've been quite worried about him :oops:

it's much funnier if you translate "étrangers" as foreigners :D

the dog didn't have any identity on his collar, he'd got a collar on and I'd assumed it would have a disc, when I got the hotel and we checked it turned out he'd got no id', I'm going to try and chase the hotel up and see that he got home OK.

Pretty much any tourist office in Austria will have deals going like this, generally not including transfers but normally at least accommodation and lift pass. Austrian Tourist Offices are pretty excellent, they're sat they're waiting for your call right now :lol:

Failing that, take a look http://www.tiscover.com/ I've always been happy with them personally, it's a portal and info service and can configure a package for you.