J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by davidof

There was another tragedy at l'Alpe d'Huez a few days later. Our friend's who own Chalet at the foot of the cliffs witnessed the drama and we're waiting for a few more details from them. The Grandes Rousses have convex slopes at the top, unless you know the exit point you can rapidly go beyond the point of no return as these boarders found to their cost. I know l'alpe d'Huez pretty well (used to be my home resort) and they've done a pretty good job at signposting the dangers in the Grandes Rousses... but the signs seem to be completely invisible to some skiers and boarders.

maggi wrote:
Incidently - Davidof, are you the David of Jungfrau region fame?

no, not at all... who were you thinking of?

I thought having an open chat forum was a good way to introduce people to the ski club so was a bit surprised at the action.

The_Mac_Daddy wrote:Don't expect he can afford to ski, after buying all that gear :))

What kind of gear do people consider useful? I do a lot of ski touring and you really think carefully about what to take. On the technology side the following finds its way into my rucksack:

1. mobile phone (rarely turned on)
2. sighting compass
3. digital camera
4. avalanche transceiver, shovel, probe
5. Sunnto Altimeter watch

and that is about it apart from the usual stove, tent, sleeping bag etc. Too much gear weighs too much when climbing and just makes everything hard to find and how do you power it all?

Skiing off-piste I may take my GPS, but really just to record what I've done not where I'm going and sometimes I take some walkie talkies so we can coordinate when skiing suspect pitches.

The thing that shocks me most is how much you can pay for a pair of skis now... 600 Euros seems to be the norm. When did they get so expensive?

It has got colder now, but after around 30cm of snow in the very Northern Als and Jura the weather seems quite stable again. I was checking the French weather service automatic monitoring stations and last weeks 'heatwave' took about 40cm of snow depths. Obviously pistes will have faired better as the snow is compacted. I expect resorts with cannons will have them running now - water permitting.

powderhound wrote:Just an update... Max appears to have stopped for a rest in the middle of Spain - very wise given the renewed cold temperatures...

In previous years he's not hung around in Spain but now he's obviously a bit confused. Should get himself a decent calendar watch.

Cliff wrote:How can a club that is open to anyone be called isolationist?

I think it is fair to say that to close what was previously an open discussion forum without any warning just because there are one or two people (not me I would like to point out) who questionned the SCGB's raison d'etre is isolationist.

I particuarly didn't appreciate the 'party line' that they'd gathered enough information from outsiders and now wished to commercialise this and didn't need these 'outsiders' contributing to their nice forum anymore.

Or maybe you didn't bother reading past the first sentence of my original post and think about any of the more serious points?

powderhound wrote:
Actually David, I thought your desription of the SCGB site interface as "lame-ass" was more appropriate... :p

It was a bit poor to be honest but I didn't use the term here because I didn't want you to get into trouble with the SCGB politburo!

The Ski Club of GB has decided to close its chatroom to the outside world, obviously in a move inspired by isolationist state North Korea. The website claims the change was made today to preserve a fantastic resource that contains "extremely valuable information about resorts, ski schools, websites, equipment, accommodation, and a lot of general chit"

Although it seems the real reason was a poor user interface (based on Microsoft software) that let imposters register the same usernames as existing members and then post insulting messages. For a few days readers were greated to a 'sub-Matrix' spectacle of posters arguing with themselves.

It seems a bit unfair that many non-members contributed to the extremely valuable information as the Ski Club puts it and will now be deprived from fair use. Although to be honest, some of the valuable information was blatent cut and pasting from other websites, contravening copyrights.

Regarding the Ski Club claim that they could no longer afford to fund freeloaders. Surely they could have come up with a more imaginative way of funding the forum, say through advertising? Especially if their claim of 60,000 posts this winter is true.

Some of the posts that the Club objected to claimed that the typical member was a crusty Telegraph reading pensioner who wouldn't know one end of the Internet from the other. It remains to be seen wether a closed forum is sustainable and can remain a valuable source.

Ho hum, I'm sure j2ski members will join me in welcoming any Ski Club of GB refugees here.