J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by andymol2

The older you get the less well your vision adapts to poorer light conditions and the more (as a general rule) we rely on vision for balance compared to children who have great vision but rely more on their inner ear and joint perception for maintaining balance.
Correct lenses help but sometimes slowing down, longer lunch and coffee stops are the order of the day when it's poor light.

Can you buy tickets at the station or did you book on line?

Off to Champery for a long weekend in a 10 days time.
Flying into Geneva and undecided whether to hire a car or to go by train.
Looks to be a straightforward journey by train - anyone done it?
Andy

Car hire "extras" is a nightmare where the desk clerks are usually on a commission to sell various elements including "extra" insurance which is essentially all profit if you have already purchased insurance!
Winter tyres are often another scam in many ski destination airports where they try and charge you for fitting winter tyres which are often either mandatory in that country or already fitted to the car. I had that discussion at Graz airport - they finally backed down when I said "If I don't pay will you put summer tyres on?" I had to be fairly forceful but we were under the impression that the tyres were mandatory and presumably the hire company could have been in trouble for hiring out an un-roadworthy vehicle.

It easy enough to access Plagne Centre by bus or via the ski lift if you are on your planks.
You may well find skiing over to Les Arcs finds you quieter pistes.
La Plagne is a big bowl so plenty of scope for deviating off piste.

Having just come back from there I would say that there is a marked difference in how La Plagne decides what is blue and what is red compared to most resorts, including over in Les Arcs on the same ski pass. That's not an issue for most but for inexperienced skiers it could be. It's a gripe of mine where resorts designate runs as blues so they can claim there's a blue down to the bottom from one lift or other when it isn't really.

Courmayeur - just the others side of the Mont Blanc tunnel.
Nice town and enough of the early intermediate skiing that you are looking for.

That's interesting - the figures I've come across in medical journals where they have used A&E and medical centre number rather than questionnaires suggested similar rates of injury for both boarders and skiers with the exception of upper limb trauma which was roughly double in boarders and ACL injuries were slightly less frequent in boarders.

It may be a simplistic interpretation as self reporting of injuries is a little subjective and would need to be corrected for age and sex and nature of skiing.

Quite frankly it looked like the course looked like it needed a visit from a piste basher.
It's a tight, fast downhill course with seemingly far more bumps than in recent years that the racers were struggling with.

The light was flat but that in itself is unremarkable it wasn't foggy or heavy snow and I doubt the wind was to blame.
It just seemed to be so bumpy that it was unsafe at racing speeds and there's no run off to compound the issue.

Was it any less safe when Svindal came down than for those before? Not really they just carried in to get the requisite numbers for the race to stand.
The course did look rather hairy from the start, but didn't change so the event should have continued or been stopped before when it became clear it was unsafe.