Snowboarding Hols 2009

We’re back, back, back. And as is traditional for me at the end of a snowboarding holiday, I am wondering why I don’t just live in the mountains all the time. Beautiful air, beautiful scenery and the opportunity to ride down the slope any day I like … pesky life getting in the way

As planned, we drove down on the Saturday, getting up at the rather unpleasant time of 5:30 in the morning. It’s a hell of a long way to drive, but in all honesty I genuinely believe that it is the best way of getting down to the Alps. You of course need enough people to make it economic, but more importantly you need enough people to share the driving. We had 3 of us doing it, and that worked out pretty well. The Sat Nav got a bit creative on the way out, which was a little worrying as we drove up a narrow mountain pass that was nowhere near our resort, but otherwise it was fine. We were fortunate to have FlexiPlus on the Eurostar, which meant that we didn’t have any time pressures on us at all. And with that, it just made the journey sooo much nicer than any other combination of public transport I have used. Ordinarily, I’d have been getting a bus and a tube/train to the airport, or getting the eurostar from Kings Cross, and then having to get a connection at the other end. With driving, you pack it up once, and then you are done until you get to the chalet. Bloody marvellous, and cheaper than flying.

The first pleasant surprise was the quality of the resort that we had booked. Claire used Peak Retreats who were utterly brilliant throughout. Given the great value, we kept on expecting to find something that sucked, and so we were kind of assuming the resort would be pretty basic. But to our surprise, it was an almost brand new build, with lovely, friendly staff, a very convenient underground carpark and a great shuttle service for getting us to the mountain. A big thumbs up all round for Peak Retreats!

And then of course we hit the slopes, which were bloody brilliant. Conditions were nigh on perfect at the beginning of the week, breathtaking blue skies over glorious snow wrapped slopes that seemed to go on forever. We were staying in Champagny, which is on the edge of the Paradiski, which of course mean there was a bit of a trek to get to the slopes, but it really wasn’t that bad, with the worst case being a 20 min queue for the gondola, which itself took maybe 15 mins to get up there – I’ve definitely had worse in my various trips!

I did wind up spending much of my time riding on blue runs, which was the most comfortable for JP and Amy who I was with a lot of the time. The first opportunity I got to ride on my own, I stuck mostly with this so that I could investigate what the runs would be like for them. But I did get to hare around like a loon, and got to realise the benefits of my improved fitness – the greater leg strength allowing for more successful ollying, and an increase in stamina. The first black run I hit was covered in moguls, which was quite challenging. I performed an elegant backflip as I caught an edge, but no harm was done and it was a hell of a lot of fun. More excitingly, when I went back a couple of days later, the moguls had been cleared, and I had a smooth sheer drop to plummet down. Was very chuffed to hit it almost perfectly, rolling the board under me and travelling at a ridiculous rate. Thrilling to say the least.

Overall, I was very happy with my riding, I had forgotten just how natural the riding now comes to me, and I was popping off a lot of ridges and the like getting air. I did an an awesome ollie off one ridge where it felt like I was up a good 3 foot in the air (which probably means it was more like 18 inches, but it felt bloody great). I also took the opportunity to practice my fakie riding, but that still needs a lot of work, and as always I got too frequently tempted to ride normally because it’s just so much bloody fun.

The best day of the trip was on the Thursday, when Claire and I hit the slopes early to go on an epic trip from Champagny to Les Arcs 1800, which is where we were for our daytrip last year. Paradiski is a bloody huge ski area, with the Les Arcs and La Plagne areas linked by the Vanoise Express – a 200 capacity double decker cable car that travels almost 2 km over a valley.

I took the GPS with me, and apparently we travelled over 50km on the day (including the lifts of course). We were out for about 7.5 hours, really pushing hard to get as far as we could in the day before heading back. This enthusiasm almost proved to be our undoing.

I planned for us to get the cable car from Plagne Bellecotte up to Roche De Mio, which would put us back in the Champagny valley, and a nice blue run to cruise home on. We got there just after 4pm, at which point I casually nipped to the loo. We then got on the gondola, and sat back to relax and chat about the final run down. Then disaster struck, and we got kicked out at the half way point – the full run shut at 10 past 4! I think at this point Claire was very tempted to kill me, and there was some frantic reviewing of the piste maps to work out if there was another alternative. I found another lift that was listed as being open until 5pm, which was back down at the start of the gondola we had just caught. We raced down, which is not as easy as it as sounds when you’ve already been riding for 7 hours. Catching the lift, Claire was at least talking to me again, and we were relieved to be in the right valley. As I strapped in to my board, I was alarmed to suddenly find that the run I was about to descend had been blocked off by a liftie who was obviously keen for her day to end. I hopped over the fence, (which claire had sat the other side of), and we headed down.

At this point, we definitely had a route home, but it was the red run ski out, which Claire was really not up for at this point, and it wasn’t exactly thrilling me as a prospect either. We got to the end of the blue run, and headed up on the lift that would get us on the run down for gondola home. As the lift rose, we could see hundreds of small people on nursery slopes, and realised that the gondola had to be open to accomodate them, and were finally able to relax. It really was an awesome day out, and a proper adventure. It was just a little tight on the timing

So a great holiday, and a great reminder of just how much I enjoy the sport. Well done to Claire for organising it and thanks to JP, Amy and Angela for making it such a fun trip.