Video footage

During my last trip to Alp d'Huez, my mate took his video camera and got a lot of footage, it is one of the contour models and some of the edited footage can be seen below:



I think the things I've realised having got back from the holiday and scoured hours and hours of footage are:

1) Shots of people in the distance aren't a lot of use, always try and film close up. Some of the best footage was taken riding right along side the other person.

2) For snowboarding, the best mount for the camera has proven to be the helmet mount. Mounting on a board didn't really work as most of the time the board is going back and forth. Hand-holding doesn't really work as you move your arms so much to keep your balance (though when stationary just filming someone coming over a jump etc. then hand holding is possibly better as it doesn't pick up every single head movement), reverse helmet mount doesn't really work either.

3) We have an awful lot of footage of my mate zooming off on his board with nobody in the frame - instead the camera man should probably aim to always stay behind everybody else and keep them in the frame, it's just more interesting!

4) The other thing we often did was my mate would pull up and wait for us to catch him up - we would slide up and stop next to him, far better would be for us to zoom straight past him and give him some footage then wait for him slightly further down the slope.

5) Though we never took one with us, another good mounting position I think is the pole-mount so you hold the camera at a distance and it is pointing back at you. This keeps the rider quite central in the frame whilst capturing great movement. (I will be taking my pole mount next time)

New board - Never Summer SL

Having had a busy year and not managing to get on my board in nearly a year since my last holiday in Jan, I finally encouraged myself with the purchase of a new board. Having ridden my mates boards in Jan - a Burton Custom and Burton Deuce, I sought a little advice from the Gone Boarding forum so that I could find something which handled in a similar way (compared to my old board which now felt like riding a flat plank of wood in comparison). 
One of the recommendations was a Never Summer SL, not being able to afford a brand new board I kept my eye on ebay for one of these along with several other boards and in the end it was the SL that won. 


Once the board was delivered I took it along to Tamworth for a quick try out and wasn't disappointed, it handled exactly how I wanted it to and felt great (despite nearly a year off) - going back again next week for another practise session and looking forward to getting another boarding holiday booked now!

La Tania, Courcheval, The 3 valleys

For our holiday this year we headed to La Tania in France, part of the 3 valleys.

We flew into Geneva and then had a 2 1/2 hour coach journey to get to La Tania, you can optionally fly into Chamberry which is a more local airport but they suffer with delays when the weather conditions are bad or they are very busy.

La Tania itself is only a very small resort with a handfull of bars & restaurants & just a few runs of it's own so realistically you always buy a lift pass for either Courcheval or the full 3 valleys - we opted for the latter and hoped we could get as much done as possible.

The route out of La Tania is a bubble followed by a chair lift, from that point you can either ski down to Courcheval or into the next valley to Meribel.

Day 1 was spent in Courcheval valley getting our ski legs back which didn't really take too long before we were right back into form.

The very next day we instead opted to head out into the Meribel valley and beyond, I'm so glad we did because (IMO) the runs out that way were so much better than the courcheval valley (which is pretty much all pisted).

There are a lot of red runs a

nd all of the runs vary from their designated colour to "considerably steeper" than designated so I found blue runs and even green runs a lot of fun.

Day 3 we had a heavy covering of fog giving poor visibility, & it snowed most of the night / morning which was great as we had a lot of fresh powder like I'd never seen before - having never been off piste before this was pretty much my first experience of boarding in powder and I absolutely loved every minute of it!

From that point on the rest of my week was spent trying to go off piste as much as possible. As a complete beginner I didn't want to stray too far from the piste, especially as there was only me & my girlfriend who skies and didn't want to go off piste. So I spent my time just going off the edge of the piste into the powder but where I could see other people had been so I knew there weren't any nasty surprises waiting - this proved to be a lot of fun, uneven terrain & a few jumps here and there made the already interesting pistes even better!

My riding was vastly improved over last year (thanks partially to the practise I'd been getting at snowdomes throughout the summer) and I found myself bombing down the steeper runs with no problems.

One thing I will say is that Courcheval is very expensive, in fact most of the 3 valleys is. One day we stopped for 2 drinks & a single burger & chips and the cost was 36 Euros. There were one or two cheaper places if you can find them, but the best option which we used on most days was a packed lunch provided by the challet at a cost of 5 euros for sandwich, drink, crisps, friut & chocolate.

This time we opted for a catered challet rather than self catering like last time. I have to say it made a big difference for a couple of reasons, firstly because you had a cooked breakfast then just headed straight out and later got back from the slopes to tea & cake then just relaxed or had a bath while someone cooked for you, and secondly because in a challet of 16 people, we got to know everybody who were really friendly & we looked forward to sitting down on an evening for a few beers and to discuss which runs we had done during the day.

I think compared to last time, I wouldn't go back to Les Deux Alpes now, having done most of the slopes in a week I think I'd be a little bored if I went back again. The 3 valleys on the other hand is huge, and whilst we got across all 3 valleys and did numerous runs in each one, we could easily spend at least another week there without running out of runs to do - and some of the runs were so good we repeated them 2-3 times during the week. I'd probably go back to one of the other valleys next time just so you have easy access to different slopes.

So in summary, the 3 valleys is great, offers a huge variety of runs, but certainly isn't cheap!

Something else I learnt whilst out there was that it is easy to get injured! One of our friends slipped over whilst walking on the ice & dislocated her knee and another person in our challet who was an acomplished skier managed to fall on his last run back to the challet on the last day and shattered his hip!

When you buy your ski pass you can buy optional insurance for a very small fee which is called "carte neige" - this often overlooked option means the medical teams will take you off the mountain and to a hospital without charging you, otherwise you need to pay them there & then on the slope and reclaim it from your insurance at a later date - not a hassle you want with a shattered hip!!

My first waxing!

Today I finally got around to waxing my board, it's been long overdue and with another boarding holiday imminent I figured it was about time I tried this out.

I found a video on YouTube (HERE) which gave some good guidance then got started.

I'd bought a £3 iron from Argos so wasn't worried if that broke, heated it up just until it was hot enough to melt the wax without smoking and I dripped it onto the board - roughly 1 spot per square inch.

I then ran the iron over the board, "ironed" it until the wax was spread across the entire base evenly (ish) & left it for 20 minutes to dry.

Once dried properly I took the scraper and forming a 45 degree angle just scraped away until all of the wax had come off - it took quite a while and I have to say, made quite a mess!

Once it was all off I took a sponge with pan scraper bit and gave the board a rub down (front to back). The end result wasn't immaculate, there were still scratches in it etc. but I think thats the way it's meant to be. Less than 2 weeks & I'll be testing it on the side of a mountain! :-)

New boots & first try of new board!

Well, after 2 weeks of scouring the internet for suitable shops to try on boots (and largely failing miserably due to the time of year and most shops being completely sold out) I took my new board along to the snowdome today with the aim of trying it out using hire boots & also checking in their shop (The Snowboard Asylum) for any potential boots.

The guys in TSA were incredibly helpful & knowledgable, I had a chat with one guy and he sat down and checked out the size and shape of my foot etc. - it was a good 5-10 minutes before I actually saw any boots. When he came back he had 1 pair of boots (Vans "Andreas Wiig") and explained that it was the only pair out of all their stock that was a suitable size/shape for my feet! Well, all I can say is, that guy deserves a pay rise - the boots fitted perfectly!

I walked around the shop in them, flexed, tried different typical snowboard positions, and they felt spot on - it went against everything I'd read about trying on as many different boots as possible but I bought them straight away. The guys then heat moulded them to my feet and also kindly set up my new board for me and applied some liquid wax stuff (good for one session really).

Then, £110 lighter, I set off for our 2 hour session on the slopes.

The phrase 1 step forwards and 2 steps back comes to mind. The new board setup was clearly an intermediate setup wheras I was used to the more forgiving beginners boards that you get from the snowdome. As a result, as happy as I was with my new gear, my boarding wasn't up to the same level as last time I was there - I fell off several times, was very wobbly / shakey, and had the kicker been out I wouldn't have attempted it as my confidence was knocked a little.

I realised however that this was normal, the board was less forgiving, so I had to up my game a bit, and by the end of the 2 hours I was getting better again - in fact technically even better than before as I'd had to be more precise with my movements. So I wasn't put off, but this made me even more determined to come back again soon and get more practise!

At the end of the day, I was happy with my new setup.

My first board & bindings.

As mentioned in my previous post, my re-kindled love of snowboarding sent me scouring the internet for "things I need to buy" (this is what I do when it comes to hobbies) and I stumbled across a guy selling his snowboard, bindings & bag for an incredibly reasonable £110!

The board was a Salomon "Driver", 160cm length. The bindings Burton "Contour"

Obviously it meant very little to me, all I knew was that the board was roughly the right length (I'd actually ridden a 155 on holiday but my height dictates that 160 is about right) and the bindings were big enough for my size feet / boots.
Most importantly, it was an absolutey blinding bargain!

So I popped along and met the guy selling them, who had boarding briefly then swapped his sport of choice to skydiving (fair play) and soon became owner of my own gear! All I needed now were boots but this was a job for a snowboarding shop as I'd read a million times over that the most important piece of equipment was the boots and they had to fit & fit well!

With a plan to go to the snowdome again in a fortnight, the search for boots was on!

All the gear but...

Just days before the holiday I assembled the last required items - as I'd never been before this was all alien to me and I harassed my mate to death asking him about what I did or didn't need to take with me. In the end, the list of things to pack (aside from obvious clothing etc.) was something like this :

• Plasters
• Nurofen / Paracetomol
• Ibuprofen cream
• Deep heat
• Sun cream (yes really!)
  
  
• Board rental certificate
• Passport
• Driving license
• European Health card
• Holiday insurance
  
  
• Snowboard Jacket
• Salopettes
• Gloves
• Impact shorts
• Wrist guards
• Helmet
• Goggles
• Sunglasses (I later discovered I didn't really need these)
• Long socks
• 2 Fleeces (something else I never needed but had it been colder they'd have been handy)
  
  
• iPod + charger
• Phone charger
• Digital camera + battery charger

A couple of after-notes :

The plasters were hugely welcome on day 2 when I woke up and realised I was in danger of getting blisters - where? On my hands, where my wrist guards were rubbing - who would have though it!

Aside from that, the plasters, tablets, sprays etc. were all of little use apart from the ibuprofen gel which I applied a couple of times just in case I started to suffer (which I never really did)

Sunglasses I didn't need as I wore goggles every day, and the fleeces were also redundant as with just a T shirt and snowboard jacket I was more than warm enough (often having my jacket half zipped down for ventilation) - that said, we had great weather and had it been colder I'm sure they'd have come in handy.

The iPod was an absolute must, it made my days so much more enjoyable as I zoned into the music and the boarding and zoned out of people around me, personal preference of course but I wouldn't be without it now!

Each day I took my iPod, mobile phone & digi camera up the slope with me - the phone never got used but I guess was there for emergencies as much as anything.

Board, boots & bindings I hired from InterSport for about £85 for the week and the equipment was in great condition so that worked out fine for me (it costs roughly £60 to transport your snowboard on a plane anyway so even if I did own one, this way was definitely cost effective!)

The finisher!

After another 2 hours of lessons in which I learnt to go from "falling leaf" to turning down the slope, then back to "falling leaf" again, I had my 2 hour finisher lesson - this was basically the final lesson which meant once passed I would be allowed on the slope unsupervised.

The lesson didn't start well, the hire board I had been using had loose bindings, not majorly loose but loose enough that they moved about a little and even at this early stage I could tell the difference as the board wasn't responding to me as much as it had on previous lessons.

I spoke to the instructor about it who was great and tried (in vain) to fix the problem - eventually it got to the point where he couldn't get the bindings back on the board so went off to get me another one, in the meantime I got to use one of the instructors own boards and I really saw the difference using that! It felt 100 times better!

In the end the instructor returned with another board and I continued with the lesson, this one was all about learning to link turns, so going from "falling leaf", turning down the slope, then turning right round to "falling leaf" on the other edge, so from heel to toe, then back again. This was basically the final step in being able to travel from the top of the slope to the bottom in a controlled manner.

At the end of the lesson the instructor told me I had passed but advised a couple of free ride sessions prior to my holiday in order to get the best out of what I'd learnt - I booked another 2 hours to tide me over until the holiday!