On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 12:16:20 +0100, Ace
wrote:

On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 11:08:25 +0000, Pip Luscher
wrote:

Was a little harder on the return journey: a combination of falling
off my snowboard onto my ribs on a... dunno what they're called...
metal 'long box' thing, in the Flaine Jam Park, followed the next day
by being skittled at speed by a fallen skier on the Diamant Noir,

That's right, blame the skier. You should have been paying more
attention.

Hah! Actually I was on skis myself. I'd nipped down the narrow part of
the couloir to clear some space and was bimbling down the area where
it begins to widen out, when there was a warning shout. "That sounds
like a warning shout" I thought, and began to turn to see what was up,
at which precise point an express train hit me in the back. I'm not
sure exactly where the other guy fell, but he was travelling quite
fast and ended up maybe twenty metres below me after I'd stopped
sliding, but he was fortunately OK.

What were conditions like anyway? Been so long since I've been to
Flaine - starting to miss the old place...

Not the worst I've ever seen but hard, hard, hard. Small patches of
boilerplate in places on the more popular easy runs. Directly
south-facing hillsides were more green than white. You can always tell
when things are bad: lots of areas just off-piste were covered in
track marks where they've been scooping up snow to patch up the
pistes.

Diamant Noir had quite grippy snow in the couloir as usual, but there
were so many rock marker poles that it looked like a particularly
fiendish slalom course.

Agate was open (though its companion Red was not), again with grippy
enough snow but one had to pick one's line with care to avoid exposed
rock in several places.

My favourite, Combe de Veret, was closed with green patches & rocks
showing.

The top half of Aigle Noir was open but one had to leave via a side
track partway down. The entry cornice was smaller than I've seen
before, so rather less intimidating than usual, but the snow was
slightly hard in places; skis grated sideways at times.

Chamois was open but hard snow, a bit like Aigle Noir. Corblanche was
closed.

Onyx was open and generally fine, but the entry run 'Jais' was getting
pretty polished.

We only did a tiny off-piste excursion in to an easy area where the
ski schools go. Crunchy, tracked powderish stuff with a very slight
crust. In fairness, I really need to do another course. Since the
beginner's course I did three years ago, I've only once done a day off
piste.

****wit.

The defendant requests that 1,000 other cases be taken into
consideration.

massages sprained shoulder[1], pulled calf muscle and torn cartilage

Ah-HAH.


--
-Pip