Saas Fee mini-report

Skiied the weekend at Saas Fee and thought I'd report back on
conditions.

Clear skies were the order of the day (and nights) throughout, with
temperatures well below freezing at resort level (1800m) overnight.
Quite cold throughout the day too.

On the slopes the snow was holding up very well indeed, despite no new
snpw for nearly two weeks. Glacier runs were well groomed and as nice
as you could ask for, particularly yesterday morning when they'd
obviously been working hard overnight; quite hard packed but with
enough grip to make it a carving paradise.

The Northerly aspect of the valley means that the top slopes get no
sun at all, so there's not a trace of any freeze-thaw effect. Which
also meant that the off-piste was surprisingly soft - I even found a
couple of decent pitches of chopped-up powder, which made me very
pleased I was on my Pocket Rockets. Ripped it up, I did :-)

Lower runs (back to resort) still had 100% snow cover (i.e. no rocks)
but were getting somewhat scraped on the steeper sections - not really
icy as such, but requiring a lot of effort to hold an edge. Which was
where my skis were perhaps less than perfect - not bad, as such, but I
was aware that with different skis it would have been less effort.
Still fun to ski, mind.

One thing I made my mind up about before I'd even got on the slopes -
I'm not taking my boots on our forthcoming trip to Canada - they're
just absolute agony until my feet have adjusted to them (takes a
couple of weeks skiing) and my recent experience of poorly-fitting,
but comfortable, rental boots in Tahoe made me realise that I now no
longer need moulded-in-concrete, close fitting, rock-solid boots[1]
and inners to ski well. C

So now I'm in a bit of a dilemma - clearly I don't want racing boots
again (I'll keep the , so I'm not sure what I should be looking for.
Touring boots are a possibility, but I know sweet FA about them. Also
not sure if the semi-soft boots would be too soft in practice.

Anyone any thought on this?


[1] I'm currently using 7-y-o Nordica GP RTs with 2-y-o Conformable
racing inners.
--
Ace (brucedotrogers a.t rochedotcom)
Ski Club of Great Britain - http://www.skiclub.co.uk
All opinions expressed are personal and in no way represent those of the Ski Club.