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#11
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Sue wrote:
Zermatt has a policy of official moguls on blue pistes for the punters to practice on. They devote part of the width of some very wide pistes to them. They're very nice regular bumps, obviously looked after by the ski schools. Visions of ski instructors carefully crafting bumps with small trowels... how on earth do they look after the bumps? I know competition bump courses are sometimes (often?) man-made. They actually create the course by digging holes rather than building bumps, and then ski the course to smooth out the holes a bit, but I don't see hwo a "natural" bump run can be deliberately maintained, not even by the Swiss. Maybe they train the moles to do it? |
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#12
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Well said. And more to the point, the ski schools in Zermatt have
absolutely no say as to how the pistes are maintained and groomed. That is the sole province of the newly merged ski company. In fact, it is the ski instructors who are most incensed at the reduction in grooming. For obvious reasons it is making their lives quite difficult. Richard |
#13
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Sue wrote: In message , Richard and Barbara writes We are Americans who have been skiing annually in Zermatt for more than 20 years. We love the Village and the skiing. We have many friends who visit annually as we do, and many friends who live in the Village. The improvements to the lift system are absolutely great. BUT, there is a big problem, and everyone who knows the area is talking about it. Grooming of the pistes has clearly been reduced. Wide trails have become narrower. Pistes that should be open, remained closed after a big snowfall. Moguls were not smoothed over on blue pistes. All of this is hurting Zermatt. Experts aside, a reputation for poor grooming will keep visitors away. Everyone assumes that the lack of grooming is a money saving measure taken after the merger of three competing transport systems. Before the merger, grooming was extensive so as to keep skiers from moving to a competing area. Zermatt has a policy of official moguls on blue pistes for the punters to practice on. They devote part of the width of some very wide pistes to them. They're very nice regular bumps, obviously looked after by the ski schools. These are marked with official picture signs, equally unhelpful to speakers of every language. I only wish this were true. I am slowly (very slowly) developing some skill with bumps, but I wish there were red bump runs to practise on. The only moguls I ever find in French resorts seem to be huge ones on steep blacks. [ok, over new year we found some fairly gentle bumps on a black in Meribel, but only because there hadn't been much snow, and the rocks showing through the backside of each bump made life a little tougher] The Zermatt safety service has a problem with crashes involving skiers doing about Mach 2, and is basically in favour of bumps to slow the punters down. (The solid-ice bumps at the bottleneck in the piste nearest the Matterhorn didn't slow me down, they paralysed me completely. If it wasn't for peer pressure I'd still be standing there.) -- Sue ] |
#14
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Richard and Barbara wrote:
We humbly apologize. How stupid of us to have forgotten that only off piste skiers subscribe to this News Group. Where do we find the 95% who prefer groomed pistes? I'm an intermediate and I'm still happy to ski in a resort with mixed grooming. My favourite snow type is well-bashed hard piste with a couple of centimetres of fresh powder on top - until I learn how to handle the real stuff, of course! Not sure if it's still the case, my experience (from nearly a decade ago) was that Megeve in France was the most heavily groomed and manicured resort I've been to. I hear that Italians prefer not to ski on moguls so more recently in the Milky Way, we found most pistes flat and smooth (including the blacks), so you might want to try the other side of the mountain in Cervinia. IME in recent years of reduced snowfall most resorts are doing more pisting than they used to if only to push what snow there is on to the pistes and maximise exploitation of the natural and artificial stuff - perhaps this is why the group were chuffed to hear of an exception to this trend. -Sarah |
#15
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"Sarah Eggleston" wrote in message
... IME in recent years of reduced snowfall most resorts are doing more pisting than they used to if only to push what snow there is on to the pistes and maximise exploitation of the natural and artificial stuff - perhaps this is why the group were chuffed to hear of an exception to this trend. Very true, also resorts are saving money - no-one is making much out of skiing. -- Simon Brown www.hb9drv.ch |
#16
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In message , Richard and
Barbara writes Zermatt has no such policy. The only official mogul runs are called buckel pistes. They are clearly marked on the map. And they are never on blue pistes. I am not sure where your information is coming from, but it is not accurate. I'd heard it beforehand on the net somewhere, so I went out and looked for the bumps. They're only little patches, not whole mountainsides like the ones marked on the piste map, it'd be fairly easy to not notice them or not realise they were deliberate. One lot were between the Rothorn bar (the one with the round thing) down the ridge towards the place where 22a and 23 diverge. Another was lower down in that area, but it was too warm for them and they'd got very beaten up. A third was along the side of one of those huge pistes on the Theodulgletscher - that was probably a red, but these bumps weren't on a steep bit. All these were marked with signs like the pictogram on the piste map. They were divided from the rest of the piste by an extra row of blue piquets, and roped off from the off-piste. There was no doubt they were deliberate. I took a couple of pictures to send to a friend who'd refused to believe in bumps on blue pistes - I could mail them to you if you like. Bumps can grow anywhere skiers turn - I've seen some sweet ones on a green piste at Val d'Isere. -- Sue ] |
#17
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In message , Steve Haigh
writes Visions of ski instructors carefully crafting bumps with small trowels... how on earth do they look after the bumps? I know competition bump courses are sometimes (often?) man-made. They actually create the course by digging holes rather than building bumps, and then ski the course to smooth out the holes a bit, but I don't see hwo a "natural" bump run can be deliberately maintained, not even by the Swiss. Maybe they train the moles to do it? Pistebumps are the urban wildlife of landforms, I love 'em so much that one day I'll learn how to ski them properly! Bumps are caused by skiing, right? They're the piles of snow people throw up when they turn. If they make neat regular turns, they form identical piles of snow in a regular pattern; if they hack about at random the heaps are all shapes and sizes and there's no pattern at all. Once the bumps exist, people tend to ski round them so the pattern is maintained. You could get a regular pattern by starting with the year's first snowfall and skiing up the bumps carefully yourself, or more economically by leading a ski-school conga line over them a few dozen times. I've seen neat regular bumps on pistes of all grades, in places where at least some of the skiers knew what they were doing or were following someone who did. I've seen 'orrible lots of random heaps with no rhythm at all on resort runs of all grades - and memorably on a "black" run at Les Gets (a cruiser resort) for a couple of days after a dump. Those got skied out fast, perhaps because hardly anyone could turn round them. I suspect inept skiers create hard-to-ski irregular bumps. -- Sue ] |
#18
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#19
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The only grooming problem I encountered in Zermatt (26-28 Dec) was due
to the 4-star hotel neglecting to provide shaving soap and a comb. Luckily I was enjoying the fluffy powder just off the side of the pistes so much that I didn't scare the regulars in the village too much with my unkempt appearance. Back to Zermatt's future - when will the Project lifts (as marked on the piste map) be completed? The current linkage between the sectors is tedious in the extreme - especially when, as the OP pointed out, they close the few linking pistes because they haven't been prepared. I look forward to returning to Zermatt when these linking lifts are completed - what a fantastic place to ski (and grow facial hair). |
#20
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"Simon Brown" wrote in message ... "Sarah Eggleston" wrote in message ... IME in recent years of reduced snowfall most resorts are doing more pisting than they used to if only to push what snow there is on to the pistes and maximise exploitation of the natural and artificial stuff - perhaps this is why the group were chuffed to hear of an exception to this trend. Very true, also resorts are saving money - no-one is making much out of skiing. It's a false economy to cut back on pisting. Most of the money in the business comes from the fresh hordes of beginners. |
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