So yesterday didn't quite go how I imagined. What was supposed to be a nice day cruising the slopes getting back in the groove of things got very quickly shunted to one side as 10 inches of fresh powder beckoned us off the piste and into some really really amazing powder skiing.
Today was always going to be an off piste day, however. We had a guide booked and we split our group half and half to keep group sizes manageable, and headed off back out into Tignes.
Our group stayed in piste most of the morning. A couple of dives off the side of the piste was nothing to write home about, except it was an opportunity to see how my skis fared in snowier ... snow.
I was skiing on a pair of 94mm skis, again from Völkl. They are brand new for next season , so I can't go into too much detail on them for now, but safe to say they were perfect for the day we had.
Skiing off piste requires a completely different style to on piste, but at the same time the skills required remains identical.
Your weight must remain on the outside ski, and your up-and-down body weight release is even more important in deep powder than on firm piste.
However, where your weight sits fore and aft on the Ski changes completely, and it is vitally important that your skis act as one, rather than two separate planks of wood.
On piste, you are driving with the toe edge of your ski, really hammering this into the slope to unlock the potential of the Ski. Off piste, you don't want to do this; this drives the ski deep into the powder and will cause havoc as your skis come to a halt!
Instead, you want to find a spot in the ski just under the boot where you are going to place your weight. And that's what these skis did; they encouraged and enabled you to find that sweet spot under the boot and the middle of the ski.
Golf and Gas-X
The afternoon was spend with a guide, an instructor from the local ESF (Ecole du Ski Francais, France's national ski school).
We ticked off some amazing lines around Tignes, but there were two we skied that were fabulous, some of the best off piste skiing I've experienced all season!
Several times over the last few years I have caught the bus between the two uppermost Tignes villages, Le Lac at around 2100m elevation, and Val Claret sitting at 2300m elevation. On the road between the two villages, the bus makes a couple of stops, ostensibly to serve the couple of isolated chalets that lie next to the road. More importantly, however, you will always see tracks coming down off the hill to the left as you make your way down from Val Claret to Le Lac.
I've always wonder how to access these areas, and today I found out. First, we headed up Grattalu, skied down the downhill course, then, after swinging skiers left and after a short hike we found the Golf itinerary route. This isn't a marked piste, but is a well-enough-known off piste route to be classified as an itinerary on piste maps.
Golf comes in about three or four steep pitches, with plenty of points to stop and re-energise. The snow we found was incredible, almost completely untouched by skiers after the big dumps the night before. So good in fact that we landed at the bottom, hopped on the bus and lapped it again!
This time we headed a bit more skiers left, and found a run called Gas-X. On both occasions, we were skiing some of the best snow of my life. It was light and fluffy on the surface, but as your skis punched down into the snowpack they were gently rebuffed and pushed back to the surface by a springy, light snowpack. It was better than anything I had skied before.
It was also a crash course in perfecting technique. It really pushed my core strength, positively engaging my core to help. I resorted to yogic breathing to help - breathing in to suck myself out of a turn, and breathing out to engage more core, keep myself solid and push my way through the turn. It was hard work, with the skis working extra hard to keep me in that sweet spot just underneath my heel. But I made it to the bottom nearly in one piece, bar a head-of-heels tumble near the bottom of Gas-X!
What a day; a day when the beers in the Loop Bar were hard earned!
.jpeg)
Comments