Ski update

I'm sure you are all on the edge of you seats waiting to hear how my ski shopping when. You're all in luck. Today is the day you get a full update of what I have been doing on the mountains.

Ski shopping was not as successful as I had hoped, what I didn't realize is that the ski store was holding an end of season clearance sale so they had no skis in my size/ability level. For all of you skiing newbies you buy skis based on your height and ability level. So all the skis in my 'length' were too rigid (meant for advanced skiiers), and all the ones for beginners were too short or too long. I did find ski boots though which I am quite happy with. This means that I won't have to deal with ill fitting boots that smell like other peoples feet now. Since I know absolutely nothing about ski boots or what to look for I had one of my friends come with me and he helped me pick out a good pair. So my boots have metal fastenings and according to on of my other friends are made by a excellent company. I don't know if Lange means anything to you guys, but my boots are made my Lange. They are quite used (scratches, paint/logo coming off) but I got them for 20 euros so I was quite pleased. Even more so when I googled the prices of new Lange boots and realized that they sell for anywhere between 80 to 650+ dollars new. Following are a few pictures so you can appreciate them for yourselves.

Now, for where I have been skiing. I have been to 2 different mountains, my photos are not particularly good as I have had excellent weather all the times I have gone, so they were all taken with quite a glare. They were also taken on my iPod so that probably didn't help. Without further ado, here they are.

 So all the photos above are from 2 alpes, but only from the village and lower part of the hill as I wasn't good enough at this point to do any of the runs at the top. Deux alpes is one of the higher mountains though these picture are all from the 1650m station, but the peak is 3200m. You are able to ski at 2 alpes all round actually, I believe its glacier skiing in the summer but I'm not completely sure about that. If anyone is interested in looking at an interactive maps of all the slopes click here.

 This picture is not on the mountain at all, while I was waiting for the bus yesterday to go up to 7 laux this was my view. I figured it was too good of a photo opportunity to pass up. This is right downtown in front of the prefecture.

All of these photos are from 7 laux, I really have no idea exactly where I was so I have idea what altitude these are at, but the runs span from 1350 to 2400m. As you can see some ground is visible. It was incredibly hot yesterday and at the bottom there was slush.

In terms of my skiing I have improved exponentially. Mostly because of the lessons I have been taking. As I mentioned before you are allowed to take as many lessons as you want for the membership fee of about $40. They divide all the people who want to take lessons into 6 groups (A-E + slalom) with A being you have never skiied before and slalom being very good. Because of the way the groups get divided I have ended up with basically private lessons twice (the instructor, myself and another student) so I am taking full advantage of the lessons because I know I could never afford lessons in Canada.

Thus, I am much much better than I was initially and yesterday I made quite a bit of progress. Our instructor decided that even though we were in group 'B' we were too advanced, so I went from doing green runs to red (The rating system goes green, blue, red, black). I would like to say that I had no problems but that would be a lie. Because of how warm it had been in almost all of the red runs had huge bumps (with some smaller ones) in the run and that you have to navigate around. This presented a problem when I wanted to turn I would end up not being able to turn, gaining a lot of speed and inevitably crashing into the ground. That being said I only had 4 crashes , though I didnt actuallly crash in the traditional sense, just mainly fell on my butt with my skis at awkward angles beneath me. It paid off in the end though, by the end of the day I was able to go down the bumpy sections very slowly while staying upright the whole time (controlling my speed!).

I would say that my accomplishment of the day was when we went down quite a long steep straight section. Our instructor first asked us if we were afraid of going fast, we both said no so down we went. After he told us that we were probably going 50km/hr. Not that fast compared to how fast you could be going but neverthless quite fast. To all of they people who are worrying, you shouldn't. I was wearing a helmet and remained in control the whole time.