Off Piste Improvers - Val D'Anniviers

Last week I made my yearly pilgrimage to the Val D'Anniviers for the offpisteskiing.com Off Piste Improvers course. I have been coming to the Val D'Anniviers for around 15 years now and despite it regularly appearing in '10 best off-piste resorts you've never heard of' style articles for most of that time it is still very much an 'under-the-radar' sort of place. With very cold (-19C) temperatures on the first 2 days we spent alot of time skiing down low in the trees, and as the week wore on the temperatures rose, visibility improved, and we were able to make full use of the terrain. Despite the Chamois and 'middle' bowls being completely unskiable due to massive avalanches the week previous we were still skiing fresh tracks on the Friday! (Snow/conditions report follows the photos).

A big thank you to Chas, Kate, Peter F, Judy, Malcolm and Pete D for a great week - it was very rewarding to see the progress made by all throughout the week. Great to catch up with IFMGA guides Nick P, Nigel S and the legendary Serge Lambert through the week too!

Sunday:

Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Friday:

Snow conditions:

Grimentz: All the 'close in' off piste is in good shape. Orzival was well-skied by most lines on Friday, but still with loads of space for fresh tracks. Good cover down to St Jean.

Zinal: The frontside off piste has great cover, a little patchier in the 'meadows' below the cable car station. Moiry dam run is OK once you navigate the very wind-stripped top 30m. A slab had gone in the first gully left of the normal route on Thursday, and reports were of a bigger slab which had released (or been triggered) in the next gully left by the time Nick went down on Friday!
Chamois and middle bowls are unskiable as the whole lot has released and is either back to a thin covering over rock, or avalanche debris lower down.

Off Piste Improvers course - Val D'Anniviers

Last week I was in the Val D'Anniviers running the offpisteskiing.com and Jagged Globe Off Piste Improvers course.With a good snowfall on the Saturday and reasonably stable weather forecast for the week we really hit the jackpot with conditions - still finding perfect untracked powder on Friday afternoon!

From our hotel base in Grimentz we had easy access to the great skiing in both Grimentz and Zinal which offer great terrain for skiers looking to step up their off piste skiing. A big thank you goes out to Chas, Peter, Pete, Kate, Linda and Aiko for their enthusiasm and willingness to take new ideas on board - everyone really stepped up their game throughout the week!

Day 1 - starting the week in style with powder and blue skies!:

A run down past the Moiry dam on day 2:

Day 3 - still good powder in Zinal's 'Middle Bowl':

A trip away to Chandolin & St Luc - still good powder even on the sunny side!:

In the Chamois couloirs:

Ending the week as it began, 600m+ vertical of perfect untracked powder straight off the lifts!:

Good news... bad news...

A spectacular day yesterday to end a week of good snow and sunshine for the Off Piste Improvers course in the Val D'Anniviers, overshadowed by the news on the way home that Brendan O'Sullivan and 'American Dave' Rosenberger had been killed in separate incidents in the Mont Blanc range.

I never met Brendan, but he was a regular partner of Ben Briggs' with a CV of steep and serious descents and an active figure in the current steep ski/board scene. I only skied in Dave's company once, on the West face of the Eiger, and he blew me away with the ease of his positive, solid skiing on funky snow. Some big big snowfalls are predicted for the end of this week - take it easy out there folks!

The 'Captain' taking off on 600m vertical of perfect powder straight from the lifts yesterday afternoon!

More photos to follow from last week...

Val D'Anniviers - Off Piste coaching (cont.)

The Val D'Anniviers came up with the goods again!

Alex styling it up:

The last time I was here was 7 years ago, with very similar snow conditions to this year, but once again Grimentz and Zinal did not disappoint.

With a couple of small snowfalls but reasonable visibility through the week our Off Piste Improvers coaching course was topped off by 40cm of powder and blue skies on Friday (albeit with -17C temperatures and a biting wind!).

Peter puts his new skills into action:

Peter, Alex, Paul, Chas, Phil and Steve all made great progress through the week, and we ticked off a couple of classic descents on the way, with great snow all the way to the Moiry Dam from Zinal and perfect powder down the Orzival valley.

The Weisshorn watching over our skiing:

Cool tree on the exit from Orzival:

A word on conditions:
Much caution is still needed as shady slopes still have the weak depth hoar and buried surface hoar layers from early in the season. Additionally Thursday night's snowfall came with wind first from the North, then swinging round to West/South-West. On Friday many small slabs and sluffs were evident, some natural, some skier/boarder-triggered, and lots had gone with the morning's avalanche control work (they were still throwing charges into places at 3pm!). Grimentz being a bit of a rock garden some care is still needed as many rocks are only just buried, though the classic routes and gully lines are starting to fill in well.

Somebody got a fright on Friday!:

The new cable car linking Grimentz to Zinal was still under testing last week, though allegedly was going to open yesterday - shame about the current state of the architecture - harking back to the best days of French concrete block construction - one assumes (hopes) some cladding will be coming shortly!

Some more powdery shots - Friday was just incredible - even at 3pm we were putting first tracks into completely untouched bowls - the beauty of Grimentz early season is that there is lots of safe terrain (sub-30º) and very few people chasing the powder turns!

Hopefully it won't be another 7 years before I am back again...

Now its time for a couple of days off with the family, then back to work on Tuesday with a couple of IFMGA Mountain Guides and their friends for some steep coaching... bring it on!

Off Piste Improvers Grimentz/Zinal

Happy days here in the Val D'Anniviers on the Off Piste Improvers course - challenging conditions and wind-affected snow in Grimentz but Zinal today was fantastic, topped off with a great run down to the Moiry Dam.

The 'data' conundrum

2 events the other afternoon set me thinking. First I spent quite some time creating archive files on my computer for lots of old information about various things "which may come in useful at some point". Shortly afterwards, on my way back from the post box, I passed 2 middle aged men who had just stepped off their mountain bikes at a café in town, bristling with shiny armour and more than one 'teletubby-cam'.

Which made me wonder: with storage options in Terabytes accessible to all (not to mention the mighty 'cloud'), super-fast-access-everywhere internet connections and cheap-enough-for-anyone POV cameras are we being caught up in a whirlpool of 'record everything' and 'share everything'?

It is too easy to keep everything now - where in the past you would notice boxes of 'stuff' stacking up in the garage, folders and sub-folders are barely noticeable, but how often do we actually need to go digging for the contents?

As for the 'record & share everything' lifestyle I am in a dilemma: as a professional it is great for me to be able to show photos and videos of what I and my clients get up to, I know for sure it has helped lure new business my way, and an internet and social media presence is almost obligatory in this day and age. I also know that over the years I have found fellow professionals heading out to a spot I had blogged about the day before with their clients (ie getting a free ride off the back of my homework), and this has changed my approach to a slightly more measured (wait until conditions have gone) blogging frequency at times...

But do we really need to capture every moment of our life for posterity? And what ever happened to just living in the moment, and enjoying each minute as it comes and then passes again? Are we too focussed on recording to actually enjoy the moment to the full? My friend Will was a perfect example of this - not counting the success of his days out by the number of Likes on the 'blue book' but simply by how much he and his friends had smiled - it used to frustrate me that he never took a camera out (ie I never got any photos taken of me) - in retrospect the images you really remember are the ones that stick in your head, the ones that don't need any prompts to bring back a 'warm glow'.


Anyway, enough pondering - dates are now in the diary for next winter's courses:

Off Piste Introduction - 3 Valleys - 11-18 Jan 2014 Info here
Off Piste Improvers - Grimentz - 18-25 Jan 2014 Info here
Off Piste Improvers - Andermatt - 8-15 Feb 2014 Info here
Maurienne Valley Steep Coaching - 22 Feb - 1 Mar 2014 Info here
Freeride Chamonix - 8-15 Mar 2014 Info here
Steep Vanoise - Brides-les-Bains- 17-21 Mar 2014 Info here
Lofoten Ski Adventures - 31 Mar - 10 Apr Info here


Don't hesitate to get in touch for more information!


The faithful few are still getting turns in up high, last weekend however I donned the lycra to join the current cycling 'vogue' for a 2 day blitz around the Tour du Mont Blanc. Yes, we did pick the hottest weekend of the year so far (typical). Yes I did lose 4 Kg in fluids (not good). Yes I did have fun (I think), though I still favour the 'pedal up an HC col, have a good coffee and some food then freewheel home' option as opposed to stringing them together...

Feeling fresh on the morning warm-up up the Petit St Bernard (the smiles were less noticeable later on after battling headwinds down the Aosta valley then slogging up the monster 35 km climb to the Grand St Bernard...):