After 10 days of being here, we finally got to go out and hit the piste! It cost us 15 euros each though as the season doesn’t officially start till next weekend and only a select few lifts were open. We were happy enough to just get our riding legs back on the blues and reds that were open, with the occasionaly wandering off into the soft fluffly snow!
Ems’ bindings were set up slightly wrong to start with so we just needed to get that sorted as she was struggling to get back into the slide of things and we could’t initially figure out why. Once we sorted that, she was on her way back to her old self, just remembering the basics of keeping your weight over the centre of your board to make the turns easier, and then leaning to turn instead of kicking the board out. 2nd to last run, she had it, and then the last run…too icy for any of us to have fun so yeah, we all struggled a little bit.

My legs are currently not talking to me, I forgot to warm up and cool down so they are refusing to do what I tell them to do. School boy error but I was just too eager to get on the hill that the 10 minutes of simple stretches etc were not in any part of my mind. It was nice to be back on the board and back up the lifts as opposed to walking, 15 euros well spent I feel!
I was riding the Dominant 159cm today, as the other Burton Dominant 154 of mine is currently on it’s death bed waiting for a specialist to diagnose the probable outcomes of surgery (a deep scrape down the edge through to the core about 10cm long and 1cm wide, meaning peetex won’t stay in and the patch that had fixed it, fell out). The 159 is a hard board for me to get used to as it just doesn’t flick round like the shorter board when I mess up and need a little security, thus the reason I fell so much. I eventually got used to the board and soon realised the reasons for having longer boards, the stopping power! You have more effective edge meaning that there is more resistance when you need it, which in turn means you can go faster! Woo!
All in all, a great warm up to the season with the Mountain Mavericks team, Dom, Mel, Glenda, Ems and me on a beautiful blue sky day with plenty of snow to go round!
Random stats if you are interested:
Date: Sat Dec 04 10:35:39 GMT+01:00 2010
Resort: Portes de Soleil
Distance Skied: 17172 m
Total Distance : 33728 m
Average Ski Speed: 21.6 km/h
Average Speed: 5.7 km/h
Top Speed: 68.4 km/h
Altitude Gained: 3019 m
Altitude Descended: 2839 m
Data provided by Satski.