Snowboarding, Morzine/Avoraiz, France

Rich and I headed to the huge Portes Du Soleil area for a few days snowboarding before the rest of the group arrived. We had the weirdest weather, it snowed just before we arrived and things were looking up on what had been a average snow season so far.

Our first day up was not bad, visibility was OK and we got around most of the mountain. Day 2 - it was raining hard up to about 1800 metres and above that is was blowing a gale with white out conditions. We managed to find some great powder stashes over in the Les Gets area. I was amazed at the end of the day, I could jump just off to the side of the marked piste and grab deep fresh tracks, nice! After a hard days riding in wet and heavy snow, we wearily trudged back to our cheap but cheerful pension (complete with crazy landlady) weighing about 20 kg heavier thanks to our sodden clothes. Day 3 - Overnight we got some great snow and headed up to Avoraiz, the snowboarding mecca and Burton camp in the French Alps. Finally got a bit of confidence up and did a nice 9 foot log ride with a 5 foot drop at the end. My ankle which has badly torn ligaments from last years touch rugby season seemed to hold up, but I could feel it twinge so didn't push myself for the rest of the holiday , my trick progression unfortunately will have to wait until next year.

We returned back to town to meet up with the rest of the crew who had arrived from London, and we hungrily looked forward to our accommodation upgrade, 6 star chalet, fully catered, 3 meals a day with hottub! And no sharing a room with Richard 'snore like a freight train' Green and the strange bidet I used to wash my manky socks in.

The rest of the trip showed amazing conditions, we had a few 30-50 cm dumps, I had many a facial snow session where I couldn't see anything for the powder spraying up upon every turn, nice. Pic to the right shows a massive avalanche that tore away half the mountain and went straight over the avalanche tunnel between our chalet and the resort.

Highlights were:

Sam's one-piece, I sometimes wonder how I go out in public with this man, if its not purple one-pieces, its fingerless gloves on a night out in a hip Icelandic city.

'Lets go down that untracked valley', one of those calls you know as it come out just spells disaster but you still can't help doing it. Craig, Sharon, Suz, Sam, Si and myself headed down this beautiful looking valley which only had a few tracks in it, after about a km of beautiful mellow turns and lots of screaming and yelping. We came to the reason no one was heading down this valley (that and the 'keep out, avalanche danger' sign at the start of the run), a huge cliff with no sighting of a clean landing! Luckily some nice rock climber had left his pinion and rope for us to make our way out via a small chute! Craig went first and nearly took out another skier who was gingerly making his way down.

The Grimburgen beer at the end of this day tasted great and we felt we had earned it after our cliff ordeal! Wiki - Portes Du Soleil