SnowSlider - Blogging From the mountains by ise

Hopefully it’s the start of low season now and the holiday crowds will disperse. It’s been much the same as usual, probably the majority of people on holiday are pretty regular people but there’s a number who seem to feel paying any regard to other people or even their own safety would ruin their holiday, they arrive in cars like they’re the only person on the road, get out and use the roads like they’re been pedestrianised, then ski without the first regard for anyone else. The string of accidents all over the alps are entirely predictable.

But, today they’re on the way home so it’s all much more relaxed. We rode up the lift to Zinal and did a couple of runs before skiing over to Grimentz for lunch followed by a ski down into St-Jean and back on the bus. The bus timetable’s not quite working, it was full to bursting from Grimentz, they maybe should run an extra bus on weekends. I was also struck by how little help this proposed new lift between Zinal and Grimentz would be, you would need to leave Grimentz early to ride up to Zinal to either ski down or ride the gondola so you’re better of with the bus at 1630 or 1710 for a full afternoon skiing.


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We left a part igloo the other day when it started to snow and did some other stuff so we came back to it today and finished off. It worked but I think we got the angle of the blocks on the first course slightly wrong still and it’s made it taller than intended. But, it was a bit of fun and I’ll have another try and see how that goes. What was noticeable was how much better the snow was today, much easier to make blocks from.


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First day of the year, first snowfall of the year, first lift up, first on the slope, first tracks and first down!

It was snowing heavily last night as forecast so I decided to get out on the first lift, avoiding the crowds and get onto the slopes first. I just timed it nicely and got the first lift up to find some great snow, not everything was open at first as the slopes were being made safe by dropping explosives from a helicopter to release then snow in controlled avalanches. Obviously I know the terrain here pretty well so I headed into some of my favourite powder slopes and enjoyed untracked snow for a few hours.


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We’d planned to build some apartments on the land in front of the chalet but unfortunately we’ve been hit by the credit crunch and had to scale down a bit.

We’ve retained east European builder Isesky Notverygoodski who’s pictured here botching up the show igloo.