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It’s been another great spring day again and we’ve been skiing in Zinal and Grimentz. The snow at the top is excellent so I took the chance to ski another one of the couloirs off the top of the Sorebois, this is probably a little narrower and steeper than the one I’d done before but still utterly sensational.

I’ve also been carrying a Garmin eTrex Vista Cx GPS unit all day which has been creating tracks of where I’ve been.I’ve been playing around a little with the software and there’s some interesting things you can do. I’ve uploaded a track file of today, it’s a bit raw and I may update it later. This track file can be loaded into Google Earth using the file type “gpx”.

GPX track file

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After spending the morning in Zinal I skied over to Grimentz for the afternoon and skied there for a few hours. The light had been fairly poor in the morning but was improved over at Grimentz. One of the days highlights was discovering I can ski fairly well with one of boot (Garmont Endorphins) in walk mode, in fact it was pretty bad but not so bad I actually noticed what I’d done until later.

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We started off this morning in Zinal and skied to Grimentz via the Chamois which was in excellent condition with the middle section totally unprepared, so much so that returning from skiing off the ridge and a small couloir on the side I skied over the piste not realising it was there. The snow during the week has left a good quantity of powder, I’d hesitate to to call it perfect powder as I understand this is a trademark for north American snow where they have powder so perfect you need special skis for it, much the same as Verbier or Chamonix from what I read actually. Anyway, in not perfect powder with the wrong skis I thought it was pretty good fun.

I also saw one of the seasons (so far) odder sights, a couple of guys messing around on pocket rockets. First, I can’t say I see many pairs around here, I think they’ve been superseded by the the Scott Missions which are this years large floppy things of choice apparently although you don’t see many of those either. Anyway, for some bizarre reason this pair had decided not to use poles. On piste, in fact even getting off the lift that really wasn’t working too well but off piste (oh yes, they were skiing off-piste) it was comical. I can’t begin to think to how you’d manage to turn properly in powder without some poles, I’m certain I couldn’t do it and apparently I’m not the only one. Obviously it does tend to rather trash the slope for anyone else if you can only do one turn and then a long traverse, I do accept people need to practice and develop their skills so you have to put up with a certain amount of punter-slope-trashing but these guys were going nowhere, flapping around on a pair of pocket rockets without poles isn’t going anywhere at all, it’s a total dead end in terms of technique. It would be redundant of me to mention their nationality I think.

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0830 this morning and I decided to join the queue for the téléphérique. It’s snowed over the last couple of days so conditions looked promising. It’s extremely low season right now and there’s practically no one about. By the time the lift came a few school kids had arrived along with a bloke with more gear than the Snow and Rock catalogue and a pair of skis somewhere over 100mm at the waist, the skis certainly looked the business propped up outside the restaurant each time I went past.

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