Hello, newbie here...

A snowHead

Afternoon all.

Thought I'd sign up to SnowHeads, as it seems to be full of good, knowledgeable sorts. Thought I'd introduce myself and tell you about my brilliant and also incredibly stressful three days in Austria last weekend. I hope this isn't too self-indulgent, I just thought it might entertain a bit. Would love to see some "I've been there and I know how it feels" comments!

I'm Richard, I'm the 48 year-old director of a huge choir in London. I also run singing holidays, and in March 2018 we ran our first skiing/singing holiday to Borovets in Bulgaria (the hotel has a piano in the bar, so the singing is very informal). First time I've ever had skis on my feet, apart from about an hour on a pair of cross-country skis in Norway 20 years ago. We took about 25 of us to Bulgaria, including my wife Kate (also a noob) and my 21-year old son Ben, who had had the advantage of a day in Milton Keynes SnoZone, (to which I was supposed to go but then had shingles so couldn't!). Absolutely loved it - really got the bug.
This video might make you laugh - I got a bit of a surprise on the last day there. Ben was ridiculously good, and was happily doing black runs by the end of the week. I was confidently doing easy blues, and Kate was still on the nursery slopes but slowly improving. The trip was a success and we're running it again this coming March (16-23, there are still spaces, if anyone fancies it!).

Anyway, in October, Kate and I joined Snozone MK and started going up there a few times a month for a couple of hours. We've been getting steadily better - Kate is still quite rigid, but is much happier with speed than she was. We both feel it's good to have an hour or so on a fairly gentle slope to warm up and get confident. We bought boots and helmets, and lots of nice gear. We decided that before the next Borovets trip we'd get a weekend on our own somewhere nice. My business partner on the singing-holiday side of things is a travel agent, so he sorted out a great hotel in Leogang for us, and we went for it. I did a fair bit of research online (not enough it turns out) and it seemed that Leogang and the Saalbach area is good for blue runs, so I thought we'd be fine!

Arrived on Friday around midday, settled into the hotel. It's ski-in/out and there's ski-hire there, so that was easy. Less easy was getting recommendations of where to go for beginners. There was a fair bit of contradictory information ("yes, easy slopes", "no, they're all quite hard"). We took the chair-lift halfway up the mountain, looked at the "blue run" going back to the hotel, and could see that although most of it did look blue, the beginning was a bit blacky, or alternatively reddy with a very sideways slope. This didn't appeal, so we went up the gondola.

At the top. I asked about 8 people, including the lift attendants, where the easiest slopes were. Again, varying answers. We ended up going down what looked like a gentle blue. Unfortunately, around the bend, out of sight, it transformed into what seemed to us like a precipice, full of moguls. To cut a long and boring story short, we went down most of that slope off skis, on either feet, back bottoms, backs, in varying aspects (feet first, head first, on back, on front...). By the time we got to the mid station, the gondola had closed. We had to do exactly the same again, which took about 90 minutes, and it was dark by the time we got down and we were the only ones left on the slope!. We were cold, tired and had been quite scared. Headed straight for the bar. Kate was in tears quite a lot, and next morning we both ate breakfast in some trepidation.

However, I asked one more person who said there was a nursery slope with a button lift up at the top of the gondola. We didn't really believe him, BUT HE WAS RIGHT! And it was only about 20m away from where I'd spent ages asking people for the easy slopes! We spent a while there getting our confidence back, and then we tried some more challenging runs which were fine. In short, Saturday and Sunday were fantastic skiing, full of lovely snow and lots of achievement.
Here's a video of my last run over a set of moguls on Sunday - I had fallen repeatedly on this the day before, so excuse the blatant self-congratulation in the video.

Our only other stress was on Monday morning - we were due to be picked up at 7:25am by the airport taxi, but he got stuck in the snow BECAUSE HE DIDN'T BRING SNOW CHAINS! Seriously, if your job description is "collect people from ski resort", surely that's a vital piece of equipment? Anyway, we made our flight from Salzburg, literally by two minutes - they were closing boarding.

Kate went to MK again on Wednesday and was way more confident, and we've just come back from there this morning - it suddenly all seemed quite easy! Can't wait for Borovets.

Anyway, that's my hello. I shall review a couple of bits of equipment in the appropriate forum. See you around.

Richard

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Welcome, and oh so 'been there, done that' on blues in Austria when learning! Laughing

Give yourself a second week and those Leogang blues will seem like the nicest runs ever. snowHead

Great videos! And you manage far better on bumps than I do dammit.

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There is not really any rules with piste gradings. They are just guidelines. Both steepness & width plays a part, so a steep & very wide piste can be a blue (since you can traverse across the slope quite happily). Obviously within reason!!

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Next time be sure to ask for nursery slopes or bunny slopes. When you can ski it’s easy to forget just how steep some slopes can feel as a beginner. There’s stuff now that I’ll straightline that used to have me static and terrified.

Glad you’ve been bitten by the bug, but be warned it can be an expensive ‘addicition’.

Welcome to Snowheads too, you can get answers to most skiing related questions here, plenty of them have been asked before so search function is useful. Don’t be afraid to ask what you think may be a stupid question, at worst you’ll be mercilessly ribbed and ridiculed Laughing

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Out of interest, what type of choir do you run?

That first video is probably one of the luckiest sketch-outs I've ever seen! Everyone was precisely positioned and timed to allow your sliding through without major incident (a few bruised topsheets notwithstanding)!

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

Thanks for the warm welcome folks.

@pam w, we had 6 days of lessons in Bulgaria and some in MK. We really just wanted some big wide slopes on which to consolidate what we'd already learnt. SnoZone is fine, but once you get to any sort of competent level, it starts to become a bit boring going uphill for 4 mins on the lift and then down in 10 seconds. Hence no lessons. Plus we were using the Carv system (I posted a very short review in the Equipment section), so we wanted the freedom to play with that a bit.

@SnoodlesMcFlude, indeed, "bunny slope" is the phrase I should have used. I'm already discovering it's expensive, but I'll cope! Smile

@Thomasski, I run London City Voices. Pop & rock choir, about 500 members. Videos on the website - lots of concerts in Troxy, E London.

After all it is free

Looking good and welcome to the wonderful world of ski run grading! it is far from consistent and I can think of a couple of blues in Les 2 Alpes that would be blacks in Borovets and reds in most of the rest of the Alps, keep in mind every resort will mark its easiest run green and hardest runs black no matter how easy, hard or not they are!

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@swannieboy, Looks like you had a successful trip, and clearly you enjoyed it. Loads of great advice above, especially getting lessons, and plenty elsewhere around the forums.
Welcome to Snowheads.

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

@swannieboy, talking of choirs, the most unusual cargo I took to the Alps was several cassocks in Easter 09. Son#2 was doing a gap year at Portsmouth cathedral as a choral scholar (prior to attending a London conservatoire) and the Director of Music was a skier who had a house in Le rivier de Allemond and skied in Alp d'Huez. So the choral scholars plus myself and mrsbillb had a few days there (to ski in our case). They flew but I drove hence the cassocks spread across the rest of our stuff. The choir performed in the Alp d'Huez chapel opening with Zadoc the Priest. Truly memorable. Good luck with your choir and future skiing.

snow reports

@swannieboy, welcome to snowheads.

You'll quickly discover that "get lessons!" is a bit of a common refrain on here, though not always unjustified wink

. Excellent that you have caught the skiing bug, though as others have said, perhaps unfortunate for your wallet/bank account.

On the "been there, done that" front, I remember a trip to Tignes in the Espace Killy. I was with a group of university friends, of various levels. We had one beginner, one nervous early intermediate (OK on blues, but not particularly comfortable), and four fairly accomplished skiers (FAS - comfortable on all pistes). The first two took ski school lessons in the morning, and the four FAS took it in turns to take them out in the afternoon if they wanted to ski (the nervous intermediate didn't ski all afternoons IIRC). Anyway, day 1 afternoon, and one of the FAS was taking the two of them out, and decided to head to the area around the Borsat lift, which is a lovely beginners area filled with green runs, and only green runs (thus mainly devoid of intermidiots bombing down and using you for skittles practise).

Anyway, as happens when you are enjoying yourself in the mountains, time got away from them a bit. Now to get back to Tignes, there are a couple of options: either the Borsat lift or the Tommeuses one. I'm not quite sure why they didn't aim for the Borsat one (may have already been too late, or maybe they were already passed it by this time), but they went for Tommeuses. At this point, the FAS had to answer a call of nature, so stopped by the side of a piste and briefly stepped off to do his business, indicating that the two others should ski on and he would catch them up. Unfortunately, in his haste he managed to ski past them completely without seeing them, and, forgetting that he was a much faster skier than them, assumed that they must have beaten him to the Tommeuses lift, so simply hopped on it and skied back to the appartment.

Upon his arrival at the appartment however, a shock. None of the other two had made it back yet. Frantic phonecalls now followed (this was past lift closure time). Eventually it was established that they had missed the last Tommeuses lift (and the bubble back down to la Daille), and at this point the beginner was too tired to continue, so took his skis off and walked/slid all the way down into la Daille. There followed a rather expensive taxi from la Daille back to Val Claret.

Weirdly, despite this, the beginner really took to skiing after that, and by the end of the week was happy skiing red runs, and demanding to be let loose on blacks.

Welcome

and congrats on not being put off for life by the scary experience.

I’m too old to remember my first times, and I was a headstrong teenager anyway , but I’ve noticed from taking my daughters out that slopes should be graded in sections rather than from top to bottom. Where we often go in Andorra, the blue from the school back to the base ALWAYS has three sections of total carnage at the end of the day as they are relatively steep and narrow and all the beginners can’t handle them.

You know it makes sense.

@swannieboy, From your description it sounds as if you stayed at the Forsthofalm Holzhotel (the only one in Leogang at the bottom of a chair lift). If so, you chose a great location.
The Asitz run, shown in your video, is ideal for improvers, who have graduated from the nursery slopes - it was once described in a Telegraph or Times article that I read about 30 years ago as “one of the best easy/intermediate pistes in Europe”.
When you say you went round a bend on what seemed like an easy blue run, only to encounter a “precipice”, it sounds as if you might have got onto the beginning of the Steinberg run (piste 92). If so, there are three different routes for negotiating that top section, two of which are frequently overlooked. You may have chosen the most difficult option: the easiest by far is to ski through the tunnel under the Asitzbrau restaurant.
Similarly I noticed that, at the beginning of your video, you took the steepest option from the top of the Asitzgipfelbahn chair. If you had turned right at the top of the chair, there is a gentle slip-way which takes you round the hill and brings you out slightly further down. Anyway you seemed to cope with it pretty well.
That blue run that goes down under the chair to the Forsthofalm is a lovely, wide, and relatively easy piste. Again there are ways around the initial steepish section, as you may have discovered as you got to know the area better.
Generally the blue runs in the Ski Circus embrace a wide variety of gradient and type of piste, ranging from very easy tracks to those that border on red. With 140km of blue piste, I would agree that it pays an early intermediate skier to seek advice on which ones to choose.
If you are contemplating a possible return to the area, you may find my comprehensive guide and a few suggested itineraries helpful. PM me your email address if you would like me to send you a copy.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

I had never thought of a singing/skiing holiday before! It would combine 2 of my hobbies as I am the treasurer and Mr Mogulski the librarian of a large local choir. We do singing tours to Europe every few years and many choir members also ski so there is a thought for the future. I don't think out musical director skis though.

A snowHead

@mogulski,

A snowHead

@tatmanstours, bingo, exactly right. It's a great hotel, and we had an awesome room. There were a few niggles, which I let them know about, and they replied very graciously. The food was among the best I've ever had at a hotel anywhere.

And yes, piste 92 it was. I would love a copy of your guide please, as we'll definitely go back there - I'll PM you. That's good to know. I did know about the easier route down from the Asitzgipfelbahn chair, but I deliberately did the steeper one as it had beaten me thus far. I'd successfully negotiated the gentle bit, as had Kate. So, question, if you go under that tunnel under the restaurant, that takes you around to the left, past the Asitzgipfelbahn chair entrance? I was trying to find out where that led, and thought it might be a good way down, but because it's such an enormous area, I found the map hard to follow. I've just watched a YouTube video of the run and it looks great!

@mogulski, come with us! Smile

Too many lovely comments to individually reply to, but thank you for the warm welcome. And apologies if I disappear completely from time to time - so much to do ALL THE TIME! Glad we're not alone in our "oh $h1t" moments!

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

@swannieboy, Welcome to the forum. I enjoyed your videos, but was a little worried that in your first video you were not wearing gloves! I know that you can get very hot a sweaty but gloves aren't just for keeping hands warm - they are all to protect your fingers and thumbs. I work in healthcare and see a lot of hand injuries. I live and work near an indoor ski slope! Please always wear gloves and if you fall try to remember to make a fist!

This also leads on to my second point - why do so many skiers not use the wrist straps on ski poles? or use them incorrectly?

Please see
http://youtube.com/v/JUjCNUrVElA

I know I'm opening myself up to a lot of criticism here, many will say that its bet to drop poles if you fall so you don't land on them - I'd say that you need to try and keep hold of them, it makes sure your hand is closed and helps to prevent hyper flexion injuries.

Enjoy your trip to Bulgaria.

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I never use wrist straps on poles. For off piste that's obvious but even on piste I can't be bothered especially since a friend hurt his thumb when he fell on his hand awkwardly with a strap in place. I'd never ski without gloves though.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

@Yorksboy, I don't use straps on poles but I couldn't give a fig about falling on them. It's partly because I was told that you can get your arm trapped if you fall off piste, and partly because I don't want a thumb injury like Pam mentions.

I've skied without gloves too during April skiing. I can't recall falling when I've not had gloves on, but I know from experience of falling off my bike that I tend to bring my arms in.

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@Yorksboy, not to use straps was one of the first things I was taught when I started skiing. As a result, I've never used them.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

I skied without gloves once, following an instructor and my grand-daughter around and juggling two cameras. No poles. Fortunately it wasn't a cold day. It was a bit miserable, dank, but not cold. I did a lot of snow-ploughing and I'm no photographer but the resulting footage, incorporated into a very amateur video of their holiday with us, is priceless.

Actually, spending a few hours with no poles is quite a good thing to do. Gets you dynamically balanced on your feet and using your edges in lift queues. Most of us do nothing remotely useful with our poles - I know I don't (outside of lift queues).

After all it is free

@pam w, some swine nicked a set of poles from me part way through a week. As I had a spare set at home I decided not to buy new in resort and instead spent the last 3 days without poles. My confidence on steeps took a real backward step and I didn't feel like I was able to drive the skis properly, but by day three I was definitely coping better. Switching back to poles was a huge relief

The usual advice is to not use straps off piste, so you can easily discard your poles in an avalanche (they may pull you down into the snow) and to reduce the risk of injury if you snag a pole while tree skiing. Once you get used to that, there doesn't seem much point in using them on piste either. I have occasionally left a pole stuck in the piste when poling along a hard packed piste. Embarrassing, but no worse than that. I don't tend to drop my poles when I fall, so I doubt the lack of straps increases my risk of hand injuries.

Gloves though - always wear them. Mini_mg demonstrated why last year in La Rosiere, she took a tumble in deep snow, rolled over and came back up dripping blood from her thumb. Presumably she hit it on a ski edge in the fall, because there was a neat cut through her glove, liner and thumb. Without the glove it would have been a nasty gash, probably needing stitches.

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Simply falling over offpiste in deep snow, with your arm under your body, strapped to a pole which is also wedged in the snow and under your body, can be bad.

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@swannieboy, In answer to your question, you ski through the tunnel under the Asitzbrau, pause momentarily to wave to the guys using the urinals in the “loo with a view”, then ski down a gently sloping track for a couple of hundred yards, before turning hard left and skiing down a very easy blue piste that brings you to the Asitzgipfelbahn chair lift.
If you carry on past the chair lift on piste 92, you reach the mid-station of the Steinbergbahn. If you continue past that you ski to the valley bottom down blue piste 93, a beautiful, long, tree-lined run. This ends up at the bottom station of the Steinbergbahn.

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Reply to Hurtle:
We sing with Garleton Singers https://garletonsingers.co.uk/ We have about 80 members and mostly sing classical music but often something like 'Songs from the Shows' as lighter concert and do a carol concert at Christmas. We are doing Handel's Alexander's Feast with a professional orchestra here in Edinburgh - Saturday 23rd March 7.30 pm at St Cuthbert's Church just off Princes Street. I hadn't thought of advertising the concert on Snowheads!!!!

@mogulski, excellent! Enjoy Alexander's Feast, I love Handel. Yours is the sort of choir I've sung with in London over the years, including Bach Choir, London Symphony Chorus, Whitehall Choir, plus various smaller outfits here and there.

You know it makes sense.

@tatmanstours, just had a bit more of a peruse on YouTube. The offending run was piste 88. It was just too steep for us to attempt without having tested our skis or done any warming up at all.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

@Yorksboy, I now tend to use cycling gloves. I have really good circulation, and my hands get really hot, but I do see the value in gloves. I've ordered a pair of Kinco pigskin gloves, so we'll see how they perform, supposed to be what all the Canadians use...

Help!!

Hello, newbie here...

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