Daft piste to be taken down on your first week skiing/boarding

A snowHead

Just attended my niece's wedding. Apparently she took her then-boyfriend (and now husband) down the Swiss Wall in Morzine in his first week's skiing. He got down it apparently, but head first. Can't imagine snow plough being much use down that.

Any other daft pistes or off-pistes (that hopefully didn't end in death/serious injury/break-up of loving relationship)?

Reminds me of the time that some daft gets decided to take a load of novice divers onto the M2 (in 30m of murky cold British water). Nice place to do your mask removal drills. rolling eyes

A snowHead

Standing on the Midi ridge in -22 with hordes of people waiting to go down and ski the vallee blanche. A lady was quite surprised when my mate told her it was his third day skiing. We decided that as he'd got down a red run the day befre (and had done a fair bit of alpine climbing) he'd probably be ok...

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

I've taken friends ski touring with only a few days of skiing under their belts. None of them were still snow ploughing though. Does wanders for motivating people to get better and at least with the very limited number of people I've done it with seems to improve their skiing a lot. I've similarly taken new piste skiers onto some blackish run off-piste when it was nice and soft. After getting over the fact you can and need to get a bit of momentum going they did fine. That also helped with understanding that they're not stood on a precipice on the steep bit of a blue which is suddenly considerably less intimidating.

It only gets daft when you send someone down something they don't have a chance of controlling themselves on which could lead to injury. Everyone should get off-piste ASAP.

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It's in Avorias and Les Crosets, not Morzine. He was lucky because people die there and your niece wasn't the smartest for doing it. The 2010/2011 a woman died from internal injuries and she was an experienced skier. If bumps are big and hard and the skier doesn't self-arrest quickly it can all go very wrong if they fall at the top bit. And 50 degrees pitch makes self-arrest quite difficult. Mt Gele, Chaussoure, Mt Fort, Grands Montets (and probably many others) all have a potential to bring someone home in a body bag.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Vallee Blanche classic is easier than many red slopes in Chamonix.

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never summer, if you want to be pedantic it's Avoriaz. Very Happy

It looks like the sort of run where a fall at the top could end up in a very, very long fall/slide.

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After all it is free

I was taken down the "diable" run in Les Deux Alpes after 6 days on ski's. It knocked my confidence for quite a while, hated every second of it.

I see some people who have developed really bad habits as a result of survival skiing when friends encourage them on to terrain which is much too steep for them. Steer with their shoulders, not linking turns, unable to do anything else than a big, fast pivot.

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I was taken down piste B in Morzine after 2 hours in a snowdome and only a few hours pottering about at the top of Pleney - just riding the magic carpet.

Piste B probably isn't particularly steep, but it's quite long and it had been warm and it was towards the end of the day so it was starting to freeze again. There's one particularly steep section if you keep to the left and don't detour via piste D. We didn't detour.

After at least 10 falls and walking down half the slope I eventually made it to the bottom... it gave me my Everest to conquer by the end of the week! Smile

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The OH took me down some random blue in AdH (actually Auris side) after 3 days very beginner skiing. She'd been over there in the morning while I was in lessons and said it was lovely. By the afternoon it was scraped and pretty unpleasant. Got to a steeper pitched bit (I'd probably think it was nothing now) and I lost all confidence in getting down.

I didn't talk to the OH all the way back on the scare chair, back to the hotel and until half way through dinner about 5 hours later Laughing

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Many years ago, my wife's first session at ski-school ended at lunchtime. I prised her away from the nursery slopes, told her to man up and popped her on the old Honegg T-bar - long since replaced by a chair lift - at Wengen. The only runs down were red, it had been snowing hard and the groomers hadn't reached that part of the mountain. And that was in the days of straight skis. Our marriage survived, but only just.

Incredibly she got down without falling. Perhaps even more incredibly, she gave it another crack the next day and actually enjoyed it the second time around. And, knowing how she now skis, that stint of survival skiing didn't do any lasting harm to her technique. I lit the touchpaper that day, and now she heads straight for the tough stuff and canes it down the mountain.

You know it makes sense.

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

My sister was taken down the La Thuile olympic black (piste 3, is it?) at the end of day 1 (pretty much last lift) by her then plonker of a boyfriend. Piste patrol had to bring her down. By day 1 I mean 'not yet really able to snowplough properly'. It was quite good fun sitting in the chalet, as the sun went down and the temperature plummeted, wondering whether she was going to come home or not. No answer from the mobile phone etc.

A snowHead

A snowHead

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

The Swiss wall drops 330 metres in about 900m. An average slope of 20 degrees (still very steep).
A slope of 55 degrees (slopes are measured in angle from the horizontal) corrsponds to a gradient of 1 in 0.7 or in percentage terms a gradient 143%. This mean that the Swiss wall will lose the 330m of vertical drop in a mere 230m of horizontal distance.
This is of course too steep for a scree slope to form or vegetation.
Looking at the profile in google earth shows the slope to be about 30 dgrees at a maximum.

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Yes I'm sure it is 50 somethings it is 50% not 50º. There are no black pistes over 35º and it is rare to find any black run in Europe over 30º - anything over that is normally off piste. At 50º if you stand and put a hand out sideways you touch the slope.

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snowball, isn't the Harakiki in Mayrhofen an average of 38 degrees? 40 degree plus slopes are common in North America, but they're rarely groomed. In my experience, moguls never seem to form beyond about 40 degrees, presumably because the downforce of snow above is insufficient to allow the snow cover to compact properly. Very steep slopes se always to be powder or, if heavily skied, littered with protruding rocks AMD roots.

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I don't think it's anywhere near 55 degrees - it is a bit steeper near the top, but the bottom is very easy angled - so I'd suggest it's maybe 35 degrees at its steepest point. I've certainly been in far, far steeper things at Argentiere and I'm far from an "extreme" skier.

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Snow rarely sticks on anything above 50 degrees in any meaningful way. I have been in couloirs up to 47 degrees (according to couloir guide books). The wall at Avoriaz is nowhere near as steep as that - I have done it several times. Those suggesting 35 degrees are probably not far wrong - and then only for the first 30-50m.

After all it is free

Mr Piehole, bet it was a bit icy too, just to make it more interesting. I was in La Thuile when just about all of the runs were closed apart from the runs to resort - those runs were black or red, IIRC. Made it interesting with the world and her husband of all abilities on two or three steep runs at the end of the day.

Back to the topic of the thread - when I was being taught to ski in Scotland {mumble, mumble} years ago, I was with a group which had congregated at the top of a chair lift in Glen Shee. Off to our right was a immaculate snowfield with nary a track on it - virgin snow - BUT the whole slope was closed off with warning signs. Undaunted, one of our group decided that it was too tempting, pointed his planks down the fall line and basically hit top speed. At various points on the slope there were these odd mounds of snow sticking up but he didn't think anything much about them on the way down. When he got to the bottom and headed to the lift again he was intercepted by the lift guy who started screaming at him. Turned out those odd mounds were the snowed over tops of a number of Poma tow pylons. Our mate had somehow managed to avoid all of the tow cables that were lying just under the surface. If he had hit one there was little doubt he would have face planted at speed and the first thing his face would have probably hit was the parallel cable lying at just the right distance away from the impeding cable.

Moral of the story - unless you have good local knowledge, probably best not to ignore the nice, shiny warning signs.

My own numpty experience was the first time down the Vallee Blance. I trusted the guide when he said I'd be OK on a set of long, narrow GS ski's - big mistake..... I stuggled for hours to get to the galcier step off on the left of the valley (sinking into the powder every 10 metres and not being able to turn without jumping higher than the height of the snow, everyone else was giggling at me fit to burst) BUT after the glacier I was the one laughing, watching the snowboarders arms dropping off with poling whilst I sedately cruised down the rest of the valley at a fair clip!

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Have a lasting memory of riding down on the chairlift next to the Swiss Wall as a teenager and seeing a skier come to grief near the top. We watched as his body bounced up in the air off the moguls like a ragdoll before stopping right at the bottom after it flattened out. Never saw him get up or move Sad

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dobby, But if you want to be pedantic, it is in Les Crosets! Only the entrance is at Avoriaz! Bloody foolish GF, maybe she was a gold digger and looking for insurance money! Absolute fool!

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I wasn't completely impressed at being taken down Lac Blanc off the back of the furnitel peclet in VT after just a few days skiing and during a VT special 'lets blow as hard as we can so no-one can stand up or make any headway and blow any semblance of loose snow off of a sheer and icy surface'. I think if I hadn't finally trusted the brand new edges on the never used before special hire skis we'd just collected that I'd probably still be there. Shocked

My relationship survived the escapade - just!!

Col de L'audzin this year in VT was also mighty entertaining in conditions where I couldn't even see my own skis in the fog/cloud that we were in. That bit in the middle was def. 'do everything possible to stay on my feet', because I don't think I'd have found them again had I fallen down! However, I couldn't really claim to still have been a novice then. Suprisingly the 'relationship' also survived that - God knows how though!!

dobby, A chum took a girlfriend down the black othe front side of Mont Chery after a week. It's steeper then the wall in places.

No worries.

She was quite a talented speed skater whiich may have helped... Twisted Evil

You know it makes sense.

The human mind is very bad at judging pitch of a slope. Also it is highly dependent on snow conditions. A couple of years ago, on ly first day of skiing (for thatweek), I was cruising down Face in Val d'Isere, and I actually stopped to look closely at ski markers, so convinced was I that I was on a blue slope and not this famous supposedlt steep run. A few days later, in decidedly more icy conditions, I was back, and it seemed terrifyingly steep. I reckon any slope is grand in favourable snow conditions, but in bad conditions, there are a lot of slopes are downright dangerous

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

Roy Hockley, Thanks for the clarification re Les Crosets. Don't thing she was gold digging. He was a student at the time. And I think he is a good skier now so Swiss Wall wouldn't be a problem for him. But they are going on a diving holiday together.....hmmm...the plot thickens....

A snowHead

patricksh,

A snowHead

dobby,

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

Forget the first week on skis, The Tunnel screwed with me last year! The run to get to it means that the walk back is a really long way, so loads of people who haven't seen what they are up against end up having to attempt a slope with no idea if they can do it. Lots of people scraping off the top of it and being fairly narrow makes it a real challenge.

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There's a particularly nasty steep bit at the end of the Green run into Mottaret

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Some Dick (snow) heads took me down the Wengen race course telling me it was a Blue . Wasnt my first week but I still needed L-plates and 3 helpers to get my skis on at the time. Oh how they giggled Twisted Evil

It was my first year though .. their names are forever etched in my BLACK book wink

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Mr Piehole, She was up for it, and skied it very nicely. Quite astonishing progress.

After all it is free

Agenterre, I thought much of it is blue? Although many resorts stYle their competition courses black even if they are nothing like. E.g. Coupe du monde, Avoriaz. Lovely run with only one pitch that is at all steep.

Mind you, entering most of the turns carrying 100kph or there abouts would put an entirely different complexion on the matter... Twisted Evil

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Daft piste to be taken down on your first week skiing/boarding

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