The Mountain Echo

It’s that time of year again! The best skiers, telemarkers and boarders from the premier European ski resorts will be gearing up for the competition that settles which of them is top dog. It is of course Boss des Bosses, the premier mogul event for non-professionals itching to get competitive on some bumps while flying the flag for their resort.

Boss des Bosses is a mogul competition held between six resorts from around Europe, who all bringing their best skiers to Chamonix to compete for the title. Bosses is a ski run which you will be able to find on the Grand Montets in Argentiere, Chamonix and it’s where our brave competitors will find themselves facing a hefty set of moguls and two kickers that are in no way small.

The competition is about the teams and wanting to win, but it’s so much more than that. There is a fair amount of drinking as well as music and BBQs to keep you amused throughout the day. Season bonding? This is exactly the kind of event that will see you meeting new people and flying the flag for your resort.

The resorts competing are: Zermatt, Verbier, Meribel, Courchevel, Chamonix and Val d’Isère. From that list you can see that all the heavy hitters are coming along, all of them are pretty serious about their skiing and none of them will be fielding a poor team this side of global warming.

Each team has to have nine members, within which you are required to have two girls, two boarders and two telemarkers. Ever tried moguls on telemark skis? You can imagine how tricky it is and how hot a telemarker you have to be to tackle the course. The teams race in pairs, both going down the run at the same time and being scored at the end.

The teams will weedle some pretty legendary skiers out of the woodwork (keep an eye out for Glen Plake’s mohawk). There will be old school people you don’t know as well as some new faces that you do.

At the end of the day they all deserve support for having the balls to take on the legendary slope. The hectic training schedule of late nights, too much drinking and general bad behaviour has to be rigorously adhered to in the weeks leading up to the competition, to ensure the teams are in full seasonnaire prime come the first run.

The resort also has to provide a judge for the competition. As we go to press we are still unsure who the judge will be, and therefore who to ply with drink for their good favour. We can safely assume that it will be someone very capable of scoring and, particularly, scoring well for their hometown. A bit of favouritism never goes amiss.

Boss des Bosses has been running for 21 years. It’s a longstanding event that has everything going for it. You can’t run a competition for that long unless you’re doing something right! There used to be a requirement for a mono-skier in the team, but that’s been abolished now. Mono-skiing competitions are now the exclusive realm of Val d’Isère (but more on that later).

One of the great things about this day is the amount of people who turn out to support their teams. Last year Verbier brought out 4 bus loads of keen supporters cheering them into third place. If you were thinking about going then get yourself booked, as we’ll need all the support we can get.

A nice day out of resort might be just what the doctor ordered anyway!

You also have a great opportunity to meet people from other resorts. Just remember to end whatever activities you get up to in town before the bus leaves back to Val. The transfer from Chamonix to Val leaves little margin in its departure time, and I doubt your boss will take ‘he/she was a great mogul skier’ as an excuse, even if they should.

Here at TME we will be out supporting in force but also using the day to see some friends from other resorts. You’ll be surprised how far word spreads about this big day out. From what we hear from our sources in Verbier, they are once again bringing a big turnout to try and cheer them into first place. It wouldn’t be proper competition without some decent inter-resort rivalry. For those who attend, if you’re able to get through the day without ending up in a snowball fight with another resort then you definitely haven’t been supporting hard enough!

Naturally, a day such as this would not be complete without the few people turning up in fancy dress to amuse us all. Last year there were costumes aplenty and, as this year’s event falls on St. Patrick’s Day, you can expect to see more leprechauns than you can shake a rainbow and a pot of gold at.

Val d’Isère will be taking out a coach load of people and you can get your tickets from the Warm Up. It’s a great chance to get a morning’s skiing in a different resort before the event, with discounted lift passes available at 22 Euros. Alternatively it’s a mere 12 for the simple ride up the mountain to the first beer of the day!

The bus leaves at 6.30am. We know that’s early, but you’ll have plenty of time to sleep off your hangover on the bus or even just get back on it again. It leaves after the prize giving in Chamonix, returning you here around midnight. Perfect if you have the day off (and it’s a Wednesday so we know many of you do) and great fun to boot.

We will be there flying the flag for Val d’Isère. We certainly hope you will be too. Boss des Bosses is part of our history (it started off as a two-way competition between Chamonix and Val d’Isère) and you’ll regret it if you don’t make the time to go and sample one of the premier events of the season. Lots of bumps, lots of jumps and plenty of drinking… what more could you ask of a day out

So you think Val d’Isère is expensive. You’re probably right. Prices here make even the richest man double take at his bill at the end of the night. God forbid you get in such a mess that you only have the dreaded credit card receipt the next morning to tell you exactly how much you spent; but this is France and, to be honest, we’re actually on a par around here with the rest of the country.

The cost of a pint in Val can vary from around 4 to 7 Euros depending on where you favour as a drinking spot. There are various Happy Hours to take away the pain of handing over four quid for a drink, but those prices represent the normal cost of a drink around here.

We accept the prices because we have nowhere else to go, but you’d be hard pressed to find anything cheaper in other parts of France. If you like beer, then get used to digging deep into your pockets and handing over your spare change to the apologetic bar man.

So why is it so much more expensive? If you thought your taxes in the UK were bad, then you definitely shouldn’t be living in France. Like Scandinavia, the taxes are significantly higher and levied in a different way to the UK. Take a glance at your pay slip if you work under a French system and look at how much money you’re giving them in addition to all the other taxes that you pay when you purchase anything.

Beer and alcohol, as with everywhere, is highly taxed. It’s all in an effort to dissuade us from drinking the stuff but naturally we still do. When you hand over your 5 Euro you are largely paying the tax man. It’s not just the bar manager being a greedy sod.

You will struggle to find a cheap drink this side of the Channel. There isn’t a Wetherspoons here so you won’t be paying 99p for a bottle of Becks anytime soon. There is also a law which prevents chains from buying up property up here in the mountains, hence why Val doesn’t have a Starbucks on every corner and a few Burger Kings thrown in for good measure.While you won’t be paying a pound for a pint any time before you return home in May, you can be intelligent about where and when you drink.

Bars want your business and will quite happily put on a good Happy Hour to ensure you get a beverage for après. You won’t quite be paying knock down rates but it is possible to get a sub €4 pint in this town if you time it right.

Comparison with prices elsewhere? Biarritz isn’t exactly knocking itself over to make drinking cheaper and the rest of the south of France isn’t going to be a good bet either. As for Paris, the best of British finding anything sub €5. A ski resort has a drinking culture and Happy Hour just seems to be part of the lifestyle. Not so much in Paris where everyone is far too cool to actually admit that they drink beer. Parisiens live on cigarettes and air. Surely everyone knows that!

You may also want to consider the effect of fiscal belt-tightening on the bars’ bottom lines to practically give drinks away. Some bars in town have halved their staff for the year in order to save the pennies, so it’s not going to pay their wages to be giving away beer at less than they bought it for. We’re all trying to get by, and if your best mate works in a bar then think of it as a way to get some money in their pockets every time you buy a drink.

It is difficult to get your head round it being so expensive, especially if you’re from the UK, particularly from the North of the UK where they are almost paying YOU to drink. Pound a pint nights are very common for the Brits but more of a rarity for our continental counterparts.

So yes, beer is expensive and we all complain about it, but you still chose to come out here and we all seem to have a good time anyway. Accept that you are living the life of a pauper in France and paying out of your ears for everything. It’s not the bars being greedy we promise you, and we’ll buy you a drink at Wetherspoons in the UK if you can prove us wrong!

While it still feels like just yesterday that they were beginning, the Winter Olympics are over. Fear not, as the X-Games are making their first trip over the pond from Aspen and our coming to a resort very near you aka Tignes! It’s not going to be as big as its American counterpart, but it will be considerably easier to watch it live, so naturally we have provided you with a definitive guide to what’s going on and who’s going to be competing (and who you might want to stalk in the bars in Tignes afterwards).

The competition runs from the 10-12th, so they have a mere 3 days to pack in all the extreme skiing and snowboarding. The competition is invitational and the competitors list looks pretty good, so you should expect an impressive show with some of Europe and America’s best throwing down to be the best at the inaugural European X-Games.

The field is mainly of a Scandinavian/American nationality base, but there are a few Canadians, Swiss and, of course, French athletes in there. Great Britain is being represented by the shining light of Jenny Jones in the boarding slopestyle, so if you’re looking for some home grown talent then we’d definitely recommend you getting down to watch that bit of the competition.

Some names you might recognise on the athletes list are: Simon Dumont, one of the finest superpipe skiers in the world. With no Tanner Hall he’ll be hoping to hold off the European competition to win after a bit of a stop-start season. Xavier Bertoni, who by all accounts is having a great season, will be flying the French flag in the men’s pipe so watch out for him to go big on home turf. The young guns like Duncan Adams and Justin Dorey will be looking to stake their claim on the podium as well. Bobby Brown and Sammy Carlson will be representing the USA in the skiing slopestyle but they’ve got a formidable Scandi army to compete with thanks to Andreas Hatveit and PK Hunder from Norway, as well as Henrik Harlaut from Sweden, who are all very capable of medal winning runs.

For the women skiers, Sarah Burke, Grete Eliassen and Jen Hudak will be trying to down the European challenge, but with Virginie Favre from France and Anais Caradeux from Switzerland the women’s competition looks like it’ll come down to who can handle the pressure on the day.

The boarding superpipe is dominated by US competitors with Olympic medal winner Scotty Lago making an appearance. Without Shaun White, he’ll be looking to seize his chance for gold, but the European challenge shouldn’t be discounted with Mathieu Crepel looking to win for the home crowd and Antti Autti hoping to capitalise on some good form for the Scandi contingent.

The slopestyle is a little more even with crowd favourites like Eero Ettala from Finland and Andreas Wiig from Norway looking to challenge for medals, but again you can’t ignore the effect of home field advantage and Mathieu Crepel has all the ingredients to take both medals home for France in the men’s boarding.

Among the women, Jamie Anderson and Torah Bright will be battling it out for the USA and Australia respectively but there might be surprises from the lesser known girls like Arka Pancochova of the Czech republic or Elena Hight from the USA.

In the slopestyle we hope that many of you will be supporting Jenny Jones as she looks for a European Gold to sit with her two from the USA in the women’s slopestyle. Cheryl Mass will be looking to challenge too, but the real competition will be from Gretchen Bleiler who was pretty upset after losing out to Jenny on her own continent.

What’s missing from these X-Games is the snow mobile competition, which is a lot like motocross but on a giant snowmobile. Don’t worry; there are snow mobiling demos every day from 3-4pm if you simply can’t live without it.

And finally, here is the comprehensive timetable. It might change due to weather and other shenanigans, but for the moment this is the definitive timetable. We will see you there!