The Mountain Echo

A prominent weight loss company has vowed to to start up a boot camp in Val d’Isere after a recent holiday in the resort. She was horrified by what she felt was a crime of neglect for many of the seasonnaires in Val d’Isere.

Weight concerns have been in the news recently what with rising adult obesity leading onto problems like diabetes and heart problems but never before has someone in the weight watching community directly targeted Val as a problem zone.

Citing issues such as ‘blatent misuse of butter’ and ‘portion control’ as potential reasons for the outbreak the company said that its services would be put to great use in the mountain community in curbing the intake of beer, meat and cheese.

‘Put down your fondue fork’ has been rumoured to be the name of the upcoming poster and advertising campaign as well as a resort wide search for the face of the campaign to make public appearances and raise morale amongst the community much like Jared Fogle who became the poster boy for the weight loss campaign by Subway. The face of the campaign will also keep a blog and be available for appointments should anyone feel like they are going to fall off the keep healthy wagon.

It’s common knowledge that many a seasonnaire out here in the savoie region must avoid the inevitable results of cooking with far too much butter and drinking too much beer, but until know the problem had been thought to be relatively small scale and the only consequences were the inability to wear jeans after february and the need for a personal trainer on the return home.

There have been calls to implement the points system into all staff rotas and for supermarkets to stock a specific lighter options choice instead of roti chicken and ben and jerry’s. The company has also pledged to create small focus groups which meet in various bars around town, serving only Vodka and Soda or Gin and Tonic or fresh juices. There will be no sugary drinks, beer or dark spirits available.

If you’re keen to get rid of your chalet backside that currently has no hope in hell of fitting into your jeans then this might be the kind of regime for you. I mean some guys do like a more shapely bottom and some girls like moobs, but for the most part a bit of abs, bums and tums to tone might do some members of the community some good in the love department.

For those keen to start before the summer on their weight loss campaign in order to avoid the awkward silences when they return home from parents or lovers there will be a fat camp taking place from the 26th to the 30th of April. For contact details see below. The camp promises to be good fun but a great workout with seminars and lectures on maintaining a dairy free lifestyle and how to say no to a demi peche. There will be trained fitness instructors wearing tight shorts in order to help shame camp inmates into running that extra 5 miles. At the end there will be a run from Bourg St. Maurice with the winner having a caesar salad with no dressing for free at a restaurant of their choice.

So for those of you looking to shed those chalet pounds and look like you’ve been skiing all day every day, this new initiative may be just the thing for you. The meetings and complete system will be implemented at the start of next season with all restaurants pledging to not serve anyone who they do not believe to be sticking to the regime and will make name and shame posters accordingly. For information and booking call the local representatives and success stories 0648816503

Remember guys it’s not a crime to ask for help

So we’d been looking forward to it all season and then last week it finally happened. The X Games came to town and took over Tignes for a week, and when we say took over, my god Tignes was owned by the event in almost every single way.

If you weren’t aware that the X Games had decided to grace Europe with it’s presence then where have you been? It’s all every park rat worth their salt has been talking about since they stepped foot in resort in November, and we’ve been excited to see just how the inaugural European X Games fared in comparison to it’s high flying US counterpart.

Of concern to many was the standard of the competion. The X Games is an invitational event and we’d heard murmurings that the big guns wouldn’t be coming out for this little shindig. Thankfully that wasn’t the case with many an extreme sports movie star coming out to prove their worth on the European stage.

The first final to take place was the men’s skiing superpipe. With names like Simon Dumont and Colby West not to mention home grown French stars like Kevin Rolland and Xavier Bertoni it looked set to be a good one, and we definitely weren’t disappointed.

The night really belonged to the French with Kevin Rolland pulling off another great run to add to his US X Games pipe title that he won in Aspen earlier this year. Following close behind him was French teammate Xavier Bertoni who couldn’t quite catch the stormer of a run by Kevin Rolland but was nonetheless very pleased with the silver with the added bonus of it being on home turf. As the French fans surged forward to congratulate their heroes it was a true moment of celebration that wasn’t seen again through the rest of the competition.

Justin Dorey did give a valiant effort to get into bronze position edging out Mike Riddle into fourth. The Wells brothers put up a good fight and surprisingly Byron claimed more points that his older more known brother Jossi.

In the men’s boarding superpipe there was a strong contingent of Finnish riders but they couldn’t break into the top three as the event was won by Iouri Podladtchikov from Switzerland with a stonking 98.00 run to win over Mathieu Crepel and Louie Vito. Markus Malin couldn’t hold his fine form in qualifiers to come out top again and just missed out on the medals in fourth place.

For the women boarding the pipe everyone was wondering whether Torah Bright would be able to follow up her Olympic gold and secure a European title. But sadly it was not to be with Kaitlyn Farrington pipping her by two points to get the gold. The margin was too big for Sophie Rodriguez who couldn’t quite get up into the nineties to challenge for either gold or silver.

For the women skiers in the pipe Jen Hudak was head and shoulders above the rest of the field as the only girl to even break into the ninety scale. The competition was down between 3rd and 5th place with Roz Groenewoud taking silver and Anais Caradeux working her home advantage to hold out for bronze position.

The slopestyle was the event that most of you were able to attend as the pipe finals mainly took place in the floodlight halfpipe at night. The slopestyle ran underneath the Les Lanches chairlift and closed the piste off to us for about a week as they built up the massive jumps and brought in the rail features for the slopestyle.

For the men’s boarding slopestyle some of the big names didn’t even reach the final, but that didn’t matter too much with every single competitor in the final looking to secure a win. It was won by Eric Willett who did a run that he hadn’t even practiced including moves like a double backside rodeo and a switch backside 9 to score a pretty massive 91 points ahead of Sage Kotsenburg and Marco Grilc who got 85.33 and 83.66 respectively. It was a welcome win for Willett who had finished second in Aspen behind Eero Ettala who hadn’t even reached the finals here in Europe.

In the Women’s boarding slopestyle Jenny Jones once again showed a cool head to stomp a smooth 720 on the final jump for a 92.33 score over Kjersti Oestgaard Buaas and Sina Candrian in 2nd and 3rd. In her second x games gold in two months she’s securing her self as the best in the world on the big stage.

For the men’s skiing it was an eventful final with a fair few falls and surprises. Tom Wallisch secured his lead with smooth landings and tight grabs to land all his jumps and edge out the competition. Bobby Brown recovered from two bad runs to ski straight into 2nd place over Jossi Wells who will be disappointed to have only come away with Bronze.

Kaya Turski secured another X Games gold in the Women’s slopestyle ahead of Keri Herman who adds another silver to her collection and Ashley Battersby in 3rd. Once again it was a case of who was solid and making their grabs stick in the air.

It was a great atmosphere and if you managed to stay overnight you will have certainly seen a few of the riders chilling out in the bars. Personally seeing Simon Dumont coming out of Sherpa was a bit of a
surreal moment!

So a hectic three days of back-to-back competition over the valley and from the looks of it many of you have been inspired to lay down some tricks in the park as a result. With lots of entertainment and a few surprises with more park rats that Tignes will see in a long time. Well, at least until next year!

When you think of the dangers of skiing or snowboarding you always think of falling off a cliff or some big ski crash where you were lucky to get a broken leg. In reality most people fall quite pathetically on piste, getting off a lift or worse still fall in the street. You always hear of the latter and think how dangerous the streets are around town but it’s not until it hits close to you, that it really hits home.

Last week my Dad slipped on the ice in our apartment car park and broke his leg/hip and has been in Chambery hospital since. He got operated on Tuesday and it will be 3 months till he can start to walk. Pretty harsh for a simple slip. My Dad is 68 but he has been in the mountains a lot in his life and is solid on his feet in the ice normally, I also know Wilkie from Surefoot slipped and split his head open, Jono slipped and hit his head. All experienced mountain people. I spoke to Doc Al about it and he says there is a stream of people in his surgery all season with broken wrists etc, all caused by slipping in the street.

Now I know were in a ski resort and as such there is a lot of snow and ice around, so things can be bad out there. I’m just not sure the white road policy is really helping matters although it does make the town look pretty. However if town is trying to attract the wealthier fur coat clientèle with this policy, surely they would prefer footpaths that you could walk on in fluffy moon boots instead of them looking nice. There is not much grace in ruining that coat on the ground and it’s hard to make a plaster cast look fashionable or prevent your lovely friends from writing obscenities all over it. There is also an environmental aspect to this as one of the reasons pavements and roads aren’t salted is because ultimately it ends up in the river systems which isn’t good for the plants and animals and it puts things that I don’t know that much about out of balance etc. Even too much grit can clog the rivers so they try to restrain from using too much of it.

It’s not all bad news though as there are a few things you can do to combat the problem. One way (if not the coolest) is to wear spikes on your shoes, they don’t look the best but they really do work and aren’t just for your grandmother. The same could be said for cat tracks on ski boots, some very good skiers swear by them, but the whole image thing isn’t great. Not drinking quite so much is an option, as although things can happen at any time adding ten pints to the mix can make you less well equipped to counter balance the initial slip. On this note you could also try practising on a balance ball or wobble board to hone your balance skills if you’re getting really serious about it. Shops are also helping the common cause too by chipping the ice outside their fine establishments or building stairs down icy slopes to help you reach them without graciously falling on your backside.

My advice when falling is to just let it happen, you’ve got a fair bit of padding on your bum and it’s less likely to break than a flimsy wrist. I know it’s unnatural but just accept the fall and go down. If you can get up and laugh about it then even more kudos to you. Also on the flip side if you see someone hit the deck then help them up and don’t laugh because karma is a bitch.

If your are unfortunate enough to have a rather simple accident on the piste or in the street there is only one thing you really can do about it to make up a good story and stick to it. You fell in the street? Oh no you didn’t, you fell while taking this incredibly gnarly couloir and you weren’t exactly going slowly.

We are now in the warmer months so things are getting a lot better but don’t let this fool you, a lot is melting in the day and then re-freezing at night which makes it pretty bad and literally like an ice rink. However good the clearing was this would be hard to stop as essentially it’s nature. So watch your backs and wrists/legs/hips/heads out there even if you do think your a mountain goat it’s not always the back side of hells pass where things go wrong.

And if you ever needed a reason not to wear those ‘oh so nice moon boots’ from Ogier it is that the grip isn’t great…