A week in Tignes, France, thats left me with a small shopping list of “upgrades” to my current snowbaord gear, more on that in another post As I didn’t mention in a previous post, I managed to get there no problem, dropped off at Newcastle airport, checked my bags and hung around for a little while till my flight was ready. For some reason this was delayed by 25 minutes when I checked in but was only 5 minutes by the time they announced the gate. A quick flight up, over priced snack and a drink, and I’m in Geneva. Collected my bags and headed out, looking out for my pickup, didn’t see it but that didn’t matter they spotted me. Good job I was wearing my SCUK hoody to travel Out we go to the bus and load up, I’m sure they managed to find the only French person that doesn’t speak English, anyway off we go about 3 and a half hours and a break later we arrive in Tinges, the driver got directions to the Loop Bar to meet everyone and then took us up to Dragon Lodge.

We were greeted and assigned rooms, then up to the room, home for a week. The room itself was actually a small apartment, with fully functioning kitchen and 2 bedrooms, one with a triple-bunk-bed and a normal bed, and one with 2 normal beds that were just mattresses on the floor. In an (failed) attempt to avoid snorers I went for one of the singles in the twin room, thinking that I had a good chance of a decent nights sleep, unfortunately my room mate turned out to be the loudest snorer I’ve ever heard, more on that later maybe.

So we get our stuff into our rooms, we’ve picked out beds so its back downstairs to mingle and have our first meal. Having only had airplane food and a Mars, I was ready for something to eat. And once the room had been converted from a lounge to a dining room, out comes 3 courses of the best food anyone could ask for on a holiday, its been such a full week its hard to remember every meal, but they were all good, we had a few soups, cheese, pate, and pasta for starters, beef stew, chicken casserole, chilli, lasagne and bangers and mash for main, chocolate mouse, orange cheesecake, bread and butter pudding, fruit crumble, crepe and banana. I’m sure I’ve missed something from that but nevermind they were all good and well presented too. At some point before dinner it had started snowing, and I don’t think it stopped until some time on Sunday, which meant we had lots of good snow just waiting to be played in. Anyway after that first meal, and some minor unpacking it was time for bed.

Now I don’t sleep that heavy at the best of times and sharing a room makes it harder to get to sleep due to the extra noise of someone else being there, so I came prepared with headphones, but within seconds of the light going out, it sounded like well I really don’t know how to describe it, it was loud, snorty and at times sounded snotty too, with only small breaks to exhale, then the snoring ended and the loud Darth Vader breathing started, I swear I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d randomly say he was my father, then more snoring, in a perpetual loop. It was also really hot in the room, considering the heating was off, this could only be blamed on the fact I was sleeping next to the hot water tank for the room. Later in the week, we discovered that -10 outside just meant the room cooled down a bit with the window open and it was still quite comfortable to sleep, once the snoring stopped anyway. The first few nights were rather poor, but with the window open and the threat of sleeping outside or maybe being hit by something, the snoring was less bad and I managed to sleep. Leading up to the better nights sleep I experimented with listening to music to drown out the thundering snores, this didn’t quite work out that well when I left my music on shuffle and after playing something a bit slow and peaceful that I was just dozing off to it switched to playing Metallica, giving me a bit of a shock and waking me up, I think I ended up falling to sleep with Muse playing one night, and Dragonforce (very effective at blocking noise as its almost solid noise itself) another, no surprises with them and I just set it to play albums.

Back to important stuff, the snowboarding The lodge was only a couple of minutes walk from the slopes, up the hill then a gentle ride down to a lift, or down the hill to the main area with easy access to 3 lifts, one easy, one still pretty easy but longer and the gondola up to a few more slopes, one route coming out in Val desire, its quite a large area and I’m sure there’s loads I didn’t visit.

After the constant snow of the first night it was still snowing the first day, visibility wasn’t great and the gondola was closed, but hitting lots of fresh untouched (until we fell in it) powder was awesome, if a little hard work when it was two feet deep and I’d just fell over, due to lack of practise, yeah lack of practise on powder was why I fell over not total lack of ability After a short break up by the closed gondola station, and not knowing the easy way back, took part of a black run back down into Tignes for food

Most days involved get out on the snow between 9 and 10, stop for lunch, then back out till tired, and back to the lodge for cake, chill then dinner.

A couple of days guiding was included and meant we got taken to places we probably wouldn’t have chosen to go normally and a klittle bit of technique improvement, this included a couple of gullies that are basically natural half pipes, and great fun to ride through, and a couple of runs that looked like there was a big cliff down the side, not my favourite, but some were huge wide and open, and hardly seemed to have other people on.

About half way through more snow was forcast and it arrived late afternoon, unfortunately we decided to get another run in while the clouds were coming in and the light turned a bit flat, by the time we reached the bottom it was imposible to pick out anything no shadows, up and down looked the same, and I only knew I’d gown down a dip when I felt myself drop, and then came back up the other side, no idea how fast I was going and no idea what the snow was like up ahead, made things interesting.

On the last day we had a small race, I say small, there was supposed to be about 40 of us, I’m sure it was only 20 all waiting to strap our boards on after the last lift. A short run to our boards, strap in and race down to the bottom as fast as possible, I figured I wouldn’t stand a chance of winning so set off after the biggest group, dodging all the people that managed to fall after the first corner and going as fast as I was comfortable, dodging skiers who’d also fell over, I do wonder if they fell because some fast snowboarder passed them. It was probably the fastest I’d gone down that piste but as expected I was nearer the back rather than anywhere near the front but it was fun

A good week, even with the bad sleep at the beginning, I’d almost certainly do it again, and hopefully I’ve managed to improve my snowboarding a little

so its off to bed, then off to Tignes for a week of snowboarding and fun.

A snowboarding trip to Banff in Canada.

The trip started with an early morning and a short drive to the badly named Durham Tees Vallee Airport – badly named because half the road signs still say Teesside Airport! Do the whole checking thing and a short flight to Heathrow.

The checkin, this is just silly, you book your flights, online or with an agent, then you show up and want to check in, so instead of just going to the desk handing over your paper work and your bags you now need to go to a machine, and tell it your there, then go to the same deak you would have anyway and handover your bags, where they then check your tickets and passport print lables etc and basically take just as long as they used to? So no benefit unless you dont have bags I guess.

That was pretty uneventful, apart from they seemed short on staff to check in my board n their skis.

One at Heathrow, we get our bags and have about 5 or 6 hours to kill till the flight, unfortunatly you can’t check you bags in for your flight till 3 hours before, this left us with a while at the public side of the airport. Sitting in the departure lounge is a bit boring, with not a lot other than the shops to amuse you, but atleast you dont have your bags at that side. You can see what I thought about the Duty free here.

The flight itself was uneventful, long, but the film selection wasn’t too bad, so that kept me amused. I managed to get through 3 films on the way there, mostly action, Max Payne, Body of Lies and The Day the Earth Stood still, I was quite surprised the films weren’t as edited as I thought they would be, there wasn’t any obvious cuts to hide gore or blanks in the language, but they’d all be improved with a bigger screen.

Anyway flight arrived, we got our bags, went transfer to Banff, checked in board and skis in the lockers up to the room and sleep ready to hit the slopes in the morning.

There’s not really much to say about the rest of the holiday, the usual day was, get up get dressed, get breakfast, put on warm gear, and get the bus to one of the mountains, go up n down the slopes n lifts a while bus back, change, eat, then bed. repeat.

We visited each of the 3 areas while we were there, and obviously the conditions depend a lot on the weather, but Lake Louise and Mt Norquay both tended to have harder packed snow than Sunshine when we were there. I definitely preferred the more powdery snow we had at Sunshine and all the runs seemed nicer and I want to say more friendly. At each of the 3 areas there was a few bits that really weren’t snowboarder friendly just too flat in places and without a run up there was no chance of getting past it without walking or skating, neither of which anyone wants to do. The up hill bits are always fun to get the speed up on the way down and hope to make it to the top, but damn its annoying when you run out of speed just before you get there and have to bunny hop/crawl or walk to the top.

Food on the mountain wasn’t anything special, but was good enough and not too expensive, but as there’s only a few places to eat they fill up pretty fast so is hard to get a seat.

Evening meals in Banff were pretty good, huge portions (so no suprise I lost my apertite near the end), we tended towards the more standard food of burgers, fries, spagghetti and pizza but it was all good.

On our last day I had a go in the park at Norquay, its probably the easiest to get to as its alongside the first lift and the entrace wasn’t far from the top, the others seemed to be between pistes meaning you had to ride a bit to get to one then go quite a way to get to the next lift back up, at Norquay the bottom was the bottom and you went pretty much straight to the lift.
I only had a go on the rookie stuff and after a few attempts a break and a couple more it was time to go, but I was  at least not falling over on what I tried even if I wasn’t flying high off the kickers.

I think I like the park riding it definitely makes a change from normal piste riding.

The trip home was again pretty uneventful apart from the flight wasn’t full, so I got lucky n had the 2 seats beside me empty to spread out in not that it really helped with sleeping but nevermind. Managed to watch Madagascar 2 and Quantum of Solace, listened to some music read some of my book, watched a bit of the on demand tv, then we were at Heathrow for some waiting n a flight home.

I have to ask why on earth did I think that it was a good idea to go back to work the day after getting home? Get up 8/9am in Canada Tuesday arrive home about 6pm Wednesday with only about 1 hour sleep, there was no surprise I was still half asleep on Thursday!

Well that’s about it the trip was mostly fun but could have been improved by me actually being able to sleep properly! And maybe a little snowboarding company 2′s company etc…

oh and no pics I hardly took any.