The weather
continues to be normal… in other words loads of grey snowy days and once in a
while sunshine days. Unfortunately I still haven´t been able to climb anything
high up.
But to be
honest this weather is so good for me. I started skiing about 6 years ago. I
have been lucky to since then mostly get 60 days+ seasons, the down part is
most of them in the profession as a ski patroller. So skiing in walk mode with
a heavy backpack and loads of poles in my arms is not the problem. But as you
can guess the ski technique is more towards survival skiing. So the latest
weeks I’ve really been focusing on position and technique. On top of that we´ve
had several amazing powder days.
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| Helbronner, Italy a bit tracked here, a good reason to get the camera out. |
One of those
days was in Courmayeur on the Italian side of the massif called the Helbronner
lift. It´s only a 20 minute drive away but it´s such a difference. The cable
car is very old (unfortunately going to be replaced by a hypermodern one) there
are rarely queues and if there are no worries; the café selling 1 euro Italian
coffee is just around the corner. Everything got another paste really Italian style.
The day we went here we were lucky the weather was great and the snow fairly
stable. This made it possible to ski al the way from the top meaning 2000 meter
in altitude runs. After a couple of runs I decided to stop, my legs were done
and it was getting a bit warmer. Al the skiing is on very avalanche exposed
slopes or just below it so make sure to watch out!
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| Just before the start |
Two years
ago I participated in a rando-race in the Kebnekaise massif in Sweden called
´´keb-classic´´ together with Martin Karlsson. For that occasion I had invested
in a semi racing kit. After that i´ve only been using it when training, but
when I found out that there was a race held in Les houches I couldn´t stay
behind. It was a lot of fun getting in to racing mode again. It was a simple
race with only 850 meter vertical uphill and no downhill. There we´re maybe 30
people participating and mostly al geared up in superlight gear, this was going
to be tough. In the end I managed to get up in 52.02 minutes the fastest i´ve
done this track this year. The winner was loads quicker only 41 minutes! Would be
fun to get more racing done in the future!
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| Some look so fast! |
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| And the finish. Good work Les houches for aranging this! |
