You can ski this resort in a day, you could probably do it in half a day but the lifts are not fast enough to get you around the mountain quickly enough. If the snow was fantastic you could spend another few days in the backcountry and use the connecting resorts of Claviere, Sestriere and Saux d'oux in Italy, but as the snow season has been pretty poor in this part of the Alps, those resorts were in terrible condition. In fact it was on a sortie to Claviere that the Viking and I had our most wipe outs in one day and I spilt blood on Italian snow! Funnily enough...or not depending on how you look at it, but drip just the smallest amount of blood on snow and it looks like lorry has hit a deer.
The best skiing was to be found at the back of MG at Chalvet (2680m) and Col de Alpet (2430) where there was still some steep runs with deep snow and quite fun in the afternoon sun. The main drawback to the whole resort were the lifts, very slow and quite old and in need of a definite upgrade. This is a weekend resort and I would NOT return here for a full week again.
However our hotel was great value and right on the piste – Hotel Apiscottia http://www.alpiscottia.com/ and run by lovely French lady who took a fancy to the Vikings legs when he sneakily decided to get an early morning coffee in his boxers, before the other guests were up.
The highlight of the week was meeting up with our extreme skier friend Jim, who was staying in Serre Chevalier for the week with his family. We spent a day with him, and the resort (more of a ski area/valley) is fantastic, which I will definitely return to in the future – it is huge, a whole array of linked villages and runs at all levels, as well as lots of backcountry off piste, which Nathan and I discovered as soon as Jim dragged us off the top lift station. We have had experience of following Jim blindly off cliffs and couloirs in the past and with 2 of us snowboarding we are able to find the courage to say NO to him and find a safer way round the runs he chose for us. In the past if I had been alone, I would have just followed him anywhere and would have either split my skull or have ruined my snowboard on the rocks.
Cervinia next!
Showing posts with label Montgenevre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Montgenevre. Show all posts
Saturday, 17 March 2007
Sunday, 11 March 2007
Cross country running!
Think cold, wet and muddy winter runs through the parks and forests near school in your daps and PE kit. Well not up here at 1850 meters in Montgenevre (France), it is a crisp clear and sunny morning and me and the Viking (my new name for the 6ft 2in Nathan fitness god that I am boarding and skiing with for 2 weeks) have just completed a 40 minute run down into Claviere (Italy) 1750 meters and back up the hill on the snow to Montgenevre again.
There are several surreal things about this relatively short run, firstly we are in a Alpine ski resort and when you put your Lycra shorts and thermal vest to go running in 0 deg C in the snow when everyone else is in their ski gear, you get some very strange looks. Secondly, the first time we did the run (yes we did it twice!) we ran down the main road from MG and had to go through customs and passport control and we were concerned that if we got through we wouldn't be able to get back in as we didn't have passports with us, fortunately the boarder posts are un-guarded. Lastly and probably most interestingly is the effect that running at altitude has on your body.
When running at altitude, your blood becomes "thicker." That is, you have a higher concentration of red blood cells and hemoglobin. This seems to be a way of adapting to the lower levels of oxygen available to the lungs in the less dense air, I don't know the exact percentages but think I read somewhere it is a few percent lower than at sea level and is linked to the pressure/air density theory that it takes longer to boil an egg on a mountain. Essentially there are less air molecules in the air at altitude and so you can't turn oxygen into energy at the same rate at sea level and so to try and run at the same speed as you would do at home, your heart has to work that much harder - on the 40 minute run my heart rate averaged 165 beats per minute, the equivalent run in the UK I would be at 145 bpm. In fact at one point my heart rate was at 185 bpm, the highest I have ever had my heart rate and is what I thought was my maximum - I know know I can push harder!
On the other hand the Viking hardly broke a sweat and his heart rate maximum was 162 - fit bastard! To the fitness freak Viking this is exciting as he believes that this could result in greater than "normal" endurance when he returns to train at sea-level.
We'll try some more runs in Cervinia next week which is at 2000m.
There are several surreal things about this relatively short run, firstly we are in a Alpine ski resort and when you put your Lycra shorts and thermal vest to go running in 0 deg C in the snow when everyone else is in their ski gear, you get some very strange looks. Secondly, the first time we did the run (yes we did it twice!) we ran down the main road from MG and had to go through customs and passport control and we were concerned that if we got through we wouldn't be able to get back in as we didn't have passports with us, fortunately the boarder posts are un-guarded. Lastly and probably most interestingly is the effect that running at altitude has on your body.
When running at altitude, your blood becomes "thicker." That is, you have a higher concentration of red blood cells and hemoglobin. This seems to be a way of adapting to the lower levels of oxygen available to the lungs in the less dense air, I don't know the exact percentages but think I read somewhere it is a few percent lower than at sea level and is linked to the pressure/air density theory that it takes longer to boil an egg on a mountain. Essentially there are less air molecules in the air at altitude and so you can't turn oxygen into energy at the same rate at sea level and so to try and run at the same speed as you would do at home, your heart has to work that much harder - on the 40 minute run my heart rate averaged 165 beats per minute, the equivalent run in the UK I would be at 145 bpm. In fact at one point my heart rate was at 185 bpm, the highest I have ever had my heart rate and is what I thought was my maximum - I know know I can push harder!
On the other hand the Viking hardly broke a sweat and his heart rate maximum was 162 - fit bastard! To the fitness freak Viking this is exciting as he believes that this could result in greater than "normal" endurance when he returns to train at sea-level.
We'll try some more runs in Cervinia next week which is at 2000m.
Monday, 5 March 2007
Happy Birthday Nathan!
A morning on Skis on the Saanenmoser ski area, snow was in good condition considering it had been rained on for 4 days and the area was very quiet for a Sunday. Off to pick up Nathan for 2 weeks of skiing and boarding in France and Italy. The SatNav said 3.5 hours from Gstaad to Turin Airport, it took exactly 3.5 hours (how did it know how long I would stop for toilet breaks?) An incredible drive through the Swiss Alps and then up through the famous switchbacks and hairpins to the Grand St. Bernard tunnel, once through the tunnel its an hour down the Aosta valley to Torino. It was a balmy winters dusk, the thermometer on the car read 22.5 degree centigrade and I started to worry about the state of the snow up in resort. As the sun set over the western Alps, the pinnacle of Monte Rosa was glowing pink through the low cloud, I was minded of the view from my apartment 15 years earlier when I was at university in Turin and we lived in the foot hills of the alps above the city.
I picked up Nathan and we shot up to the French resort of Montgenevre, checked into our Boutique hotel (1 Star!), and now have balcony facing the slopes. The first task of the day was to purchase Nathan a brain bucket (helmet!) and hire some snowboard boots for him. We promised each other that as we had 2 weeks together boarding and skiing we would take the first day easy.....well we are now in the room and Nathan can't lift is head off the pillow from whiplash and everytime I move my shoulder it sounds like the gearbox on my 1984 Mini Metro, hmmm only 13 days left to go – I wonder if we can make it through with out injury, and I have another 3 weeks after that – need to look after the aging body. We are both pretty dehydrated and the altitude is not helping, I too now have a sore neck from a head plant on the last run down from the hill, Nathan shouted as he rode past, “doesn't matter how deep you plant it, it wont grow!” thanks mate!
Oh I nearly forgot it was Nathan's birthday today, he is now 36 and so has moved out of his early 30's and into the late 30's zone....early night tonight then for the old man!
I picked up Nathan and we shot up to the French resort of Montgenevre, checked into our Boutique hotel (1 Star!), and now have balcony facing the slopes. The first task of the day was to purchase Nathan a brain bucket (helmet!) and hire some snowboard boots for him. We promised each other that as we had 2 weeks together boarding and skiing we would take the first day easy.....well we are now in the room and Nathan can't lift is head off the pillow from whiplash and everytime I move my shoulder it sounds like the gearbox on my 1984 Mini Metro, hmmm only 13 days left to go – I wonder if we can make it through with out injury, and I have another 3 weeks after that – need to look after the aging body. We are both pretty dehydrated and the altitude is not helping, I too now have a sore neck from a head plant on the last run down from the hill, Nathan shouted as he rode past, “doesn't matter how deep you plant it, it wont grow!” thanks mate!Oh I nearly forgot it was Nathan's birthday today, he is now 36 and so has moved out of his early 30's and into the late 30's zone....early night tonight then for the old man!
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