Photo Frenzy!

...no I'm not dead yet!

This week was a busy week, with Guy, Will,Neil and the hodge clan decending on Val. Unfortunatly I was unable to get in as much riding with them as I wanted as I had to go riding off piste with our insane french instructors (sucks to be me heh?. Anyway I got a snap of some of the boys. If they were a band this would be thier album cover, note how Will looks like he's about to go scuba diving...



I also managed to snap this great picture of the posh chalet we can see from our cramped apartment.....bastards

The lights in the background are the snow makers going full tilt, it was bloody cold that night, we were out on our "balcony" (a phone box bolted to the side of the apartment) and Jim's Fanta froze in the 10 minutes we were out there



anyway, our guides were tasked with giving us a proper going over this week. On day 1 all 16 boarders were grouped togeter and we headed off like some barbarian horde to terrorise the slopes. The froggies idea of a warm up ride is to go from the top to the bottom of the mountain as quickly as possible. The combination of hangovers, cold limbs and tight pistes resulted in carnage on an unprecedented scale with riders crashing into eachother, rocks, trees, the piste and ski schools. After that warmup we were split into two groups and sent our separate ways. Our group went to the "lost valley". Riding the lost valley is akin to caving, there are several points where the run is more rock than snow and the gaps get down to less than the length of my board making turning an interesting proposition.

Anyway on thursday we went to Les Arcs for more off piste. The day started with a leg burning hike up to 2900m



Then we decended the "Grand Col". To be honest it was a bit of a ball breaker but some of the views were amazing.



after that I hooked up with Guy and Co on the Sat for some general riding before packing them up and sending them off to Borg to catch the train home to the real world.

I like this one