Return of the Blog at last!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR!
January 20, 2010HAPPY NEW YEAR and a belated Merry Christmas (on the 20th of Jan)!!
Another of Camilla's amazing photo's (www.whiteroompictures.com)
I have been very bad and getting my first blog of the season written, sorry!!
It has been a slow start to the 09/10 winter compared to last seasons manic snow filled December! This has been down mainly to conditions and work commitments back in the UK, which sucks! I didn’t get out to Verbier until the 26th December this year as the snow before Christmas was pretty average.
However my feet didn’t touch the ground as soon as I got into town, for the week between Christmas and New Year I was coaching on ES Freeski’s first Verbier camp of the winter. Decked out in our nice and bright FAIISE outfits we had awesome group, we had kids from age 10 to a couple of 18 year old Peak Leader gap year students. It was a super fun week even though we only had an afternoon of sunshine! All the guys and girls pushed there skiing further and picked up a few new tricks in the park, Oli Corkhill and myself were really impressed!
The course finished on New Years Eve conveniently…. And knowing that there was no need to get up early in the morning we went out and hit it fairly hard! A nice dinner followed by some huge shape making in the Farinet and Cas Bah followed well into the early hours…. getting to meet the man from the BT adverts and walking round wearing a butterfly mask all night being the highlights that I can remember!!
Verbier at midnight by the legend Rob Stanford, awesome photo!
After spending New Years day recovering and after a sprinkling of new snow and the arrival of Phil Hopper, we went out and got some skiing done! It was awesome to get to start testing next years STORM Skis properly, the 10/11 Strike is perfect and definitely a ski to watch out for!
We had wicked crew and having spent the whole of last year in Verbier with Bungle and not actually skiing together due to his injury it was good to get out on the hill with him, along with Andy Bennett who was finding us some cool pillow lines and mini cliffs! It was perfect early season training for when the next big snowfall comes so we can be ready to go out and get some shots done!
I have spent the last week back in the UK but am back to Verbier next week and cant wait! Got an exciting and busy period coming up with the start of the competition season for me, kicking off with the Freeride World Tour Qualifiers in Flaine on the 5th of Feb followed by the next qualifier stop on the 8th in St Moritz for the slightly scary Engadinsnow Event! So its straight into training as soon as I get back!
Will keep you all up to date and will get another blog out in a week or so and hopefully this time with a few skiing shots!!
Have fun x
