The cup runneth over
Méribel, France by Lowdy Brabyn
There can be few things better than sitting with friends around the outdoor table of a mountain ski bar in the late afternoon sunshine of the Alps, exhausted in body, elated in spirit, vin chaud in hand, swapping tales of heroism and defeat and feeling that alcoholic warmth find its way to those tired thighs, aching calves and stiffening biceps and giving them all a congratulatory hug.
For me, such moments are what skiing is all about, moments of pure happiness and comradeship where life just cannot get any better. My favourite place to savour them is at Le Rond-Point, a ski-in, ski-out bar just above Méribel.
There, the toffee vodka flows and, on a Monday night, the punters dance in their ski-boots to the brilliant beats of live band The Noise. Mont Vallon glows pink in the west, a reminder of those magnificent bowls of fresh powder, conquered only hours earlier, which now sink into the purple gloom beneath its fiery peaks.
It is this twilight hour when my contentment crystallises, the memories of an exhilarating day, the delicious satisfaction of the moment and the anticipation of tomorrow are all right there in my overflowing cup.
The virtual skier
www.telemarktips.com, winter 2002 by Phil Jones, Hathersage
Life is hard for a time-pressed professional with the mentality of a closet ski-bum, it's doubly so for a tele-addict, for Telemark is not just a turn, it's an attitude. This year I've found powder glades at Val d'Isère, and had three magical days in the bowls and bumps of Breckenridge. I'll get four more days in Chamonix. But I've skied (virtually) every day at telemarktips.com and its 'world famous' Telemark talk forum.
It provides everything for a snow-starved telemarker: gear reviews, picture galleries, video clips, even a centrefold, but it's the talk forum that provides the buzz. Valdez Telehead reports from Alaska, Eric O from Lake Tahoe, Bob Mazarei from Verbier, and Yuggi from France. You get tales of a peerless powder day in the Engleberg, a back-country tour in British Columbia, and days on bumps at Mammoth (with video clips). You experience the traffic into Cottonwood on powder days. You get passionate disputes about gear (Hammerhead bindings are the business!) and style (don't poodle). It's like a long lunch or a beer at the end of a hard day. It's not skiing, but you can feel the burn.
Silence, snow and solace
La Plagne, France, February 2002 by Christian Robinson, London
It had been difficult. When I'd said, 'Life must go on', I immediately regretted it. I felt shallow, hopelessly inadequate. It was a couple of months after we lowered that small box into the deep, straight-cut sides of that hole on a hill, that I casually suggested we should go to the mountains. The flakes had finally fallen, silently, uncomplainingly, in the night, and I thanked them.
Away from the busy middle valleys, it was empty. It wasn't perfect, the skis gently hissed, not the noiseless floating of sub-zero powder, but there was still a flowing cowl over the tips. We glided, shifting our weight very little to follow the curves of the track, through the quiet trees, stoic with their laden boughs, through the chattering light, the thin air, everything moving past us, through us, propelled as though by an invisible hand.
He was just ahead. I drew level. He turned and looked. There was a slight smile.
Tunnel vision
Treble Cone, Wanaka, New Zealand by Rej-Paul Bhumbra, London
We reach the top of the ski-lift - not quite sure whether it's snowing hard or this one has gone all the way to heaven. I immediately take off the snow-baked glasses, and squint, not from sunlight but from snow stinging on my cornea, looking for a signpost directing our party of four to the approach of the descending run.
I look behind me, and we set off down the connecting passage. I follow, and with five yards' visibility, I begin to feel like the speck that starts the snowball. The white snowstorm surrounds me like a padded cell, firing sharp needles into my cheeks. From the wind and disorientation it's difficult to tell if I'm actually skiing forwards.
Rather than skiing with the assistance of gravity, I feel more like a sailing boat, with both wind and particulate propulsion. I am in a combined snow and wind tunnel. I can see no one. I stop. Raising my gloved hand to eye level it's unclear where it's connected to me. The noise of the wind is omnipresent. Although I know there are people around me, detectable by both rationality and hope, we are all ants in an avalanche. Reunited at its whim when it decides to pass.
Going for broke
Emergency room, Breckenridge, Colorado, March 2001/March 2002 by Tara Thompson, Cheltenham
Time: 11.30am, last Friday of spring break.
Location: Emergency room, Breckenridge, Colorado.
Atmosphere: Something akin to Dante's Inferno.
As I wait for the verdict on my mangled knee I can hear the guy in the next cubicle arguing with his doctor: 'Not ski? Are you mad? Just put it back in its socket and give me a big brace, something that makes me look like the Terminator!'
As my X-rays materialise, a woman with two broken wrists is carried down the aisle screaming. A voice tells me that I've fractured my tibia and snapped a ligament, but I'm distracted by yet another unconscious figure being stretchered past. By the time I'm discharged, strapped, braced and relieved of several hundred dollars, the ward is full, the noise is deafening and there's blood everywhere. Why do we do it?
Cut to same date, one year on. Standing at the top of the run that prematurely ended my holiday last year I ask myself the same question. Thirty seconds later, as the wind screams past me, I have my answer. We don't do it in spite of the danger; we do it because of it. 'Feel the fear and do it anyway!'
A touch of the white stuff
Val d'Isère, France, January 2002 by Judi Curtin, Limerick
Meet Captain Sensible. The most cautious skier in the French Alps, safest pair of skis in the western world. Grey grannies and shrill toddlers whizz past her with ease. Divorce is threatened on a daily basis. Ski guides weep bitter tears of frustration, but the Captain doesn't care. She raises her game for no one.
It was a beautiful day in January. The sun beat down on the fresh, clean snow. A heli-skier sailed in the azure sky above us. The Captain looked up. She momentarily lost concentration. There was a slight wobble and she almost recovered. Not quite, though. Fourteen witnesses saw the fall. Captain Sensible's left mitten briefly skimmed the snow before the legendary control was regained.
The tour company awarded her 'Wipe-out of the Week'. Not for the spectacular nature of the fall. Spectacular it wasn't. Nevertheless, this was no everyday occurrence. Nor, indeed, an every-year one. After lengthy discussion and deep reflection, it was agreed that no part of Captain Sensible, except for her skis, had touched the white stuff since her first day on the slopes in the spring of 1986. A truly glorious moment.
Zero gravity
Arinsal, Andorra, March 2002 by Hubeena Nadeem, London
'Point your skis down slope and let gravity take its course,' sings the instructor into the mollified stillness of the Pyrenean mountain slope. Gracefully, he demonstrates, gliding across the menacing layer of crystallised morning snow as he is scooped into the wisps of icy cloud below.
'Follow me down,' bellows the cloud.
I breathe in the crisp air of Arinsal. Andorra, the province perched between Spain and France, stands proud as a good beginners' resort, but the morning snow is formidable and my bravado has, like snow on the lower slopes, turned to mush. Tinkering gingerly with my ski poles I lean over to my skiing accomplice and say: 'I think he means you.'
Like a woman waving her hanky at the train taking her husband to war, I whisper: 'Good luck.'
My cursing ski mate sets off down the crispy slope, meandering perfectly until disappearing into thickening cloud.
'Just follow the pylons,' bellows Steve.
I let my skis slide, they pick up momentum, but reach an abrupt stop on orange padding around a pylon.
'I followed the pylons,' I say, but they're too busy laughing to hear.
Perfect pit-stop puts the world to rights
Les Arcs, France, February 2002 by Richard Corrigan, Brighton
Emerging from the Chalet Himalaya in Peisey-Nancroix, we were greeted by an overnight sensation: about two feet of fresh snow, with an ominous look in the low-hanging clouds.
Flat light can take about three years off that stylish descent, so the group left fearing a return to the snow-plough and toilet-position. Such doubts soon proved unfounded. An hour and a half of sweeping down the tree-lined Aigle and L'Ours reds of Vallandry restored our joie de vivre, the scent of the pine trees hanging in the air.
Refuelling in Chez Mimi's (a charming example of both alpine decor and conviviality) guaranteed high spirits, and before heading off we booked a table for lunch at La Ferme - a renowned eaterie at the end of the lift system. After all, behind every good skier is a quality pit-stop.
The expedition was hampered by wrong turns, wipe-outs and whingeing. Reaching the restaurant was nothing short of miraculous but this buzz was immediately heightened by what lay inside. The place was in full swing - singing, dancing, live music. Food to die for, all washed down by a couple of life-saving glasses of vin chaud . Magical.
What a carve-up
Les Menuires, France, March 2002 by Hilary Alder, Woking
Remember me? That crazed-faced middle-aged woman who hurtled across the red run like an electric hare on supercharge?
Yes, of course I was dangerous. Do you think I chose to ski bent double, legs three feet apart, wailing pathetically, 'Lean out, turn, turn, oh, please turn!'
I held the record for the number of traverses across the slope, somehow never managing to descend more than six inches at a time.
Until, that is, this year in Les Menuires. Persuaded at last to try carvers, I hired a pair of Rossignol Cobras. The effect was immediate and dramatic. The skis were almost psychic. I only had to think 'turn' and they obeyed. What's more, they relished the thought of hard-packed snow and moguls. I astonished everyone with tight, controlled turns, edges cutting deep into the ice.
I became a control freak. I skied in slow motion, searched out the difficult snow, bobbed down icy slopes like a well-oiled machine. I even had time to watch other skiers whoosh past me, hanging on for grim death, arms and neck outstretched and jackets flapping, praying for a soft landing.
So away with the conventional. For me, there's no contest - I'll carry on carving!
A dude for all of two seconds
Avoriaz, France, February 2002 by Jim Park, Edinburgh
Being an over-40 snowboarder has certain 'issues' attached. The 'mature boarder' is viewed by younger boarders as the Alpine equivalent of their uncle getting down on the disco floor at a family wedding, while skiers observe this species with a studied disdain... a look a father might give his 17-year-old son who is cavorting about the street on a Spacehopper.
But this year in Avoriaz I struck back for the 'grey' boarding fraternity and became an honorary dude! Hurtling at great speed down the piste, I noticed a small gathering of seriously trendy, youthful boarders 'chilling out' at the side of the piste, while observing passing traffic.
Subconsciously deciding to go faster and showcase my, ahem, technique, I caught a front edge and somersaulted through the air. What happened next defied all laws of physics (or as they had previously applied to me). To my total disbelief, I landed the board slightly awkwardly but regained my balance, and continued onwards, acknowledging the smattering of applause from my audience.
The shouts of 'Hey, gnarly, dude!' still echo in my mind.
