SAUVE QUI PEUT!


AASC Club Skiing trip to Three Valleys - Feb '97


This is the cry of the A-Team when we went extreme! The club has had extreme skiers for years - idiots who get board with piste skiing and instead climb up mountains and ski off them. The A-Team is the advanced ski team class and we'd always considered ski mountaineering as the preserve of the, well, foolish.However, day 5 of the club ski trip saw a terrific dump of snow. It had been weeks since any fresh snow had fallen and our instructors blood was up! It was up the lift system to the highest point and then climb.

Climbing up steep snow carrying skis and poles is recommended for anyone seeking aerobic exercise, or was, just breathing quickly through fear? Actually fear hadn't made its appearance yet as I reckoned we could ski down the slope. We'd charged up without too much trouble and it was only a couple of hundred feet down to the piste. However, I then remembered this was a ridge, and ridges have two sides. The view from the top was spectacular. The whole Mottaret valley spread out two thousand feet beneath us with little ants making their way slowly along the pistes far below. And the way down there? Between two outcrops of rock down what looked like a vertical drop covered in two feet of virgin snow.

Gary Raing had the somewhat dubious honour of going first and managed to get a couple of turns in quite nicely. After that, of course, the snow was all chopped up and most of us had to side slip 10 or 15 feet before we could do out jump turns. I was looking for hand holes and a proper belay point when I realised it was my go next. Everyone else was in various stages of disarray (except Gary who'd descended several hundred yards without falling) but it looked a lot worse than it was. The joy of flicking your heels and falling, in control, through space until you land in soft fluffy stuff has to be experienced to be understood. And looking up from the button to see your ski trails wending down from a craggy ridge, well.....

Sixty six of us made it to Les Menuires in the high French Alps this February, two people dropping out at the last minute due to 'flu (gutted!). Les Menuires itself is not the prettiest of places, apparently, but I didn't notice as I was in the mountains all day and only really saw it after dark. The ski area is vast - the biggest in the world in fact. Usually you get to know a resort and don't need a piste map after day 3 but I had to keep mine with me until day 6. (That wasn't due to old age memory loss!! - Ed). There was everything for everybody from beginner to extreme nutter. We even had a dump of snow on day 5, providing perfect powder for the last day. My only complaint is the lack of street fighting on the slopes (sorry did you mean street lighting? - Ed) so you can ski after dark ( don't laugh - they do it in America inevitably!)

The hotel was, I suppose, a little modest but when people realised it was an outdoor activities holiday and not some namby pamby plush Trust House Forte management training course type place ( and after we'd had our first meal) everyone mucked in. At the end of the week the hotel got praise all round. More important than anything else you could ski from the door in the morning and back in the afternoon, no ski bus to wait for not even a walk to the nearest lift.

Needless to say there was plenty going on in the evenings. My team wuz robbed in the quiz, losing by just one point not that anyone was at all competitive - but I bet they cheated. Broomballing (ice hockey without skates) was pretty competitive too. What made it quite amusing as there is no control over anything much at all when you're on an ice rink in trainers. My team were robbed at that too - the video playback clearly shows their goal was after the final whistle. For the first time we had a party out on skidoos one evening. They are motorised sledges - a bit like motorbikes with tracks. Bum boarding (cheaper but more dangerous) made its appearance and many of the party who are younger than me ( and Dave Owens who isn't) made a couple of visits to the local bars and clubs. By tradition the last night is fancy dress, this years theme being 'P' hence pirates, policewoman, prostitutes (3), prisoners (4), a piste map, protester, punks (3), penguins (3), pied piper, etc, etc. a good time was had by all and some of us weren't even drunk.


The other tradition is the awarding of prizes, which went like this :-

Mr Poseur - Jeff Fereiro for spending all week looking amazingly like Ghandi (or Ben Kingsley)


Mrs Poseur - Shaungh Harvey-Kelly (her real name) for having the stickiest nipples (you had to be there).


Chukka Noakes Memorial - Richard Hothersall taken ill one day.Richard very carefully crept around the side of a restaurant so that no-one could see him depositing his breakfast on the piste. Had he been looking up instead of down, he'd have noticed the chair passing overhead.


Diplomatic Relations - Rob Morling. Rob had a little bump with a Dutchman who (everyone thought wrongly) claimed Rob had damaged his bindings. To placate the man, Rob got into the same bubble lift and promised to repair the bindings at the top. How ever, Rob got out at the middle station leaving the Dutchman waving his fist as the bubble whisked him away. Rob really won for novelty : The foreigner he annoyed wasn't French. (What are Dutch people doing in a hilly place anyway?)


Best Fancy Dress - Kevin Tozer. He was Popeye. Julie Higgins got a nomination for coming in black leather skin tight trousers "Not much effort, but what a result".


Steve Venton Award - Given this year to Steve Venton for being....himself. The best thing is he still doesn't understand why he was given the award.


Lost in France - Nominees : Yvonne and Shaunagh took a wrong turn late one afternoon and had to hitch their way back from the next village with a lorry driver. Rumour had it they enjoyed it so much they tried to do it again the next day, but lost their way and arrived in our village by mistake.

Winner : Rob Morling for keeping up the tradition of not being able to find his way back to his own room one night.


Unluckiest Person of the Week - Richard Hothersall. On the morning of departure, both alarms failed, fortunately his mum rang him (at 4am). Then the taxi took him to the wrong terminal at Manchester Airport. He finally arrived 20 minutes before take off.


Four Valkyries - Yvonne, Shaunagh, Anne and Sue Kelly. Have dinner with them like I did and you'll find out why.


Crash of the Week (also longest nomination of the week). John Laidlow of 'Laidlow Gorge' for his peer Roger Daltry - inspired rock outcrop pinball. During the week the Extreme Team developed a new technique for steep descents, based on the complete disposal of all equipment on the way down. The descents are rapid, but fortunately an appropriate method of stopping has still not been found. The record for the longest such descent was set at about 300 meters by John Laidlow. Initiated by a gentle stepping out of his skis, John's descent accelerated down a slope, passing close by two on lookers who stepped back to allow his progress to go unhindered. Having covered 200 meters of hard packed 40 degree slope, John skilfully steered his way into a rocky couloir, covering a further 100 meters partly airborne, before coming to rest in front of two French first-aiders who swiftly approached John to congratulate him on his feat. (Yes, he counted them and still and two). On his way down, John broke his pride, his sunglasses, his thumb, his salopettes and also wind several times.


Most Improved Skier - Jocelyn Miller. She was rubbish at the beginning of the week but she was pretty average by the end. (Just joking - She really improved more than anyone else in the week - Well done!)


Many thanks to Bob Seymour for his help in organising the trip Bob has now retired to get married, being replaced by Carrie Nelson who hopes the same fate may be all hers (no, I really am joking now), and thank you to everyone who came along and made the trip so successful. Watch out for details of next years trip which Carrie, Adrian Rogers and I will be very pleased to take your money shortly.

Andy Stone.

(Pictures to be added Shortly........) Return to the Index page