Day 51 - An Experimental Day

I won't bore you with geeky details but I decided to try modifying (bodging) some old kit so I could climb on my telemark skis. I also wanted to mount a camera on the tail of one of my skis to see what I could capture. So.....

The weather played a blinder, gale force winds closed all but one of the ski lifts. With this news my mates decided to stay at home, not me though. I took the the one and only lift, then fitted my modified climbing skins and started climbing. They worked a treat. I only saw one other skier, we had the whole area to ourselves. The safety patrollers seemed to be enjoying the peace and quiet too and were either racing around on their snowmobiles or chatting in their huts.

When I got to the top station I hid from the wind, had a sandwich, removed the climbing skins and got ready for the decent. The next experiment was with a Go Pro camera mounted on the ski using a self adhesive bracket supplied with the camera. I set it to take a still image every 2 seconds, set the angle and hoped for the best. The beauty of today was that if it fell off there was no one to ski over it, I could just go back and pick it up. But it stayed on!

So this is a self portrait with Mt Blanc on the right of the frame and I hope a clear demo of the telemark turn. I love this part of the decent through this little hamlet, it must be amazing to stay up here on the mountain in one of those chalets.

Every day skiing is a good day, even in gale force winds.