Le Franco Phoney

Cross-country skiing. What a dumb thing to do when there are chairlifts that take you to the top of a hill so you can enjoy the slide down. And that’s why it’s taken me until this year to try it — a week before the lift system opened in La Clusaz. Had the lifts been open, I would have been on them, and a friend and I were so desperate to go skiing, we thought we’d try this ski de fond thing out. To give the sport a fair review, let’s pretend that downhill skiing doesn’t exist.

Pictured is the reason why downhill skiers get laughed at when trying to cross-country ski. First of all, riding ‘switch’ (backwards) isn’t really possible thanks to the scales on the bottoms of the skis: my friend pictured is actually standing still, with his best switch pose (along with another pose later for ‘off-piste’ which really doesn’t work with skis as thin as slices of bread). Without trying, we both managed to slip backwards on the up slopes so we’ve blown that ‘impossible’ theory out of the water. Also pictured are typical items of downhill skiwear: waterproof, baggy skipants and thick snowboarding mittens. Cross-country skiers sport lycra leggings, thin gloves and bum bags. We did well to leave our jackets at home at least, and to wear sunglasses instead of goggles. Alas, our loud skipants ensured that we didn’t fit in and I could almost hear the aged French men who lapped us cackling to themselves about our appearance and lack of ability.

We chose the easy piste at the top of Les Confins (La Clusaz) to start with, which involved uphill and downhill segments, and although the uphill parts challenged my respiration, the downhill slopes were the hardest. On normal skis, I would have thought them almost flat. On these french fries, the slopes were like massive cliffs. I survived them thanks to a technique as wrong as my outfit: I used my poles to slow me down by poking them in the snow in front of me. My arms ached for three days after all that jolting, but the views and the decent exercise made up for it. Meanwhile, the old French guys lapped us for a second time.

After our first lap (and as the old French guys went past us for a third time), we agreed to stop, in case it got dark before we did another lap. We had all afternoon, but we pretended it was later than it was. We had the photos to prove we’d tried it so we left. The single lap was enjoyable from an exercise perspective, and I’d consider trying it again.

Now, let’s return to the world where downhill skiing does exist. Give me downhill or telemark skis over these weird uncooked spaghetti skis any day! They have no edges and the bindings are fiddly. Even the pros look like they might wobble and fall over at any point. I’ll leave it to them to look unstable while I take my fat skis off-piste at the top of the chairlift.

One of the most noticeable and amusing things about living in the French Alps is how quickly conversation turns to snow when winter approaches. Months before the resort is due to open, people start predicting what sort of season it will be based on everything from long-term weather forecasts to how abundant the berries are on the trees in the mountains. I’m as guilty as the next person.

This year got off to a slow start with a very warm and dry autumn, causing the annual ski test at Le Grand Bornand, held before the official opening of the resort, to be cancelled. Nobody could talk about much else apart from when the snow was due to fall.

Finally, about ten days ago, the snow fell. Conversation went from ‘when’ to ‘how much’ and ‘how low’, with rain washing away the first dump of fresh snow on the lower pistes. Resorts all over the Alps opened on the weekend with eager skiers lining up. I was one of them, queuing at the La Balme area of La Clusaz, and at first tempted to stay on the piste to avoid the rocks hiding under what we all suspected to be the usual early-season flimsy layer of powder off-piste. All that changed yesterday when I hit some rock gardens on the piste. Even at an altitude of 2,600 metres, the rocks were poking through. Nicely hidden behind the steepness of the slope and on a narrow part of the piste, I heard my new skis crunch over the rocks like a train chugging along a track. I ventured off-piste instead. Result! Just one rock obscured my fresh tracks.

What a dire start the season eh? No, not really. The resort isn’t even due to open until 17th December! I’m happy that the snow is back (and indeed it’s dumping down right now, although rain is expected later in the week), but I wonder if the early opening was perhaps more for marketing or pressure to open prematurely. The pistes are patchy, and worryingly, the barrier at the top of La Balme that prevents people from sliding over the edge to their death has not been fully raised yet, leaving just the lower orange netting to waist height only. Falling over it would not be difficult. Pictured is how it normally looks. Those big zig-zag ropes attaching to the higher horizontal black rope to keep everything taut are not yet there and the orange netting is kind of hangy.

Anyway, enough about health and safety: I need to get back to talking about snow with my friends.

I talked about the art of the haggle at French garage/car boot sales (called a vide grenier ) in the past. Haggling doesn’t come naturally to me, but last weekend at the St Jean de Sixt vide grenier, I found myself haggling with the big guns.
Pictured is a ski binding. A ski technician friend spotted a pair of skis with these bindings on them, and said that the bindings alone were worth more than the €30 price tag on the skis. Since I needed a pair of bindings for some new skis, he suggested they’d be a cheap alternative to brand new bindings since the technology hasn’t changed much in recent years. I could trash the skis at that price. While we were standing there, a man asked the seller if he would reduce the price of a neighbouring pair of skis. The seller said no and the man turned to walk away. The seller changed his mind and asked for €25. The man offered €20 and after scoffing from both parties, the seller accepted, mumbling about it under his breath.

I figured I could also get this pair for €20, so I picked them up. The seller, aware that my friend and I had seen everything, promptly wrote out a sticker for €50 and slapped it on the skis I was holding, mumbling some more. I protested and said I’d pay €20. He was a big man – both in height and girth, and had a scary look on his weathered face. He snatched the skis from my and slammed them back against the wall they had been leaning on, saying I could have them for €30 and no less. Had I been by myself, I would have been so afraid of this scary man towering over me that I would have scampered away. Instead, I scoffed like a French man and said no because he had just sold the previous pair for €20. He scoffed back, so I scoffed some more, shrugged and turned to walk away. He picked the skis up and thrust them towards me, agreeing on €20. I said thanks and he didn’t reply. I handed him a twenty and he sarcastically said I may as well have it back since the skis were practically free, then ignored my friend who bothered to say goodbye. I didn’t even try. Upon closer inspection of the skis, they’re in almost new condition, with great edges, bases and top sheets. Bargain!

So, one angry French man later, I have a working pair of bindings and a decent pair of skis too. It was worth almost weeing myself after all.

Yesterday was a really beautiful day for Le Bélier marathon here in La Clusaz. Participants who climbed the five peaks of the resort either walking from 7.30am or running from 9am were grateful for the cooler morning temperatures after a few weeks of hot weather, but the sun drilled down, making the finish line a warm place to be before midday.  I noted last year that skis are always somehow in the picture no matter what time of year it is, and this year was no exception. Although there was no cow bell attached this time, this girl was holding a pair of alpine skis, presumably waiting for her mates to finish the race. Having seen one French girl  complete the walking race looking like she’d just walked out of a fashion magazine, I wondered if she too had walked the race with the skis over her shoulder. After the other local offerings this month, including the stuffed hog on wheels, donkey ‘rides’ and a cow van, nothing would surprise me.

Each year, La Clusaz holds a show to illustrate the history of skiing. This involves a torchlit descent by the local ski instructors who mingle with traditionally-dressed skiers to show how skis have changed over time. Free hot chocolate keeps the spectators warm and happy. Pictured above is some of the action, including a woman skiing in a long dress with one long pole to help her balance, and four ski instructors attached to one long ski (the two at the back fell off on the first attempt skiing downhill, much to the crowd’s excitement), and an early version of piste security, who pulled an ‘injured’ skier into their sledge without removing his skis — delighting the crowd once more.

Before the action really began, the dancers bounced around to three songs, then a fire fighters’ old water pump on a sledge was dragged into the lights. I wonder if it’s the same one that they use each Bastille Day in summer with the sledge bit removed.

After the dancing, the firefighters squirting cold water on the cold crowd trying to stay warm (who didn’t seem to mind), and the torchlit descent, the skiers and instructors did their things on different skis to show the progression of the sport from wooden planks to telemarking through to snowboarding and parabolic skis. Three local kids did some cool jumps off a big kicker and the ski instructors did some (mostly) less cool ones after. The fireworks signalled the end of the display.

I love watching stuff like this — local, historic, interesting and entertaining. And amazingly, all totally free.

Yes, there’s a brand of ski called Heidi Ski and they come from Switzerland. I tried some out at last weekend’s ski test held in Le Grand Bornand just up the road and I was really impressed. Despite the off-piste model being only 80mm across the centre, these babies floated nicely and with such a narrow waist, turned off piste like no other pair of ski I tried all day. I should point out, however, that I’d never really skied off-piste before – that’s what I’ve used my snowboard for. This year was going to be the year, and Heidi Ski were looking like my ski of choice. Aren’t the graphics lovely too? You don’t want to buy a pair of skis with horrible graphics, do you. I remember once asking a snowboard instructor friend what my next snowboard should be and his reply was: “The one with the nicest graphics,” so I’m pretty sure it’s not just me that looks at the graphics as well as the performance of the ski.

Other favourites were the Dynastar Legend Sultan 80s for on the piste (I’m pleased about this, as I’ve bought a pair to use for telemarking which I’m still learning how to do), Movement Black Rose for both on-piste and off-piste (and lovely sparkly-in-sun purpleness), and the Salomon S7s fo, r off-piste (although sadly I’m not that good off-piste yet to use them the way they deserve), but I came home and Googled Heidi Ski. I wanted a pair of Heidi Skis…until I saw the price. There’s no way I can afford those beauties no matter how lovely they were, and so the hunt for a new pair of skis continues.

Apologies if this post sounded a bit “me me me”: the beautiful snow of the French Alps is what motivated me to live in France in the first place. I’m passionate about the snow and winter sports, so sometimes I can’t help myself but write about it all. Back to French observations next time.

Le Bélier (the name of a local goat-like sheep whose head forms the logo for La Clusaz) is a 27km course around the five peaks of La Clusaz (click here for the map if you want to see the route), which was held today. Participants can run or walk, and the goodies on offer on the way around differ for both. Walkers are offered local sausages and Reblochon cheese while the ‘serious’ runners get water and energy drinks. Walkers can choose to do just half the course (called “L’Agneau”, which means “lamb”), and many of my brave friends did one or the other today (well done to Dave, Alex, James, Paul, Jess, Richard, Samantha, Janelle, Steve, Max, Josh, Elliot and anyone else I’ve missed), with wobbly legs, a torn muscle and bloody toes just some of the outcomes from their efforts. Their reward, apart from the achievement itself, is a free massage and a meal involving more local sausage and some chocolate on bread, amongst other things.

I watched those doing the full Bélier course cross the finish line, and noticed this man who had an innovative take on the cow bell that’s so often heard at ski races in Europe and around the world. He’s stuck a cow bell on an old ski. If you’ve ever held a cow bell, you know how heavy cow bells are. Jingling them takes a fair amount of effort — and space. Carrying them to an event is dedication in itself! This man has all the answers: he can sling the ski over his shoulder while walking to his destination, then let the ski take the weight of the bell and simply wobble the ski to make the bell jingle. Congratulations again to everyone who took part in Le Bélier/L’Agneau today, but most of all, congratulations to this guy for coming up with such a great idea.

Following on from my last post about fashion, this one is about kids. I’m not a parent, but I was a kid on the piste, and I remember my parents wanted me to look cute, but more importantly, identifiable from a distance. It’s perhaps for this reason that very few kids are ever dressed in black. I had yellow plastic pants (it was before Gore-tex existed) and a red woolly hat with a massive pompom on top. It matched my red jacket. My mum could identify me as I cried the whole way down the nursery slope, and my dad could pick up my hat from the snow after each and every fall.

Imagine if there were half a dozen kids in yellow pants, a red jacket and a red hat. My dad would have been retrieving hats all over the place, and my mum would have probably been hassling another mum about hugging a kid she thought was me. Confusing! And that’s what it’s been like this year in the French Alps. It seems that loads of parents have opted for a kids’ one-piece in red, orange and white. Although I’ve seen the same outfit in the darker colour scheme of navy blue, I guess most parents have decided that they want to see where their kids are, and so, red is better. Below is a photo I took while eating a crepe the other day. There was actually another kid in the same outfit sitting in the creperie with me, but I couldn’t get him in shot. That’s four kids in the same outfit, and more kept rolling through as I later sipped on a hot chocolate.

So, what fashion advice am I offering? I’m not actually sure. I would say to parents to think twice before buying this particular outfit, but then, it’s not always a bad thing: last week in Avoriaz, I found a crying child wearing this same outfit. I asked him if he was lost in French, but he answered in another language. Luckily, one of my friends speaks Dutch and was able to find out that the kid had been separated from his mum and brother. He took him to the chairlift operator who put the word out. When a woman and another kid in the same outfit walked past a few minutes later, my friend recognised the outfit immediately and sure enough, that was the lost kid’s brother and mum. Family reunited thanks to the ski suit.

Compared with the average French woman, I’m a fashion disaster. I do not, at least, get out on the street in twenty-year-old clothes that are faded and out-dated. Nor do I get on the piste in ski gear from the eighties, but plenty of others do. I know, I know: ski clothing is expensive, and if you go once a year, you can’t justify buying new gear every year. But maybe even every ten years would do. I’ve snapped lots of bad outfits, but I’ve chosen these three as examples (unfortunately similar in colours, but different in other ways) of how not to style yourself on the piste.

One-Piece Number 1

This couple still use skis from the late eighties/early nineties. At least they match the outfits. The outfits don’t look like any others around them, but they haven’t seemed to notice. What really gives them away, apart from the colour distribution, is the big pocket in the front of her outfit and the giant triangle pointing down on his. Advances in both ski technology and waterproof material (Gore-tex, anyone?) mean that this couple are doing themselves a bit of a disservice: shaped skis that have been around since about 1999 really are much easier to use, and well-worn twenty-year-old fabric is never going to have the warmth or protection of today’s material. And if anyone wants to defend their choice of ski by saying it’s ‘real skiing’, then they should probably be on old wooden skis with telemark bindings. Ski technology moved on with fashion.

If you must wear a one-piece please pull the trouser legs down over your boots. This will keep your buckles and boots dry and protected, stopping the buckles from icing up on cold days (they’re difficult to adjust like that), and saving your feet from getting wet from that ice melting and seeping through the shell.

One-Piece Number 2

Here are more unprotected boots, but this time at least the one-piece wearer has tried to pull the trouser legs over the boots. Many older one-pieces (like this faded one) suffer from this problem and I really don’t know why. The leg tightness unfortunately extends to other parts of the outfit, and the owner, a lady would you believe (head cut off to be kind), has done that common eighties thing of attaching a bum bag to store whatever it is she needs to take with her for the day. Bum bags were indeed all the rage in the eighties! I had two: a pastel purple one, and one made of black leather. When they went out of fashion, I took them to the charity shop. What makes an every-day fashion accessory that lost popularity by the nineties timeless if worn with a ski outfit? NOTHING. I’d like to ask this woman if she wears it down the street, perhaps in summer when she has no pockets available (much like the result of this figure-hugging one-piece), and if not, why not. What’s the difference?

One-Piece Number 3

This one is actually a man (heads again cut off on purpose, and thanks to my friend Tom for the photo) who isn’t even on the piste. In fact, he’s in St Jean de Sixt, which really is a village down the road from Le Grand Bornand and La Clusaz ski resorts. So why is he wearing a rather scary one-piece? Maybe he went skiing earlier, but what I don’t understand is that if he’s bothered to leave the resort and change his shoes, why not change out of his one piece at the same time, especially when he’s considering eating in a restaurant. I’ve seen this often recently: people will be shopping in La Clusaz in their ski outfit and with a dog on a lead, but no sign of ski equipment. Maybe they’re worried they’ll fall?

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve been all these people: I still have my 193cm straight skis in my shed, and I owned an O’Neil one-piece back in the nineties because I’d heard that one-pieces keep you extra warm, and, given Australia’s often wet snow conditions, I saw the value in that. Mine was a fluorescent mix of colours. I wore it once. It was badly designed (it didn’t keep me warm because the zip down the front wasn’t protected, leaving me with a wet line down my front); going to the toilet was very awkward; I was mistaken as a man by my own boyfriend at the time, and when I looked around even back then, I noticed that nobody else was wearing anything remotely similar. I’m not saying I want to conform, but at the same time, I don’t get around in Elizabethan dresses or Cindy Lauper hairstyles.

So, my advice, if you believe an Australian for fashion advice, is to throw away the one-piece and either buy a new one-piece if you must, or better still, settle on a jacket and pants. And if you’re still using your old straight skis, I dare you to hire some shaped skis just for a day and not love them.

Still to come: kid fashion, over-blinging it, and possibly something about novelty hats.

Part of ski resort Le Grand Bornand opened last weekend and included a free ski test area, where you could choose any ski from scores of manufacturers and see how they go on, and off, the piste. I’m up with the lingo: it’s all about rocker systems, reverse camber and wide waists this year. But how on earth do I explain to the ski rep that I want to try a combo of any of those things? The result:

April (in slow French): “What’s that ski?”

Ski rep: “C’est blah de blah de blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. D’accord?”

April: “Okay.”

This resulted in me trying out K2 Misdemeanors even though I used to own their brother, the Public Enemy ski. What a waste of time: I know exactly what it’s like to ski on and it was a pointless test. But I took them out anyway as I was too embarrassed to explain in slow French that I hadn’t understood what he said and that I’d changed my mind.

Another instance was the Rossignol S7 ski. Now, two friends of mine have just got these skis and I was keen to try them out. Sadly, I learnt through my French friend who also wanted to try them out, Rossignol staff were very unhappy that three snowboards had come back within the first few hours totally wrecked from the rocky off-piste which has yet to form a decent snow base, and they had decided to take all off-piste skis away from the public too. So, no chance of trying the S7 I though. But then the Rossignol rep pointed to a pair of Roxy skis (picture) and said they were basically the same. Here we go again:

April (in slow French): “I’d like to try the …ummmm… Roxy ski.”

Ski rep (in fast French): “They’re all Roxy skis…”

April’s French friend:  “The Mumbo Jumbos.”

Saved by my French friend! Apparently, the Rossignol guy had actually named the ski, but my French is still so lacking that I didn’t catch the completely non-French-sounding “mumbo jumbo” in his sentence.

No worries. I have some great skis to try out and I’ll regain the confidence I just lost with my French language skills by ripping these babies up on the hill. Alternatively, they could feel like planks of concrete stuck to my feet that do float off-piste (don’t tell the Roxy rep I took them off piste – I promised I wouldn’t), but are more like two tethered elephants on piste. The Roxy ski rep asked me what I thought of them, and I bet she regretted that. She had to patiently listen to some idiot talking about “more muscle I need” and “not good on piste” without any further explanation as to why. Had she asked me in English, I could have told her about the elephants.