Le Franco Phoney

As I predicted, Candide will indeed be holding an event in Tignes. It’s not actually called the Candide Invitational 2009, but it seems to be the closest thing so far. The Riderscup (yes, one word) will see two teams competing against each other: one led by Candide and the other by TJ Schiller, according to the Tignes.net website. The competition will involve an XXL half pipe and Big Air session. It’s being touted as the US against the Europeans, which seems a bit like a marketing ploy to me.

If you’re interested in going, you’d better get your skates on: it’s happening in early January.

The great thing about visiting a ski resort that one of your friends lives in is that you get to be a complete tourist without having to worry about people knowing you. Of course, this isn’t so good for the friend in the resort, but when the group consists of four girls — two of them single, you can get away with quite a lot. Our first night in Tignes started off innocently enough, patting Oscar the giant dog (just 3cm shorter than the world’s tallest dog) at the Alpaka before having a few drinks at my friend’s place. We headed back out and were told off for leaving the door open at La Grotte du Yeti before deciding it smelt too much like a toilet to stay, deciding instead to chat up the barman at the Jam Bar who put up with us until we thought we should try to get some sleep before catching first lifts in the morning.

After a full day of snowboarding the next day, you’d expect us to be somewhat subdued the following night. Two girls went back to the Jam Bar and continued to chat up the barman, and by the time the other two arrived a few hours later, the first two were beyond tipsy — one becoming very giggly while the other one spoke loudly over a pizza dinner about all sorts of odd, but entertaining, dinner topics, such as squat toilets. Before we had paid the bill, we were asked not to come back to the pizzeria, but that wasn’t even related to the drunken girls.

Add into the mix a boyfriend of one of the girls, who arrived in Tignes just in time to take us away from the pizzeria of our disgrace, and who was happy to ferry the girls around while doing handbrake turns in his van even though he only has one passenger seat, and you’ve got a party in a van right there. More like a fun-park ride than a drive to Val Claret, we eventually arrived with three girls splattered in the back of the van, giggling after their joyride. We stuck our necks into Daffy’s, but continued onto a bar that has an @ symbol in its name (which I’ve forgotten) while our bloke driver faffed around at his car for another few minutes.

It was in this particular bar that a French man came over to take our order. He didn’t work there: he just wanted to chat us up, and it worked. With our driver finally finding us seated in a corner, he explained to this guy at the bar that two of us were single and two were not, and that it was up to this guy to figure it out. He chatted up one of the non-single girls first before moving onto a single one. He told her he had not had a girlfriend for four months, yet he had told our bloke mate that his current girlfriend had cheated on him. Was this payback? Who knows. He didn’t get the opportunity despite some great efforts.

My Tignes friend wanted to check out another bar, le Couloir, so she and I ducked out for five minutes to find it and see what it was like. We didn’t make it through the door for two reasons:

1. some posh kid who had just arrived in the resort kept trying to talk to us; and,
2. a dog came and sat on my foot.

So, we eventually slipped away, with one very warm foot, and a posh kid imploring us to stay for a chat. Meanwhile, back in the bar, a guy attempted to drunkenly ballroom dance with one of the others, which proves that no matter where you go in the world, alcohol makes men believe they are Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing. They never are, but they’ll never learn.

We demanded that the DJ play some 80s music for us, then left, as you do when drunk, just a few minutes later. We did some more handbrake turns on the way back to Tignes le Lac before finally piling into my friend’s very small bedsit (around 20m² including spacious bathroom) in the early hours of the morning, ready to attack the mountain in daylight the following morning. Luckily, the subsequent snowstorm kept us in bed long enough the next morning to fully recover first.

Well, what a start to winter: La Balme here in La Clusaz opened last weekend, providing an entire area of untracked powder — and a few rocks underneath. With my snowboard relatively unscathed, I popped over to Tignes with some friends for Sunday and Monday. Despite the sunny weather on Sunday, the wind was strong, causing the fresh snow to feel like pellets of rice hitting us in the face at times. The glacier was mostly closed, again, like last time, due to high winds. The run down from the glacier was still rocky, presumably due to the high winds stealing all the snow.

Meanwhile, Monday was even worse. A friend in Val d’Isere texted me in the morning to say she was looking at a blizzard, while the rest of us chickened out of the 9.30 start we had planned. The fog and snow stayed, so we ventured out after a long breakfast and played on a free piste (thanks Tignes!) at Val Claret that was pretty much untracked until we arrived. That would be because there were only a few other suckers out there, but it was fun to try to see the kicker before actually hitting (or missing) it.

One of my friends chickened out of skiing, opting for ‘defrosting the car’ instead. This involved sitting in her car with the engine running and her feet over the heater vents on the console until she thawed out. By the time she was warm, the centimetres of snow on her windscreen had melted away. Meanwhile, just up the road from her, my handbrake-turn-loving friend had put on his snow chains and was happily pulling on his handbrake all around the ever-white roads of the resort.

So, two days of cold fingers on this visit, plus the day of boarding on the glacier in antarctic-style conditions in November, added to all my previous visits which mostly involved snow or high winds has led me to believe that Tignes actually means “bloody freezing” in French.

No, that’s not a typo, there’s a new ski ‘posse’ called Coreupt (or coreUPT — they can’t seem to decide), and Candide Thovex is in with them. The news isn’t actually that recent, but I’ve only just discovered the (very short!) video (see below), which is kind of an odd one, and since Coreupt seem to be based in Tignes, perhaps the Candide Invitational 2009 will be held there instead! Coreupt seem to be collecting a pretty good team of riders. Anyway, I heard a rumour that Coreupt equipment will be available for testing on the last weekend of November. Don’t blame me if I’m wrong — I’ll be going to Tignes that weekend anyway for another snow fix before La Clusaz’s lifts open in December.

With even more snow falling in La Clusaz, my mountain-biking buddy from a few weeks ago and I took the opportunity to visit a friend in Tignes and hit the piste for a pre-season slide.
Although the wind prevented the telepherique on the glacier from opening, all the t-bars were open, and as the only snowboarder out with four skiers, I’m currently sporting a bruised behind from the t-bar…erm…bar. In case you don’t know, skiers rest the bar at the very top of their legs where their legs meet their cheeks. Snowboarders, however, have to go up sideways and take all their weight on their inner thigh and the cheek nearby. It also works your muscles a bit more when riding a t-bar on a snowboard and after the fourth journey up, I was wishing I had skied instead. My forward leg was like jelly.

The snow was fresh and powdery, but visibility higher up was not so good. So we stayed lower down and I played on a friend’s 2006 Nidecker Diablo (pictured) which was lots of fun. It’s much softer than my Burton Custom, but it felt just as hardy when going at speed. This board didn’t flap, yet the extra softness provided great suspension over the few small bumps that I could find on the well-flattened piste. I managed to find some powder that had blown into a gully the whole way down one side of the t-bar and that’s where I noticed that the board had that sinking feeling. Just one centimetre shorter than my Custom, I expected it to float just as well. It did float, but it felt like the back end was sinking - a feeling I haven’t experienced on a board before.

We ended the day in Tignes with a hot chocolate and drove back to La Clusaz, satisfied that the first day of the 2008/09 season was a good one. Meanwhile, more snow is due to fall this week. Winter is coming!