On the last blog I said I would be going to check out Tyon and see how the park is over there. Well I haven't been yet because I've been having too much fun skiing in Verbier.

The park here now has a new gap jump into a big kicker which is pretty cool. It's got loads rails of all different shapes and sizes now too so it's pretty difficult to get bored of it.
 
I had a good day in the park a few days ago just hitting the big kicker getting some video done. I was just trying to get all my spins down from 180's up to 900's. I wasn't jumping my best but I still had fun and didn't crash too much! We then went to hit a backcountry kicker just below the park. Nick and Chris Southwell and a snowboarder called Peter Strom had built it a few days earlier and had decided to hit it up. I went down to check it out but decided it was too gnarly for me. It had about a 25 meter gap to clear and you had to drop in from miles away, air over a cat track and hit it at about 60 k's! Only Peter hit it but unfortunately didn't land any. It was one of the those jumps where the crash to land ratio is all wrong but if you did happen to land one it would be a really cool jump.

 
Having a down day today. It's snowing lightly but is generally pretty grim outside. We could do with a decent snowfall now to get us all motivated to go out shredding again. However we made the most of the sunshine yesterday and spent most of the day hiking small lines with some decent cliff drops in them.
 
Myself and Nick Southwell went up the mountain to check out some lines ready for the next snowfall. We got to the top of the Jumbo lift in Verbier which takes you up to Mont Fort. We doubled back on ourselves and decided to session a face just under the top of the lift. It's a really quick hike round and nobody goes there. I think this is because it is quite a small face and people just don't think it's worth the hike. However it's great for getting plenty of photo's and video footage. It's also great training because it has two or three nice cliffs, about twenty footers, a gap jump and a few tech bits through some rocks.
 
We were joined by Ben Hawker who came up on his lunch break. He crashed the first cliff but nailed the second bigger one which was pretty sick. The video looked great because the top sort of three inches of snow would slab off everytime we made a turn. It made it a bit difficult to ski but looked quite gnarly on the video.
 

For a final run of the day Nick and I went up Mont-Gele and decided to ski down the front side. We didn't expect it to be very good but thought we would just check a few places out for future reference. We dropped in at entrance one and cut left down a couloir lots of people had skied. It was very rocky and windblown. We found what looked like a really nice line nobody had touched but it turned out to be an inch of snow on rocks. We found another untouched couloir but couldn't see the exit. It was 3:30pm so we decided it could be a bad idea and missed it out. When we came around underneath it we were glad we hadn't gone down because there was no exit at all. Not even a cliff drop, just loads of rocks impossible to ski down. We had a few nice turns where it opens out at the bottom and we both hit up a couple of small cliffs.
 
In all it was a really good day and we made the most of the conditions. As I write the snow is starting to fall harder and I think Bruson (the small resort opposite Verbier) could be on the cards if it keeps falling like this!
 

Check out some of Andy's other blogs from Verbier:

We have had a few pretty good days here in Verbier lately

My legs are still killing me

Verbier blog Jan 28th

Suprisingly the best turns we had were over at a place called "highway"

Verbier Blog