Tignes, December 2008A tale from the big French resort as it got dumped by more snow than you could shake a stick at
I cast my mind back to a sunny afternoon on the South Pennines last Autumn. At Halifax Ski and Snowboard Centre, the finalists of the second round of 2008's Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle Series are taking their last runs. The battle is on. Jamie Nicholls has cleaned up in the Junior Men category, dropping a switch front 7 and a backside 9; Katie Ormerod, surely the youngest competitor of the day, has landed a 720; Colum Mytton has tried a double backflip; and in the Senior Men a contest is raging. Local hero Andy Nudds has one chance left to stick his front 10 and to grab first on the podium – he soars perfectly through the air and touches down gracefully but just can't hold it together, leaving the other local lad, Mat Macwhirter, the top spot and golden ticket to ride, thanks to his flawless frontside rodeo and sleazy style.
All of this seems a very, very long way from the frozen-fingered, numb-assed seat I have appropriated on the tight, steep, snow-bank that I'm now perched on, staring hopelessly into a blind chute that Will Hughes has recently dropped into, and which is now becoming engulfed in a milky white cloud.
On the 13th of December last year [2008] I was offered a hasty escape from Blighty’s dismal weather in favour of the winter landscape that is Tignes, set deep in the Haute-Tarentaise region of France and the European Alps. It was all thanks to the Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle series crew that the trip was on.
My saviours came in a varied collection of shapes, sizes and colours; from Yorkshire man Wayne Taylor (father of the no-guts, no glory Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle Series) to Endeavor snowboards and the appropriately hairy and lumberjack shirt-toting Sam Noble (he could be Canadian), who had offered as a prize to the best of the un(board)sponsored riders a pre-Christmas outing to France and the opportunity to earn a year's sponsorship. That’s not to mention our hosts; entertainers, route-finders, party-planners and general accommodators at The Dragon Lodge in Tignes.
One rider from each stop of the series was picked by Sam Noble to come on the trip. The only requirements were some jaw-dropping skills and no current snowboard sponsors. Halifax locals 15 year-old Will Smith and 18-year-old Matt Macwhirter and 26-year-old Rhianna Nuttal, from Rossendale, collected the golden tickets. Just to throw a little mayhem into the mix, and to give the riders a bit of encouragement, Sam also enlisted his whole Endeavor squad (Mike Austin, Andy Nudds, James Phillips – who’d been working as a roadie on the Kings of Leon tour and was heading back to Les Arcs to finish off a decade of seasons!) and some mates (Irish champion Tim Russell) for good measure. Our number was verging on 10 and bordering on ridiculous as the overloaded Noble Custom Van – an iron horse of a machine – made the last pick-up in Whistable in the early hours of a very cold December morning.
As has become customary with European excursions we were driving to France, not as bad for the Southernmost members of the team, the Northerners earning themselves an extra eight hours in the fun bus. And unfortunately for them it’s not going to get any better, not if our resident geographer Matt Macwhiter is any cop anyway, afterall, as he put it, “England is moving closer to France at the same speed your fingernail grows.”
Driving is good though. For one it is technically green(-ish, just don't look out the back as you're climbing those mountain hairpins – more smog than Beijing I suspect) plus you get to meet everyone, get bored of everyone, ask incessant questions of the trip organiser like, ‘Are we there yet?’ Or get a full Encyclopaedia Britannica breakdown of French resorts and snowboarding folklore from the more educated (old) members of the group. But most importantly, it offers the chance to get amped. So much chat and shred videos leads to a lot of over-excited snowboarders.
We were really hoping to get the chance to interrogate the Tignes and L'Espace Killy. It is massive. Tignes and Val d'Isère have become household names on the winter sports circuit for good reason.
Nestled high in the rocky Haute-Tarantaise, Tignes is actually five little Alpine communes spread from Les Brévières, just below the tree line at 1550m, to Val Claret, well above it at 2100m. It forms one half of L'Espace Killy (named after the 1968 Winter Olympic gold medalist, Jean-Claude Killy) area – the other half being attributed to Val d'Isère.
Open November to May, with a little shindig on the glacier from June to October, nearly 3000km of trails, a vertical drop of almost 2000m, two big parks, loads and loads of terrain and an average 5m snowfall, all go together to make this a serious contender for any winter trip.
James Phillips was bursting with backcountry freestyle ideas. He had unfinished business on a lot of jumps in the area. Obviously the Snowflex groms wanted to hit street rails. But the outlook was not good. At best we were led to expect moderate snow, dust-on-crust, and this presented a potential problem: for if there's no snow in the village, not only do the old boys not get to shred pow, but the young bucks can't prove themselves in the streets – not by riding rails at any rate.
With thinking caps on we made a quick stop off at Tip-Top Snowboard shop in the feeder (and integral part of Le Paradiski) town of Bourg-St-Maurice (accessible by Eurostar and the Snow Train) before rushing on to The Dragon Lodge at Tignes Le Lac, where our dinner was getting cold. It was a full 24 hours after setting off and almost 1000 miles from our departure point.
A big, hearty, wine-fueled dinner involved our introduction to John Bassett (Dragon Lodge main man and avid snowboarder since 1986), Will Hughes (dab hand in the powder), Greg (dab hand with a snow shovel), Dan (Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares), and Skippy (ex London publican on couch-surfing sabbatical). Pleasantries completed, we congregated at the main table and tucked into a fresh bottle of Pernod as we poured over maps to come up with a plan for the week.
High on the agenda was some backcountry learning and a chance to practice with transceivers. Half the group had never really tested their legs on a hike or in powder, let alone contemplate the power of the snowpack and how to make decisions about heading off-piste.
Luckily, Val d'Isère local, by way of the States, Henry Schniewind of Henry's Avalanche Talks had been enlisted for the following night to give us all a re-cap/brief intro to backcountry safety and to practice locating some of the Ortovox beepers we had coming out of our ears.
Aside from that we were looking at getting stuck into the best of what Tignes had to offer. Will Hughes assured the nippers that, yes, there were some rails in town, and yes, we could go and ride them during the week, but secretly all the old riders were dreaming of powder turns and nothing else.
The eerily quiet floodlit 'fingers' across from Le Lac made a powerful impression in our snow-fueled sleep.
We awoke to the predicted dusting of snow, overcast weather and extremely high winds. Not to be disheartened we set off as a mighty pack with the Tignes locals at our head. We toured what was open in Tignes Val Claret, charging around in first day madness but restricted to the low chairs like Tichot. It was busy, apparently 2000 students were roaming the resort. We shredded whatever little pockets of snow lurked and jibbed all and every boulder and barrel. Stopping at the Val Claret concrete parking block, the Golf du Parking, the dryslope kids messed around on some little acid drops and spun off a homemade pole jam stuck in the side of a snow-laden road. But the executive decision came to cut our losses and head lower down to the trees at Les Brévière
s where Will Hughes was certain we'd find the good stuff.
Les Brévières is the lowest of the villages in the Tignes umbrella, set below Jean-Marie Pierret's 1989 fresco of Hercules and the Lac du Chevril. The Sache télélabine offers access to some easy rolling slopes with some pretty wild cliff, pillow and tree options if you know how to get out the bottom. We lapped it a few times, again revelling in a hedonistic charge that saw so many crashes, pile-ups and collisions it was a miracle we didn't lose any of the team on the first day.
We then found a half-fallen tree to slide with a super tight run-in. Mike made it the furthest over and there were some heinous, edge-catching, crashes, exemplified with Rhianna’s frontflip to 10 foot drop to, a somewhat tough, landing.
The pillows being frozen solid and the pow not up to much, we stuck to the marked runs until our legs were spent.
It gets dark and cold surprisingly quickly in the middle of winter, and by the time we realised John had lost the keys to the van we were ready to be back at the lodge, feet up, beer in hand, dinner on the table!
But when we did get rescued back to the lodge, our first task in backcountry school was transceiver training on the nearby slopes. We’d been asked by John to minimize damage to the town Mayor’s garden next door – I can only imagine John’s blood pressure as a pack of teenagers start running loose across the most important man in Tignes’ front lawn, digging holes in the snow and arseing about!
But that’s not to say we didn’t take the task seriously. Everyone had learned from the experience and Rhianna summed up a lot of riders’ attitudes to the backcountry where they tend to avoid riding in it due to fear caused by ignorance. “Not knowing scares me,” she admitted, unlike the nonchalant, out-of-breath boys. “I was just surprised how much walking around in the snow takes it out of you.”
The Ortovox S1 was unanimously agreed as the easiest of our sample transceivers to use (although I found the Patroller very good).
It had grown dark as we searched… and it had started snowing.
Finally inside, feet up with beer in hand, we settled down in the living room full of the smells of wood smoke to a basic backcountry safety talk from Henry Schniwind.
The most pertinent question he raised, and one that sticks in my head, was: “What will happen to other people if you set off an avalanche.”
Something else I’d not thought about before was how to describe my location on a mountain should I need to call for any kind of rescue. My memory of lift names and pistes is awful at best so I couldn’t imagine having to give a backcountry location without a GPS or something similar.
As we listened to Henry’s talk something magical happened. No one really noticed at the time, but on a quick trip down to my room to grab a battery, I noticed there was about 30cm of fresh snow filling in all the icy crud from the afternoon. On a second trip outside, only a few hours later, even my footsteps from earlier were filled in.
It was almost as if the collective energy of being awe-struck by some of the epic conditions in Henry’s talk had conspired to send a special request to the clouds, which duly dumped their load directly on Tignes.
We awoke to a sight I have often heard about, often dreamt of, and listened with envy as someone else recounts the tale, but never directly experienced myself: it had dumped.
We’re talking a serious unleashing of nature’s bowels. As I opened the door to the garden the snow had grown from foot high to chest high and Will Hughes was in the thick of it hastily clearing the steps so we could get up to breakfast.
No one could believe their eyes. An initial panic to get out there in the snow soon subsided as we realised the entire resort was closed, in fact the conditions were so treacherous even the road between Tignes Le Lac and Val Claret was out of operation, there were unsubstantiated rumours of Les Brévières being evacuated, of helping push an ambulance up the uncleared roads (apparently some squabbles between the road clearers and the powers that be), and an official measurement of actual snow-fall came from Sam Noble,
“About a Will’s worth.” He was referring of course to the complete disappearance of our youngest member Will Smith, when he jumped from the balcony into the powder.
Once again the Dragon Lodge came to our rescue and instead of sitting around playing Xbox or looking for street rails buried deep beneath the snow we exploited the bountiful garden to build a jump.
Tim Russell took the glory with a first hit double-frontflip to complete disappearance somewhere under the snow! He did emerge, just.
The kicker consumed us that day and some of the other guests from the Lodge joined in, busting out some style as Andy, Mike, Matt and Will got serious.
In the distance we were treated to the mite of the freshly fallen snow when a slide took off high above Val Claret, thundered down the slope, and only just came to a rest before the Parking du Golf we’d been playing at the day before. It left the whole area covered in a warning dusting of fine powder.
The kicker session was rounded off with a pre-dinner acid drop from the balcony. All the more experienced riders goaded Will and Matt on until, preceeded by Mike, they made the leap and absolutely loved it!
James had other ideas though. Rather than jumping off the first floor balcony he climbed right to the top of the building and dropped the full 10m to fairly chopped up powder landing in the dark, beastly.
Unphased by his heroic feats Mike and I popped out for one last shred in the garden where we created an odd looking metal box-to-drainpipe, that was loosely placed on an old shopping trolley, jib. It went pretty well until mid-frontboard the drainpipe exploded!
Still it led us on to this interesting fact over dinner, apparently bananas have now been re-produced so much that they have lost the ability to reproduce themselves. Lib tech I fear will be quaking in their boots!
The rest of the week we found ourselves in the lucky position of exploiting the heavy, and unexpected snowfall. Amazingly on a quick excursion to Les Arcs just down the road (read about it next month) they’d only received about 20% the precipitation that Tignes had, highlighting the incredibly specific nature of mountain weather systems.
Will, Matt, Andy and Mike did get their rail fix. We went to some well-trodden features in the centre of Tignes and ground our way through the night on a concrete ledge in town. This was followed by a homemade quarterpipe right outside the supermarket. We were able to cut it right into the side of one of the new huge snowdrifts and Tim’s previous shaping experience from SPC, IPP and even the Red Bull Rail Storm in London really paid off. And the riders battled on despite heckling from rowdy Brits, the customary “Do a backflip” being supplemented with the equally inspiring, “You’re shit!”.
Mike, who’d eyed up a nice ride-off urban drop at the Golf du Parking, braced his knees for some flat landings – but it never wiped the smile from his face, and that’s what we like to see.
The real treat for the week, including for Andy, Will, Matt and Rhianna, was the one day the sun shone.
With Will and John as our route-finders we headed up the Tichot to test the snow. There was still an avalanche 5 rating so everyone was taking it easy. Still we were led to some mellow chutes (mellow for the locals!). The dryslope riders were given the opportunity to drop in second, third and fourth and so scored some of the best turns on the trip – they were beaming!
Pushing our luck a little we split, Will Smith, Andy, Matt and Mike off to build a jump for the next day while Will Hughes, John, Tim and myself went off to the Chardonnay bowls to see if we could find some steeper chutes.
That’s when, perched on a snowdrift and frozen numb, the cloud came in, spreading its milky monotony everywhere. Will Hughes had just dropped into a chute that was blind beyond it’s entrance. It seemed like an eternity before a crackly radio message came up, “It’s awful, there’s loads of exposed rock. It’s really technical and not nice!”.
Enough said, we aborted and linked up back on the piste below.
Our last day was spent riding a nice long transfer table-top jump the guys had built. It looked great save for the few hundred footsteps all over it – the photographer lost his cool on that one, sorry boys. But a pretty good session went down, Mike rocking some cab 7s and Matt a front 5.
A last little charge up high to the top of the Val Claret funicular and then the long traverse back to The Dragon Lodge signaled the end of the trip. The last ones back, Tim and I, were treated to one of those Kodak moments as the sun dipped beneath the clouds over the lake and offered up a spectacular view of the whole Tignes panorama.
Sam’s goals for the trip had been to find not just the best rider, but the rider who will be best for his brand. His support for the Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle Series had been in part to counter balance the relative neglect that the Snowflex slopes get in comparison to the indoor domes. Which seems crazy when you look at how good the snowflex kickers are for learning. In the end Matt Macwhirter secured the deal and we celebrated with beers on the balcony, another epic meal and a little boogie at the local disco.
The Back Stories
Tignes
Tignes has an esteemed history with UK riders. They’ve been flocking to this part of the Tarantaise (that spreads from Valmorel to Val d’Isère) for years. Nelson Pratt and Marcus Chapman both first spread their wings across the Espace Killy and it has hosted comps from Gumby’s Big Day Out, to popular summer camps to clinching the first ever X-Games deal in Europe for 2010.
Despite now forging its identity from the five Tignes villages (bottom up: Les Boisses, Les Brévières, Le Lavachet, Le Lac and Val Claret), the original village was actually nestled in the Isère valley, in a spot that is now under a few million tons of water, locked in place by the post-war hydro-electric dam in 1952. Apparently you can get a glimpse of the old village every 10 years when they drain the Lac du Chevril to perform repairs on the dam.
The ski resort we know now was initiated in the 60s and has seen millions of visitors in the last 50 years, all flocking to the winter snow and summer slush on the Grande Motte glacier.
The town of Bourg-St-Maurice is the most usual feeder on to Tignes – it used to be a conscript town back in the day but now it’s used by professional soldiers. You’ll see them out and about in Tignes Les Boisses from time to time on manoueveres.
Tignes office de Tourisme
00 33 (0)479400440
www.tignes.fr
Travel
Train
The Snow Train (www.raileurope.co.uk) or Eurostar (www.eurostar.com) offer a stop at Bourg-St-Maurice from where you can get a bus or shuttle up to Tignes.
Fly
To Geneva (www.gva.ch) in France with EasyJet and take a transfer with AlpSki Bus (www.alpski-bus.com) or with Altibus (www.altibus.com). Other popular airports are Lyon, Grenoble and Chambéry in France.
The Dragon Lodge
It’s the 12th year of the Dragon Lodge this winter. John Bassett, our contact, can trace a distinguished snowboard story right back to 1986 when he got his first snowboard. He only managed to do one run on it though before the lifty wouldn’t let him back up and he was forced to walk for an-hour-and-a-half to get back to the top!
Expect a first class, friendly service with homely accommodation and remember the staff here are far more than cooks and drivers.
Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle Series 2009
The most progressive UK kicker competition is currently in mid-flow. Having caused a riot at Halifax and Bearsden it is off to France for the finals at Noeux Les Mines on October 10th.
www.snowflexseries.westbeach.com
Endeavor Snowboards
Endeavor Snowboard Design was established in 2002. The Global headquarters is based in historic Gastown, downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. Despite an all-star cast including the infamous Paavo Tikanen, Sam Noble has been bringing Endeavor to the UK from the beginning and Mike Austin had been on the team all that time.
Henry's Avalanche Talks
Henry’s Avalanche Talk (HAT) is a team of professionals committed to sharing their passion and providing insight on riding off-piste safely. The HAT team does this via a wide range of services, from multi-media avalanche awareness talks, on-snow training to free email information and more.
Jumping the good ship from Boston USA, Henry Schniewind had been involved with backcountry safety for almost 20 years. Having trained in America, worked as a ski patroller and finally adopting the Haute-Tarantaise as his home for the abundance of backcountry terrain it offers, he knows what he is talking about.
Fancy checking out other French ski and snowboard resorts? Ever thought about the Portes du Soleil? Check our overview
Posted by name - Tue, 12/01/2010 - 2:03pm
A tale from the big French resort as it got dumped by more snow than you could shake a stick at
I cast my mind back to a sunny afternoon on the South Pennines last Autumn. At Halifax Ski and Snowboard Centre, the finalists of the second round of 2008's Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle Series are taking their last runs. The battle is on. Jamie Nicholls has cleaned up in the Junior Men category, dropping a switch front 7 and a backside 9; Katie Ormerod, surely the youngest competitor of the day, has landed a 720; Colum Mytton has tried a double backflip; and in the Senior Men a contest is raging. Local hero Andy Nudds has one chance left to stick his front 10 and to grab first on the podium – he soars perfectly through the air and touches down gracefully but just can't hold it together, leaving the other local lad, Mat Macwhirter, the top spot and golden ticket to ride, thanks to his flawless frontside rodeo and sleazy style.
All of this seems a very, very long way from the frozen-fingered, numb-assed seat I have appropriated on the tight, steep, snow-bank that I'm now perched on, staring hopelessly into a blind chute that Will Hughes has recently dropped into, and which is now becoming engulfed in a milky white cloud.
On the 13th of December last year [2008] I was offered a hasty escape from Blighty’s dismal weather in favour of the winter landscape that is Tignes, set deep in the Haute-Tarentaise region of France and the European Alps. It was all thanks to the Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle series crew that the trip was on.
My saviours came in a varied collection of shapes, sizes and colours; from Yorkshire man Wayne Taylor (father of the no-guts, no glory Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle Series) to Endeavor snowboards and the appropriately hairy and lumberjack shirt-toting Sam Noble (he could be Canadian), who had offered as a prize to the best of the un(board)sponsored riders a pre-Christmas outing to France and the opportunity to earn a year's sponsorship. That’s not to mention our hosts; entertainers, route-finders, party-planners and general accommodators at The Dragon Lodge in Tignes.
One rider from each stop of the series was picked by Sam Noble to come on the trip. The only requirements were some jaw-dropping skills and no current snowboard sponsors. Halifax locals 15 year-old Will Smith and 18-year-old Matt Macwhirter and 26-year-old Rhianna Nuttal, from Rossendale, collected the golden tickets. Just to throw a little mayhem into the mix, and to give the riders a bit of encouragement, Sam also enlisted his whole Endeavor squad (Mike Austin, Andy Nudds, James Phillips – who’d been working as a roadie on the Kings of Leon tour and was heading back to Les Arcs to finish off a decade of seasons!) and some mates (Irish champion Tim Russell) for good measure. Our number was verging on 10 and bordering on ridiculous as the overloaded Noble Custom Van – an iron horse of a machine – made the last pick-up in Whistable in the early hours of a very cold December morning.
As has become customary with European excursions we were driving to France, not as bad for the Southernmost members of the team, the Northerners earning themselves an extra eight hours in the fun bus. And unfortunately for them it’s not going to get any better, not if our resident geographer Matt Macwhiter is any cop anyway, afterall, as he put it, “England is moving closer to France at the same speed your fingernail grows.”
Driving is good though. For one it is technically green(-ish, just don't look out the back as you're climbing those mountain hairpins – more smog than Beijing I suspect) plus you get to meet everyone, get bored of everyone, ask incessant questions of the trip organiser like, ‘Are we there yet?’ Or get a full Encyclopaedia Britannica breakdown of French resorts and snowboarding folklore from the more educated (old) members of the group. But most importantly, it offers the chance to get amped. So much chat and shred videos leads to a lot of over-excited snowboarders.
We were really hoping to get the chance to interrogate the Tignes and L'Espace Killy. It is massive. Tignes and Val d'Isère have become household names on the winter sports circuit for good reason.
Nestled high in the rocky Haute-Tarantaise, Tignes is actually five little Alpine communes spread from Les Brévières, just below the tree line at 1550m, to Val Claret, well above it at 2100m. It forms one half of L'Espace Killy (named after the 1968 Winter Olympic gold medalist, Jean-Claude Killy) area – the other half being attributed to Val d'Isère.
Open November to May, with a little shindig on the glacier from June to October, nearly 3000km of trails, a vertical drop of almost 2000m, two big parks, loads and loads of terrain and an average 5m snowfall, all go together to make this a serious contender for any winter trip.
James Phillips was bursting with backcountry freestyle ideas. He had unfinished business on a lot of jumps in the area. Obviously the Snowflex groms wanted to hit street rails. But the outlook was not good. At best we were led to expect moderate snow, dust-on-crust, and this presented a potential problem: for if there's no snow in the village, not only do the old boys not get to shred pow, but the young bucks can't prove themselves in the streets – not by riding rails at any rate.
With thinking caps on we made a quick stop off at Tip-Top Snowboard shop in the feeder (and integral part of Le Paradiski) town of Bourg-St-Maurice (accessible by Eurostar and the Snow Train) before rushing on to The Dragon Lodge at Tignes Le Lac, where our dinner was getting cold. It was a full 24 hours after setting off and almost 1000 miles from our departure point.
A big, hearty, wine-fueled dinner involved our introduction to John Bassett (Dragon Lodge main man and avid snowboarder since 1986), Will Hughes (dab hand in the powder), Greg (dab hand with a snow shovel), Dan (Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares), and Skippy (ex London publican on couch-surfing sabbatical). Pleasantries completed, we congregated at the main table and tucked into a fresh bottle of Pernod as we poured over maps to come up with a plan for the week.
High on the agenda was some backcountry learning and a chance to practice with transceivers. Half the group had never really tested their legs on a hike or in powder, let alone contemplate the power of the snowpack and how to make decisions about heading off-piste.
Luckily, Val d'Isère local, by way of the States, Henry Schniewind of Henry's Avalanche Talks had been enlisted for the following night to give us all a re-cap/brief intro to backcountry safety and to practice locating some of the Ortovox beepers we had coming out of our ears.
Aside from that we were looking at getting stuck into the best of what Tignes had to offer. Will Hughes assured the nippers that, yes, there were some rails in town, and yes, we could go and ride them during the week, but secretly all the old riders were dreaming of powder turns and nothing else.
The eerily quiet floodlit 'fingers' across from Le Lac made a powerful impression in our snow-fueled sleep.
We awoke to the predicted dusting of snow, overcast weather and extremely high winds. Not to be disheartened we set off as a mighty pack with the Tignes locals at our head. We toured what was open in Tignes Val Claret, charging around in first day madness but restricted to the low chairs like Tichot. It was busy, apparently 2000 students were roaming the resort. We shredded whatever little pockets of snow lurked and jibbed all and every boulder and barrel. Stopping at the Val Claret concrete parking block, the Golf du Parking, the dryslope kids messed around on some little acid drops and spun off a homemade pole jam stuck in the side of a snow-laden road. But the executive decision came to cut our losses and head lower down to the trees at Les Brévière
s where Will Hughes was certain we'd find the good stuff.
Les Brévières is the lowest of the villages in the Tignes umbrella, set below Jean-Marie Pierret's 1989 fresco of Hercules and the Lac du Chevril. The Sache télélabine offers access to some easy rolling slopes with some pretty wild cliff, pillow and tree options if you know how to get out the bottom. We lapped it a few times, again revelling in a hedonistic charge that saw so many crashes, pile-ups and collisions it was a miracle we didn't lose any of the team on the first day.
We then found a half-fallen tree to slide with a super tight run-in. Mike made it the furthest over and there were some heinous, edge-catching, crashes, exemplified with Rhianna’s frontflip to 10 foot drop to, a somewhat tough, landing.
The pillows being frozen solid and the pow not up to much, we stuck to the marked runs until our legs were spent.
It gets dark and cold surprisingly quickly in the middle of winter, and by the time we realised John had lost the keys to the van we were ready to be back at the lodge, feet up, beer in hand, dinner on the table!
But when we did get rescued back to the lodge, our first task in backcountry school was transceiver training on the nearby slopes. We’d been asked by John to minimize damage to the town Mayor’s garden next door – I can only imagine John’s blood pressure as a pack of teenagers start running loose across the most important man in Tignes’ front lawn, digging holes in the snow and arseing about!
But that’s not to say we didn’t take the task seriously. Everyone had learned from the experience and Rhianna summed up a lot of riders’ attitudes to the backcountry where they tend to avoid riding in it due to fear caused by ignorance. “Not knowing scares me,” she admitted, unlike the nonchalant, out-of-breath boys. “I was just surprised how much walking around in the snow takes it out of you.”
The Ortovox S1 was unanimously agreed as the easiest of our sample transceivers to use (although I found the Patroller very good).
It had grown dark as we searched… and it had started snowing.
Finally inside, feet up with beer in hand, we settled down in the living room full of the smells of wood smoke to a basic backcountry safety talk from Henry Schniwind.
The most pertinent question he raised, and one that sticks in my head, was: “What will happen to other people if you set off an avalanche.”
Something else I’d not thought about before was how to describe my location on a mountain should I need to call for any kind of rescue. My memory of lift names and pistes is awful at best so I couldn’t imagine having to give a backcountry location without a GPS or something similar.
As we listened to Henry’s talk something magical happened. No one really noticed at the time, but on a quick trip down to my room to grab a battery, I noticed there was about 30cm of fresh snow filling in all the icy crud from the afternoon. On a second trip outside, only a few hours later, even my footsteps from earlier were filled in.
It was almost as if the collective energy of being awe-struck by some of the epic conditions in Henry’s talk had conspired to send a special request to the clouds, which duly dumped their load directly on Tignes.
We awoke to a sight I have often heard about, often dreamt of, and listened with envy as someone else recounts the tale, but never directly experienced myself: it had dumped.
We’re talking a serious unleashing of nature’s bowels. As I opened the door to the garden the snow had grown from foot high to chest high and Will Hughes was in the thick of it hastily clearing the steps so we could get up to breakfast.
No one could believe their eyes. An initial panic to get out there in the snow soon subsided as we realised the entire resort was closed, in fact the conditions were so treacherous even the road between Tignes Le Lac and Val Claret was out of operation, there were unsubstantiated rumours of Les Brévières being evacuated, of helping push an ambulance up the uncleared roads (apparently some squabbles between the road clearers and the powers that be), and an official measurement of actual snow-fall came from Sam Noble,
“About a Will’s worth.” He was referring of course to the complete disappearance of our youngest member Will Smith, when he jumped from the balcony into the powder.
Once again the Dragon Lodge came to our rescue and instead of sitting around playing Xbox or looking for street rails buried deep beneath the snow we exploited the bountiful garden to build a jump.
Tim Russell took the glory with a first hit double-frontflip to complete disappearance somewhere under the snow! He did emerge, just.
The kicker consumed us that day and some of the other guests from the Lodge joined in, busting out some style as Andy, Mike, Matt and Will got serious.
In the distance we were treated to the mite of the freshly fallen snow when a slide took off high above Val Claret, thundered down the slope, and only just came to a rest before the Parking du Golf we’d been playing at the day before. It left the whole area covered in a warning dusting of fine powder.
The kicker session was rounded off with a pre-dinner acid drop from the balcony. All the more experienced riders goaded Will and Matt on until, preceeded by Mike, they made the leap and absolutely loved it!
James had other ideas though. Rather than jumping off the first floor balcony he climbed right to the top of the building and dropped the full 10m to fairly chopped up powder landing in the dark, beastly.
Unphased by his heroic feats Mike and I popped out for one last shred in the garden where we created an odd looking metal box-to-drainpipe, that was loosely placed on an old shopping trolley, jib. It went pretty well until mid-frontboard the drainpipe exploded!
Still it led us on to this interesting fact over dinner, apparently bananas have now been re-produced so much that they have lost the ability to reproduce themselves. Lib tech I fear will be quaking in their boots!
The rest of the week we found ourselves in the lucky position of exploiting the heavy, and unexpected snowfall. Amazingly on a quick excursion to Les Arcs just down the road (read about it next month) they’d only received about 20% the precipitation that Tignes had, highlighting the incredibly specific nature of mountain weather systems.
Will, Matt, Andy and Mike did get their rail fix. We went to some well-trodden features in the centre of Tignes and ground our way through the night on a concrete ledge in town. This was followed by a homemade quarterpipe right outside the supermarket. We were able to cut it right into the side of one of the new huge snowdrifts and Tim’s previous shaping experience from SPC, IPP and even the Red Bull Rail Storm in London really paid off. And the riders battled on despite heckling from rowdy Brits, the customary “Do a backflip” being supplemented with the equally inspiring, “You’re shit!”.
Mike, who’d eyed up a nice ride-off urban drop at the Golf du Parking, braced his knees for some flat landings – but it never wiped the smile from his face, and that’s what we like to see.
The real treat for the week, including for Andy, Will, Matt and Rhianna, was the one day the sun shone.
With Will and John as our route-finders we headed up the Tichot to test the snow. There was still an avalanche 5 rating so everyone was taking it easy. Still we were led to some mellow chutes (mellow for the locals!). The dryslope riders were given the opportunity to drop in second, third and fourth and so scored some of the best turns on the trip – they were beaming!
Pushing our luck a little we split, Will Smith, Andy, Matt and Mike off to build a jump for the next day while Will Hughes, John, Tim and myself went off to the Chardonnay bowls to see if we could find some steeper chutes.
That’s when, perched on a snowdrift and frozen numb, the cloud came in, spreading its milky monotony everywhere. Will Hughes had just dropped into a chute that was blind beyond it’s entrance. It seemed like an eternity before a crackly radio message came up, “It’s awful, there’s loads of exposed rock. It’s really technical and not nice!”.
Enough said, we aborted and linked up back on the piste below.
Our last day was spent riding a nice long transfer table-top jump the guys had built. It looked great save for the few hundred footsteps all over it – the photographer lost his cool on that one, sorry boys. But a pretty good session went down, Mike rocking some cab 7s and Matt a front 5.
A last little charge up high to the top of the Val Claret funicular and then the long traverse back to The Dragon Lodge signaled the end of the trip. The last ones back, Tim and I, were treated to one of those Kodak moments as the sun dipped beneath the clouds over the lake and offered up a spectacular view of the whole Tignes panorama.
Sam’s goals for the trip had been to find not just the best rider, but the rider who will be best for his brand. His support for the Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle Series had been in part to counter balance the relative neglect that the Snowflex slopes get in comparison to the indoor domes. Which seems crazy when you look at how good the snowflex kickers are for learning. In the end Matt Macwhirter secured the deal and we celebrated with beers on the balcony, another epic meal and a little boogie at the local disco.
The Back Stories
Tignes
Tignes has an esteemed history with UK riders. They’ve been flocking to this part of the Tarantaise (that spreads from Valmorel to Val d’Isère) for years. Nelson Pratt and Marcus Chapman both first spread their wings across the Espace Killy and it has hosted comps from Gumby’s Big Day Out, to popular summer camps to clinching the first ever X-Games deal in Europe for 2010.
Despite now forging its identity from the five Tignes villages (bottom up: Les Boisses, Les Brévières, Le Lavachet, Le Lac and Val Claret), the original village was actually nestled in the Isère valley, in a spot that is now under a few million tons of water, locked in place by the post-war hydro-electric dam in 1952. Apparently you can get a glimpse of the old village every 10 years when they drain the Lac du Chevril to perform repairs on the dam.
The ski resort we know now was initiated in the 60s and has seen millions of visitors in the last 50 years, all flocking to the winter snow and summer slush on the Grande Motte glacier.
The town of Bourg-St-Maurice is the most usual feeder on to Tignes – it used to be a conscript town back in the day but now it’s used by professional soldiers. You’ll see them out and about in Tignes Les Boisses from time to time on manoueveres.
Tignes office de Tourisme
00 33 (0)479400440
www.tignes.fr
Travel
Train
The Snow Train (www.raileurope.co.uk) or Eurostar (www.eurostar.com) offer a stop at Bourg-St-Maurice from where you can get a bus or shuttle up to Tignes.
Fly
To Geneva (www.gva.ch) in France with EasyJet and take a transfer with AlpSki Bus (www.alpski-bus.com) or with Altibus (www.altibus.com). Other popular airports are Lyon, Grenoble and Chambéry in France.
The Dragon Lodge
It’s the 12th year of the Dragon Lodge this winter. John Bassett, our contact, can trace a distinguished snowboard story right back to 1986 when he got his first snowboard. He only managed to do one run on it though before the lifty wouldn’t let him back up and he was forced to walk for an-hour-and-a-half to get back to the top!
Expect a first class, friendly service with homely accommodation and remember the staff here are far more than cooks and drivers.
Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle Series 2009
The most progressive UK kicker competition is currently in mid-flow. Having caused a riot at Halifax and Bearsden it is off to France for the finals at Noeux Les Mines on October 10th.
www.snowflexseries.westbeach.com
Endeavor Snowboards
Endeavor Snowboard Design was established in 2002. The Global headquarters is based in historic Gastown, downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. Despite an all-star cast including the infamous Paavo Tikanen, Sam Noble has been bringing Endeavor to the UK from the beginning and Mike Austin had been on the team all that time.
Henry's Avalanche Talks
Henry’s Avalanche Talk (HAT) is a team of professionals committed to sharing their passion and providing insight on riding off-piste safely. The HAT team does this via a wide range of services, from multi-media avalanche awareness talks, on-snow training to free email information and more.
Jumping the good ship from Boston USA, Henry Schniewind had been involved with backcountry safety for almost 20 years. Having trained in America, worked as a ski patroller and finally adopting the Haute-Tarantaise as his home for the abundance of backcountry terrain it offers, he knows what he is talking about.
Fancy checking out other French ski and snowboard resorts? Ever thought about the Portes du Soleil? Check our overview