P10

Tuesday, 06 March, 2007

22nd Pierra Menta ski mountaineering competition

Next week sees the 22nd Pierra Menta, the international ski mountaineering competition and festival of ski touring. The competition takes place over four days and covers 10,000 vertical meters of climbing in the Beaufortain range of the Savoie.

pierra menta

Posted by redac at 02:50 PM
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Vars ESF Director sees red!

The Ecole de Ski Francais, dubbed the Red Jumpers (les pulls rouges) because of their signature uniform, was established in 1937 by Georges Blanchon, Emile Allais, Charles Diebold, Paul Gignoux and Léo Lagrange, the then minister of sports. Although a private entreprise with individual schools organised on a franchise basis (a bit like McDonalds) it has long enjoyed close links with the state through the Fédération Française de Ski and the Minister of Sports.

Posted by redac at 08:02 AM
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Monday, 05 March, 2007

Haute Route with Google Earth files

This is a short description of Haute Route with Google map file and snapshots of 3D terrain. The Haute Route passes some amazing natural environments traditionally starting from Chamonix in France and crossing to Zermatt in Switzerland although there are a number of variants. This guide is more GPS intensive and is provided with Google map files. Since we were the first party to do this in 2003, we broke trails much of the time. Our trip coincided with the first days of American-Iraq war.

Posted by ckim at 12:48 PM
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Sunday, 04 March, 2007

Ski tourers killed by avalanche near col du Galibier

Two ski tourers have been killed by an avalanche just before 14h00 under the north face of the Grand Galibier (3228 meters). A third member of the group was also hit by the slide but escaped without injury. The two victims were students from Lyon. The group of four skiers and snowboarders were climbing at 2,500 meters altitude in the Tierres Vielles bowl having previously skied down towards the ski resort of Valloire in the Savoie

Grand Galibier, east summit

Posted by davidof at 06:21 PM
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Low-tech returns to its roots

If Dynafit makes the catwalk strutting supermodels of the ski binding world the new Low Tech Race must be Kate Moss. It is positively skeletal in looks, consisting of nothing more than a curved spring and post for the heel. This brings the standard binding weight down from 335 grams for the TLT Speed (without mounting screws) to just 160 grams. Extreme skier and journalist Volodia Shahshahani suggests that Dynafit had been feeling the heat from “artisanal” products. It is possible to buy similar heel units built by ski mountaineering fans in their own workshops.

Dynafit low tech race