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March 2-12 La Grave

3/15/06
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Posted by silaswild on 3/15/06 3:51am
Scott Stephenson's trip report.  Ski porn of highest quality, wow!  More photos, Scott, pretty please?

http://www.summitroutes.com/cgi-local/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=winter2006_board;action=display;num=1142438887
I want to do that really bad. With Coombs.

I probably will. Sometime. Soon-ish.

I'm 48 in 2 weeks. Better get on it.

Thanks for posting Silas. Looks like these guys hit the place at the right time with great snow conditions. Some really cool pictures!

Hey, thanks guys!  Oftpiste, you should definitely go for it.  It was incredible.  We had folks of all ages/abilities on the trip, from 17-75 years old!  But, I wouldn't suggest you wait until 75 -- just do it!  Coombs is a great guy and the most amazing skier.  It's definitely worth the trip.

--Scott

North American Ski Training Center (www.skinastc.com) also has trips to LaGrave some years.

So did you do the official Coombs Steep Camp deal or was it some other arrangement? I'm curious about what goes on and how they handle the different kill levels and such.

I've prowled the website for La Grave and it really looks incredible.

Yes, I did the Coombs Steep Skiing Camp at dougcoombs.com.

Doug and Emily do a fantastic job of organizing the camp. They divide up the clients into groups (usually 3:1) based on skill level and fitness and they do a damn good job of it. Groups change daily, to suit how each person feels and to give everyone a chance to ski with each of the guides.  All the guides are great skiers.  A few of the guides are people who make the decision of whether to open the tram daily -- they've lived in La Grave their whole lives and are killer skiiers, just like Doug. I was pretty intimidated by the La Grave website and the thought of skiing with these guys, but I went for it and it turned out incredible.  Go for it!


Great photos, great achievements. I'm additionally impressed with the quality of the guiding, because March 2-12 was mostly not a real good weather week overall in the French Alps.

I'm thinking of getting together a trip to the Alps (France and/or western Switz) sometime during first half of May or last week of April, to do some great and/or big ski mountaineering tours -- probably some with local French guides. If you might be interested in joining with that, by all means get in touch with me:
http://roberts-1.com/contact/ken/p

Although I was born in Seattle and have done lots of fun and exciting skiing in the Cascades, for the past four years I've been skiing in France as much as I can -- except for occasional spring trips to the California Sierras meet Washington skiers who've driven south for the sunshine and corn snow.

Thoughts on skiing in France:

* there are local guides in France who speak good English and are great skiers.

* there are excellent French-language ski guidebooks and maps with like 2000 ski tours in the northern French Alps -- for those (like me) who are comfortable skiing most of the time without hiring a guide-person.

* for every great tour or ski-descent which North American magazines talks about, there are at least ten more similar that are just as good.

* those who want to achieve big goals in a limited timeframe should hire a guide-person with local knowledge -- because there's helpful tricks which are not in the guidebooks.

* there's lots of great + fun skiing in the French Alps that does not include getting lowered into scary couloirs. Like here's some photos last year of some touring with a local English-speaking guide-person:
http://roberts-1.com/t/s05/ch/e/2
- (He lowered us onto a 45-degree slope on a different day)

* the northern French Alps are a really fun place to hang out for a while and do different kinds of skiing and non-skiing stuff -- even if you do not feel any need to notch big accomplishments.

Some of us rent apartments there in March and April. Some of us ski with French partners (and visiting Brits) who are not guides. Some of us enjoy having American friends come over and hang out with us. If you might be interested in the "hanging out" experience (like earlier in April) you can also get in touch with me.

Ken

I wonderd what upper La Grave looked like.  I was there Feb 17th and all I saw was white, white snow, white fog, white wind and more white exept below the upper tram in the trees.  There we found 12" on granite with good skiing between the rocks.  Glad somone got it good.

Thanks for sharing your picts. ;D  I've got to go back some day.

That's some quality ski porn.  Thanks for that  8)

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silaswild
2006-03-15 11:51:39