Tuesday was my last day off before starting my shift again but unfortunately I couldn't make it to the hills as I had some Christmas shopping to do. I made the best of it by testing out a new sleeping mat I'd bought. I'd pitched the Vango Halo 200 in the garden a week ago just before the snow to let a workmate see it and had left it pitched so took the opportunity to sleep in it on Monday night. As it turned out the temperature dropped to -9°c but the sleeping mat was fine.
As I was free until 1.00pm I took my skis down to the field in front of my Mum's house for a bit of practice and after returning from town I went back for another go. It was almost 4.00pm by the time I arrived, the sun was setting and a fog was lying in the hollows which made it look really nice. I managed to get some more practice in but spent some time simply standing around watching the colours change and managed to take a few photos before the light went completely.
As for the practice, well I was trying to execute a Telemark turn but you know how it is when you're attempting something but you can't actually see what you're doing? Well perception and reality can be quite a bit different but I roped Alison in to taking some shots and discovered to my dismay that whatever the turn was that I'd executed it wasn't a Telemark!!
Oh well, at least it wasn't a snowplough turn for a change, if we still have snow I'll try again on Saturday :-)
Great photos Richard, looks like you are enjoying the snow.
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Some lovely pictures Mac! Aach, who cares if it wasn't a textbook telemark whatever it was it got you round a corner in what looks like (for a couple of hundredths of a second at least) a controlled manner. One up on me, I'm yet to turn Nordic touring skis.
ReplyDeleteRichard, I'll echo Dave's comments, who cares if it isn't a textbook tele turn, it beats snow ploughing! I always thought telemark looked like an easy technique until I tried it and WHUMP! Faceplant.
ReplyDelete@ Mark, I absolutely love the snow, always have, I guess I was just born in the wrong country :-)
ReplyDelete@ Dave, Thanks, the E-420 is doing the job nicely. You should have seen it on Monday sitting on the tripod with the LCD screen plastered in snow.
The turn just happened to be honest, I tried to do as the book said (I didn't do exactly what the book said although I thought I had) and the skis turned so I just kept doing it.
@ Joe, I normally suffer from the curse of crossed skis and end up on my back, head downhill and unable to get up as my right ski is trapped underneath the left :-)
Unfortunately there's a bit of a thaw now so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll hold out until Saturday at least on higher ground.
Lovely photos, as the other have said!
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