Festive Fun- Christmas in Argentière

Adil Latif | Snowboarding-Mont Blanc glacier Descent | ON 24th December 2006 | 0 comments

24/12/2006: 2am London:
Still have not finished packing. Spent most of the day travelling around the UK trying to pick up a set of Motorola walkie-talkies. Eventually picked them up at Ellis Brigham in Tamworth, who kindly provided them for free together with some base layers.

My snowboard is sitting on the bed looking irresistible.

It is a pure white Icon Wallpaper edition, with the board make stencilled in an overlapping fashion across the middle between the bindings and wrapping around the bottom of the board.

However, there is a big scratch on the top surface which I’m sure was my cleaner bashing the vacuum into it. There are some little knocks around the edges which I suspect are the war wounds of carrying it through the London Underground!

My snowboard bag is full. I have crammed everything down to my aftershave in there due to the new hand luggage restrictions at the UK airports. Any ideas on where I could put the snowboard?

7am London:
I think I must have fallen asleep at about 3am after packing my bags and while listening back to the advice Keith was giving me on the recording I had of him. Then something vibrated, just in time for me to wake up and not miss my flight!

There was another vibration: my phone was ringing. It was my housemate who was locked out. He was apologetic for waking me, totally oblivious of the fact he had potentially saved me from missing a flight.

I grabbed a taxi to pick me up. You would imagine that after prancing around the UK yesterday to find the walkie-talkies that I wouldn't leave them all nicely charged on my bed! Flight or no flight I still went back for them.

25/12/06: Argentière:

Just got back from my first day on the slopes. Ben, a friend I made in the Belvadere bunk house, came up with me. We struggled at the beginning, as Ben is a skier and would be facing down the slope at all times. However, when on a snowboard if I was to be on my toe-side I would be facing up the hill, so we really had to think about our lefts and rights!

I crashed into a number of Piste marker poles with one of them lodging itself under my board resulting in me riding over it as if I meant to perform a fancy trick! The culmination of that run was my board and me attached to it heading quite fast toward a go slow sign and stopping inches from it.

Ben’s friend Neil joined us later on in the day and his ski poles came in handy on the flat sections of the slope.  He used them to pull me along until I had enough momentum. When snowboarding, it's crucial to have enough speed when approaching a flat section to ensure you don’t stop. If you do stop it is hard to get going as, unlike skiing, you are attached to the one platform so you can’t independently push out using your legs.

If there is no kind-hearted skier around you usually have to take out one foot and use it to push off, similar to what you would do while skateboarding.

26/12/06 Argentière:
Sitting on my top bunk at the Belvedere about to head for a sauna downstairs, every single part of my body is aching. I hit some more piste markers today. Stopped in time to prevent a collision with a skier. I was quite excited about that as it gave me a chance to try out my newly aquired French phrase "Je ne vois pas". He turned out to be German and didn’t understand a word I said and asked if I spoke English!

27/12/2006 Argentière:
Went for 1 run in the morning and now I feel pain all over. It was long, steep and icy! Basically it was as if all the ice rinks in London had been joined together and then tilted up at a slant. Falling on ice can be quite terrifying for most average boarders. In my case it’s slightly more so as I am not able to see where the next patch of snow is to break my fall and bring my sliding to an end.

28/12/06 Argentière:
Didn’t do anything in the morning as Ben went ice climbing. It gave me a chance to write out some emails which I had to send.

The afternoon came and we decided that the ice conditions would warrant the purchasing of a helmet. Fortunately the expensive French branded one didn’t fit so I purchased a slightly cheaper but equally good if not better fitting K2 version.

Caught some Air from the Chair:
Was waiting at the bottom of one of the runs for the 2 man chair lift which would take us up the mountain. I stood at the bottom with Ben. We were reasonably well positioned however the chair collided with the back of my rucksack throwing me off balance resulting in me being half on half off. The longer I stayed in this position the higher the chairlift was going.

I took the decision to jump woohooing on my way down as I landed on the slope below. Thankfully it was not high with about a 2 meter fall.

Ben asked me later on if I knew how high it was before I jumped. I answered in the negative. At times you have to take the risk and go with instinct. I knew if I had jumped later it would have been higher so I cut my losses!

Riding with Ben was great. He looked out for me all the time on the slope. The incident on the chair was not avoidable. It was the first time I was taking a rucksack with me and next time I will be more prepared for the chair approaching.

Towards the end of the day I was really tired as I had not been performing that well on the ice and instead of things getting better the slope got a lot worse. We were going to have to navigate through some rocks. Ben kept calm and had total confidence in me and guided me through with great skill. I felt amazing at the bottom because I had made it down in one piece!

We soon realised that I was performing better during the times Ben would continuously talk over the walkie-talkie. Previously I had asked him to only provide commands informing me when to turn. However providing ongoing information such as:

1. 1. Slope direction (that is which direction is the piste marked)
2. 2. Camber (the slant of the slope, e.g. the direction of the slope may be straight in front- however the slope may be tilted so that the left hand side is higher than the right hand side).
3. 3. Width of the slope.
4. 4. Condition of the slope (ice, rocky, grass/ mud!).
5. 5. People traffic.

These were all really useful bits of information and made me feel safer and more confident in my riding.

Later on that day I had dinner with Keith McIntosh and Neil McNab. Over dinner we discussed possible routes of the helidrop and possible dates. Neil offered to take me out the next morning for a run just to see how I was getting along.

30/12/06 Les Houches:
Neil came and picked me up in the morning. We drove for about 30 minutes coming nearer to where he stayed and to where we would be riding for the day. After a couple of runs on slopes which were not far off horizontal I convinced Neil to take me on the types of runs I had been accustomed to. Riding with Neil was good as it really helped to tie up areas in my technique which had been taught to me by Keith (in France), and Daniel Lloyd and Grant Gallacher (in the UK).

Neil speaks about that day in an article in Whitelines (a snowboarding mag) we made it into.

I stayed at Neil’s house that day and had some amazing food cooked by Neil’s wife Ruth. I also made a new friend, Manon, who was a very pretty and intelligent girl. She drew a lovely picture of a snail and then asked me to draw a picture of a sun above the snail, I was terrified as I hadn’t ever drawn anything since I started losing my sight. However she was very generous and accepted my addition of a sun in her drawing! We watched Toy Story together and I gave her a crash course on how a blind person uses a white stick to learn of dangers such as steps and curbs, she was fascinated. Manon was Neil’s 2 year old daughter!