2 Alpes Snow Report: 15th March 2012

Due to technical hitches, today’s snowboarding has been cancelled. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow afternoon, with any luck.

Things got off to a poor start when I failed to meet a friend at the top of the Diable telecabin. After hanging about for a bit, I did a run down Cretes to the Teleherique, and had just got into the lift when they piled us all out again to run the car 50 metres up the cable and then back down again, for some unexplained reason.

This faffing about meant I arrived at the top of the Telesiege des Glaciers just too late to get the funiculaire to the top and do a run down Signal4, so I thought I might as well settle for a couple of laps of the Signal chair.

Unfortunately though, on trying to tighten the toestrap on my back binding I found that the spring thingy on the ratchet had more or less given up the ghost and wasn’t playing the game. I could just about get it vaguely tight after a lot of persuasion and messing about, but it was looking distinctly dodgy, and if it packed up altogether at the bottom of the Signal I would be faced with a hike back up from the top of the chair to the Jandri in order to get home.

This being the case, I stuck the thing together as best I could and set off on Plan A in the general direction of midstation, Cretes and the Village chair, aiming to gatecrash the Ski Club and Mark Warner’s tea again. Not that I’m any kind of pikey scrounger or anything, honestly.

But further inspection of offending binding strap at 2600 revealed that it was about as much use at keeping my foot in one place as a piece of string and some masking tape, so rather than do myself some kind of horrible injury by falling off the board on the way down I resorted to Plan B and got in the Jandri back to resort.

I’ve had these bindings (Ride Dva if anyone’s interested) a good five seasons, and I had a nasty feeling I was going to be told I had to buy a whole new set at God knows what sort of silly money, but fortunately the nice people in Brun Sport not only have a random toestrap lying about, they will also fit it for me, all for a mere tenner. Bargain.

I could hardly be said to have earned sumptuous afternoon tea, but I hopped on the resort navette to meet Stuart anyway, and was rewarded with cheese, watermelon and herbal tea.

Conditions (what little I sampled of them) are still a combination of spring sunshine and inreasingly slushy pistes, but there are rumours of snow over the weekend – anything from 24cm on Sunday night down to the odd snowflake and a bit of a drop in temperature, depending on which website you choose to believe. I’d like to go with the 24cm prediction, but unfortunately I suspect the sensible money is on a mere snowflake or two. We shall have to wait and see.