Skier splats reporter : 19th January 2012
Mind your speed on these firm pistes

Dear Hit ‘n’ Run Skier,

I realise that the bit of piste from midstation down towards the Bellecombe chair is narrow and occasionally icy, and believe me, I too have frequently failed to get down it with any sort of of finesse on many occasions. I have to say that I have never managed to knock a fellow piste-user into a double somersault in the process, but there you go, we all make misjudgements now and than, and accidents happen. Furthermore I am assured by JC, who saw the whole thing, that you’re a fairly rubbish skier and it’s not a particularly easy section, so I’ll forgive you.

Or I would have done, if you’d only bothered to stop and check that you hadn’t actually done any serious damage. I sincerely hope no-one has been foolish enough to issue you with a driving licence, if that’s what you consider to be acceptable behaviour. No, my hand is not actually broken, though writing this report is proving rather more uncomfortable than usual, and sorting 1500 lift passes for recycling this morning wasn’t much fun either. Thanks a bunch.

Yours,

Squashed Boarder

PS: That suit makes your bum look big, by the way.

Really, what on earth are people thinking about? If you knock someone down, or even if you see them fall and fail to get up straight away you do not go hurtling blithely off down the piste in your own little world. You stop and see if they are in one piece. You might even think of offering help or calling piste rescue if necessary.

Mr Rather Rubbish Skier wasn’t the first assassin I’d encountered yesterday either, though I manage to avoid the others by lurking at the side of the piste until they went away. I don’t imagine any of this is deliberate, but rather the result of increasingly fast on-piste conditions and inexperienced skiers/boarders who haven’t noticed that they’re going far faster than usual and don’t have enough control.

This is easily done (I did it myself the other week when getting used to the new board), but it’s also easy to avoid. Please, people, think about what you’re doing. We’d really like you all to go home in one piece, and we’re quite keen on staying that way ourselves too if at all possible.

Leaving aside the minced finger incident, yesterday’s conditions were once again very good all over the hill, though possibly a bit harder than they had been earlier in the week (hence the speed problem).

With any luck, this should resolve itself over the weekend, as we’re forecast snow on Friday and Saturday. How much of it remains a bit of a mystery – snow-forecast.com was predicting us 35cm a few days ago, before revising their estimate down to the odd snow shower and now back up again to 10cm on Friday afternoon. Chaine Meteo is remaining tight-lipped on the question, and our own forecast merely said degradation, which always puts me in mind of whips and gimp suits, but actually just means the weather is likely to turn nasty.

Disappointingly, the only thing everyone seems to agree on is that we’re in for high winds again, which isn’t encouraging for the off-piste enthusiasts, but we’ll have to wait and see what transpires. At any rate, new snow will give us softer conditions and fluffy lumps, which should slow everyone down and make the whole experience a bit less like trying to roller skate round the M25.

We used my rapidly swelling paw as an excuse to download in the eggs, as we were both in a lazy mood and suspected the Diable of being hard and nasty. We had a good look at the piste from the cabin though, and it seemed in very skiable condition with a good covering of loose snow over a hard base. You need to watch yourself in the vicinity of the guns down the right hand side, because they have evidently been running too warm and there are lethal icy mounds next to several of them. The pisteurs have put in warning poles, but steer well clear and head for the left hand side would be my advice.

My next chance to get out and about should be tomorrow afternoon, but whether I do or not will depend on how windy it gets and whether or not my hand still looks like a fistful of Toulouse sausages. Best put another lot of frozen peas on it, I feel.

• Latest Conditions
  Sunny periods, clouds coming in.
• Depth of snow on lower slopes
  70cm
• Altitude of last snowfall
  1270m
• Date of last snowfall
  07/01/2012
• Depth of last snowfall
  50cm
• Total number of pistes
  91
• Highest temperature
  3°C
• Altitude of lower slopes
  1270m
• Depth of snow on upper slopes
  220cm
• Avalanche risk
  2
• Altitude of upper slopes
  3400m
• Number of pistes open
  89
• Altitude of highest temperature
  1270m

What you say - tell us what you're thinking