Posts Tagged ‘european ski resorts’
Sunday, October 25th, 2009
 what no lifts & trails? la grave looks like alpine wilderness... because it is On the fringe of conventional ski holidays can be found the odd ski resort with a special reputation - here’s what La Grave.com has to say about skiing la grave:
“By exploring the domain of La Grave-La Meije, you are not in a typical ski resort.
This is a real mountain environment as you head down in an unmarked, and non-patrolled area at your own risk.
You must be aware of all mountain hazards including rocks, avalanches, crevasses, and be ready for the possibility of drastic weather changes.
In 30 minutes, the cable-car (téléphérique) takes you to 3200m, where you can create your own itinerary for the descent. You can choose from vast glacial escapes to steep chutes, a world away from the marked trails, the ropes, and the signs of a ski resort. Let your skill level and your inspirations guide you.
This freedom requires a certain technical level, but more importantly humility, responsibility, and respect for Mother Nature.
For yours and everyone’s well-being and piece of mind, you need to take certain precautions before heading out.”
This is the (no) piste map:
 thats right, there is no piste on the la grave piste map
Unlike pretty much any other ski area in the world, on the la grave piste map the “restaurant” symbol is heavily outnumbered by the “severe danger” symbol.
 perhaps the most dangerous "beautiful place" in the alps
There’s no doubt that La Grave is something special… and perhaps your skiing needs a little magic too, to fully appreciate what it has to offer.
But you don’t need to be Doug Coombs to ski la grave – you can enjoy spectacular off piste heaven in comparative safety if you (1) hire a local guide and (2) are very honest about your skiing or snowboarding ability.
The ski village made for a bond film
 I planned to seduce the beautiful Swiss agent, but the Austrian dwarf got there first
While I’ve yet to find a ski resort I have not enjoyed skiing and apres ski in, there are in truth very few places left in the mountains that maintain the style, charm and authenticity of the Cortina or Saint Moritz of old…
… staying and skiing in la grave is the closest you can get (in 2010) to being in a 60’s Bond movie.
 I dispatched the Austrian dwarf, but the French shepherd had me hemmed in...
La grave is beautiful, unspoiled and, as is given away by the cars parked in its streets, that perfectly vintage-glam mix of old local familes and old-money ski-tourist.
No doubt there’s more than the odd parvenu here, but you can kid yourself that you’re rubbing shoulders with discreet European minor royalty and David Niven types.
 was that Stephanie de Monaco? don't stare, act casual... talk loudly about how many ponies you need to play polo full time
It created for us the perfect foil for La Grave, to visit Alpe d’Huez and Les Deux Alpes before coming here.
The latter two ski resorts provide everything that the modern package ski holiday maker has come to expect from their ski holidays – massive and modern lift infrastructure, huge variety of accommodation, eateries and nightlife, well organised on piste safety.
La Grave is everything that the modern ski resort is not – un-pisted (if not entirely un-patrolled), beautifully aged mountain village, small apres ski scene, higher cost of guided skiing.
 beautiful mountain village is the antithesis of a ski resort
La Grave might not fit most peoples idea of a ski resort, but that’s precisely its charm – the authenticity of a proper, old fashioned mountain village, coupled with proper all-mountain skiing and snowboarding.
Un-pisted, un-tamed… un-safe? possibly.
Un-dimned, un-blunted, un-spoiled? Definitely.
And we love it!
 Jimmy says "get your piste-softened, lift-cossetted, choc-chaud-pampered arse out on a real mountain"
NEXT: The Day the Wheels Fell Off – Murphy’s law takes charge of the Grand Alpine Tour next leg to Bourg Saint Maurice & Les 3 Vallees
Tags: european ski resorts, European skiing holidays, grave, la grave, lagrave, ski holidays, ski resort, ski resorts, skiing, sno, sno man, sno mobi, snoman, snowboard, snowboarding, www.sno.mobi
Posted in European skiing holidays, Grand Alpine Tour, posts on www.sno.mobi | 8 Comments »
Friday, October 9th, 2009
 camping in the alps in September is pretty great actually After a relatively easy, if un-glamorous trip down from Calais to the French alps, we traded in our nights in highway truck stops for balmy days in a gorgeous French campsite at the foot of Alpe d’Huez ski resort.
 Jimmy helps daddy to fetch water to the Airstream We get excellent WiFi so I can crack on with a few days of work online which need to be completed before we can start to visit the alpine ski resorts to review their ski holiday facilities. Jimmy settles in immediately and, along with mummy, befriends a charming Dutch couple who are regulars at the campsite (been coming here for 17 years, and I can see why).
A lot of roadies stay in this campsite for just a night or two, as they’re here to take on the mighty Alpe d’Huez, one of the most famous climbs in the Tour de France – there are also a lot of Dutch caravanners & motorhomers here, among the many French old-timers who have made this their summer/autumn residence in retirement.
I’m struck by the marked difference in the Dutch and French approach to us – bonhommie aught rather to be a Dutch word I think, as one or a couple of Dutch campers come to say hello most days, ask if they can look around the Airstream and enquire enthusiastically about our Grand Alpine Tour - the French only speak or even smile at us after several days of effort with huge smiles all round and “bonjour! ca va?” attempts to engage.
It’s here, and while thinking about this difference between the French and Dutch, that I started to realise just how similar the English and the French really are.
The Dutch are certainly extraordinarily socially capable, when roaming abroad – I think a lot of their confidence comes from the impressive Dutch multi-lingual abilities, of which I am frequently envious, but there is something more to it too. Maybe its that straightforward matter-of-factness… whatever the reasons, they are one of the most generous and enjoyable of nationalities to meet when travelling.
 Ben and Jimmy were immediate friends But back to the English and French – yes, we are incredibly similar. If you look at demographics, a caravanner is most likely to be working class and/or retired so I asked myself, if a French person turned up in a (let’s be honest) fairly flash caravan, in a working class caravan site in the UK, how many of the locals would rush over to say hello… speaking in French? Not too many is my guess! But, if that French person made lots of effort to be friendly and engage, no doubt most Brits would be generous and welcoming… and so it went on our first week in the French alps.
 turn right, behind the bins to find the waterfall - is everywhere stunning in the French alps? yes, probably By the end of the week Jimmy was saying “au revoir” or rather “ov-war” to everyone and even “bonjour” if the camper had a “doggie” with them. With French ladies, Jimmy is our secret weapon! (he is a terrible little flirt – gets it from his ma  )
 Jimmy checks out the cafe culture in Bourg d'Oisans, below Alpe d'Huez
Next: driving up (and struggling down) Alpe d’Huez with a 2.5 ton vintage caravan
(if you’ve a business or accommodation in Alpe d’Huez, Get Listed Now on SNO.mobi and I’ll name-check you in the Alpe d’Huez blog post)
Tags: Airstream, alps, cheap deal ski, european ski resorts, European skiing holidays, french alps, mobi, Overlander, road trip, ski, ski holidays, ski resort, ski resorts, skiing, sno, sno man, sno mobi, snoman, sno_man, vintage, vintage airstream, www.sno.mobi
Posted in Airstream, European skiing holidays, Grand Alpine Tour, posts on www.sno.mobi | 4 Comments »
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
A few words and pictures on preparing our selves, lives and vintage Airstream for a 3 1/2 month tour of the major ski resorts for european ski holidays.
Is that entertaining if you don’t know us? … not sure… but you’ll come to know we three sno lovers and predict for yourself if we’ll be able to go from London-living-townies (him BBC telly maker, her Bank of America IT manager) to some kind of ski-resort/Romany/travelling hybrid… in 10 short weeks…
… laughter… tears… something for everyone!
TO-DO-LIST
1 – get Airstream and tow-car ready (see caravan-geek post)
 sno mobile gets ready to roll 2 – Rent the Putney Flat:
We can’t afford to be away on this mad adventure and also pay the mortgage, so our home must be rented - thanks to Gumtree we managed to do so in extremely short order… to a local young family, spookily similar to ourselves (he’s even a beeb chap)… makes you doubt your uniqueness that sort of encounter… however, they are lovely and need exactly the same duration tenancy as we need to fill (they’re having a big loft extension done and need to be elsewhere with 2 very small children) – Iddi deftly handled the flat renting process and this is a pleasing, if solitary, TICK on the to-do list.
2 – Choose 3 month route through the alps:
It’s a big old drive from London to the alps but once you’re there, all of the major ski resorts in France are within a few hours drive of each other… so the plan is to up-sticks and head to a new ski holiday resort twice each week (approx 3 days per resort). That will make for approximately 30 ski resorts in 15 weeks. In my more self-aware moments, I realise that this mammoth number can’t really be achieved, but it’s a great target (that’s my opinion – Iddi thinks it verging on ridiculous).
Idalette has taken control of the route and campsite booking – she’s massively more organised than me and is proving the missing link in the business, as she creates “processes” for things that have heretofore relied on my (unreliable) memory – quite a relief!
3 – pack the flat
 are we packing away or just making things worse - essentials for the Grand Alpine Tour go into the Airstream (ski holiday clothes and a spectacular amount of Jimmy kit)
- some baby things go out on loan to my sister who has jus become pregnant with first baby!
- antiques go to safer places with friends and family
 as luck would have it Ive recently bought a car big enough to carry a grandfather clock - everything else, thanks to our lovely tenants, gets stored in the eaves of the flat – fantastic!
Here is the (lightly scathing) response Idalette gave to my pearls of caravan-packing-light wisdom:
[quote] … pretty straight forward except deciding what to take for three seasons’ weather when you only have one suitcase worth of space. “Layering” is the answer, apparently! So I will be wearing summer and autumn clothing together as my winter apparel. It may look strange, but it will get me noticed and “that is the whole idea” (!) [end-quote]
Well “layering” has always worked for me.
4 – “breaking-in”
A gentle introduction to caravan full-timing in a pleasant Caravan Club site in Surrey. Here we learned what we needed but had forgotten… and what we had brought that is useless and/or took up too much space.
It also gave me the chance to fix the final bits and bobs (eg make the fridge work, get the www.SNO.mobi logo stickers fitted to Airstream and car, buy and fit the 3G dongle aerial and cable, fit the super low wattage LED strip lights, etc, etc)
Mainly we were able to get used to living in the Airstream, jst as we’ll have to for over 3 months in over 30 european ski resorts – it was a bit of an adjustment but actually… once you know the drills… extremely comfortable and really great fun…
… and so…
 Jimmy is an Airstream full timer as Jimmy now keeps shouting at us…
 Lets GO Lets GO!
Tags: 3g, Airstream, dongle, european ski resorts, European skiing holidays, french sim, mobi, mobicarte, roaming, roaming data, ski holidays, ski resorts, sno, sno mobi, snoman, vintage, vintage airstream, www.sno.mobi
Posted in Airstream, European skiing holidays, Grand Alpine Tour | 4 Comments »
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
Not much about ski holidays or ski resorts, this post is for the Airstream lovers – you might want to skip this one if you’re not a vintage caravan nut… or just look at the pretty pictures!
1 – polish alluminium Airstream exterior:
From totally oxidised grey, to a mirror shine takes 2 people 2 weeks and 5 different grades of cutting and polishing – lets not get into that here! – if this is your bag, you can read an amazing Airstream polishing guide or get it done by pros like like Sarah Jane’s company American Caravans, as I did – this blog will stick to the “before” and “after” shots of the sno mobile
 43 year old Airstream looking lovely but very grey and oxidised  George works his magic on the old girl's bodywork  WOW! inspection before Grand Alpine Tour (inexplicably dressed as bandidos)
2 – make sno mobile road-legal in UK – also done by Sarah Jane’s talented chaps
- convert brakes from US “electric” to UK “over-run”
- replace running gear & suspension to work with over-run hitch
- replace towing hitch A-frame and add a hand brake
- convert road lights and add UK yellow turn-indicators (from a 60’s morris minor)
 Like J-Lo ?
3 – buy a huge 4×4 large enough to safely pull a 2.5 ton caravan at speed on the highway
- US trailers have a much higher “tongue” weight (direct downward weight on the tow-bar) so only a Landrover can really tow a big Airstream safely (our trailer is the longest and widest you can legally tow in the uk with a car) - Defender, Disco or Range Rover? – it transpires that only a Range Rover is heavier than our trailer (safer at highway speeds if tow car is heaveier than trailer), so I had the perfect excuse to empty the bank account and buy a cracking mota
 gets over 20mpg while pulling 2.5 ton Airstream - runs on bio diesel too!
4 – build a cot for Jimmy and suspend it from the Airstream ceiling
not much need be said – parts of the process, here in pictures
 take one Ikea cot and begin to improvise  power sanding is best accomplished with "air guitar" technique  campsite sheep will dispose of unwanted packaging  legs are so passe - for that true DIY look, at least 2 corners must be supsended from the ceiling or wall  behind bars  Jimmy loves his new Airstream bed
5 - fit a massive battery bank, so we can keep working on the laptops, even if we’re in a ski resort where we can’t hook up to electric
- for the tech lovers among you; 6x Trojan T105 6v batteries wired in series and parrallell to give nearly 700 amp hours at 12v (its a monster!) – I got a spark in to check my handy work and his old dad asked me if I used to work on submarines…
- a big 2.5KW inverter/charger which can charge them all back up over one night on hook up, or power prett much anything on 240v AC from the batteries (all hidden in dead space under the bed and nicely centralised weight between the axles)
- a big yellow builder’s transformer to give 110v US-style, so we can keep the fab vintage fridge and the US power outlets (if you check your phone and laptop charger, you’ll see it can work on either EU 230v 50hz or US 110v 60hz)
- 3x fairly inconspicuous UK power outlets plus 3x cigar lighter outlets for things like car chargers (charge things direct from 12v batteries without wasting lots of battery power in the inverter)
6 – get mobile broadband working in French and Swiss ski resorts (3G for the laptops)
we’ll need to be reliably online every day in lots of different mountains and not at rip-off UK roaming data prices! so I need to find a way to get French 3G (ie a dongle) working in remote mountain places inside an Airstream (which is basically a Faraday cage – ie not radio signals go in or get out!).
Why is this hard? (1) dongles are locked to the network you buy them from, so my O2 dongle won’t let me use a French Mobicarte SIM and (2) we need to get the 3G signal from outside the Airstream where its strong, to inside the Airstream where its warm and dry!
I found this excellent 3G antenna from Panormama Antennas and fitted it to the old American TV mast - the old mast has a very cool little winder inside so you can turn the aerial for best signal, from the inside! I love it when old tech meets new – a really nice way of keeping this brilliant piece of 60’s engineering in use!
NB: You MUST buy a dongle with an aerial socket and also get the right lead for that dongle – marvellous chap at Panorama Antenas helped me get the right kit and it gave me excellent 3G reception in an English campsite where I couldn’t reliably connect before.
I unlocked the dongle online at unlocked-dongle.co.uk but have yet to get it working with another SIM, so I won’t make this link active until I can tell you it actually works. You need to use a French SIM because you really don’t want to be surfing on a UK SIM with your laptop while abroad – the prices are jaw dropping!
 laptop online in remote mountain campsite via WiFi connection to old Nokia N95 - phone is suppliying its mobile 3G broadband via the clever Joiku Spot software My backup 3G connection is my old Nokia N95 which has Joiku-Spot installed - the clever (and cheap) bit of software allows this excellent little phone to act as a mobile wifi hotspot from anywhere using it’s 3G connection to the inernet, and shares the internet connection with my laptop via wifi! Again, simply buy the French Mobicarte SIM when over there… and pay for the Internet Max option (tip-1: don’t buy it by the hour as they try to make you… buy “Illimitee” for a monthly fee and you get at least 500MB allowance for around €12; tip-2: use webmail, not Outlook, because SMTP traffic is NOT included and will devour any credit you have on the account)
Update: Mobicarte unliited “lnternet Max” option has now gone – currently the only unlimited data per month plan is from 8pm to 8am but costs only €6 per month! so for now its internet cafes by day and 3G after supper – works great for me
6 - lots more little bits of this and that… and…
7 - the www.SNO.mobi logo stickers!
very chuffed with these so here are a few pictures of the finished sno mobile
 Jimmy gets first look at new sno logos  let me see!  looks pretty cool  I like it - what about the car?  just like our website  Jimmy thinking about helping the photographer  Jimmy helping the photographer  nice
Our wheels are ready – let’s get this sno on the road…
Tags: 3g, Airstream, dongle, european ski resorts, European skiing holidays, french sim, mobi, mobicarte, roaming, roaming data, ski holidays, ski resorts, sno, sno mobi, snoman, vintage, vintage airstream, www.sno.mobi
Posted in Airstream, European skiing holidays, Grand Alpine Tour | 1 Comment »
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