Fresh snow at last!

The clear skies have finally let up and the clouds rolled in to bring some fresh snow at long last!

After some 7 weeks of dry crystal clear skies we finally have some fresh snow to ride, not here in Chamonix, but as seems to be the norm this season, through the tunnel in Italia.

It seems we live the wrong side of the mountain this season, I've been riding in Italy more than I've been riding in Chamonix this season as the conditions through on the other side of the tunnel have simply been consistently better.

Not good in terms of tunnel costs but way better in terms of getting in some good turns on the board, so well worth it at the end of the day.

So I'm running my first splitboard week this week, I've been looking forward to this for quite a while, hoping to get out and get in some good touring and some new exploring. After 7 weeks fo sun, perfect conditions for the touring, the weather has turned and so we've had to make do with riding fresh powder all week instead.

Well you can't win them all can you!

Getting set for our first tour.

We started the week with sunny skies and set about getting used to the splitboards with an easy tour. There were some funny antics going on as the guys leanred how to and how not to perfom their first kick turns when skinning up hill, but at the end of the first day everyone was both stoked and surprised at how well the Splitboards performed both up and down the mountain.

Simon gets some surprisingly fresh turns at Le Tour!

Adam on the Jones Solution getting some fresh turns on day 1 at Le Tour.

We started off at Le Tour where after 7 weeks of now snow we actually found some very good turns in crystallised untracked cold snow, Nice!

It then started snowing in Courmayeur so we headed through and rode epic powder in the trees Tuesday and Wednesday. On Tuesday I rode the Flagship 168XL which I now love. On Wednesday with the snow getting steep and deep I broke out the Hovercraft 156 again and had an amazing day ripping tight lines through the trees with the guys screaming close behind.

Today, we had a bit of a tour from the Helbronner planned, but as we got to the top of the lifts the cloud came in so we opted for a run down Glacier Toule instead.

Simon, James (in lovely matching kit, yes I've been selling off some jkts) and Gwri get the goods riding the Splits on Glacier Toule.

Once we got down the steps onto the snow the skies cleared and we had a great run down the middle of the Glacier in super deep powder.

Gwri in full flow!

Adam deep in it.

Xavier loving the Jones Solution in the deep snow!

Lower down things started to warm up a bit and so with the Avalanche risk rising we headed on down and over to Courmayeur with the splitboards where I had a new line in mind which I'd never ridden before as I didn't ever fancy the walk out. Now with the splits on our feet we dove straight in there and found an amazing deep fresh untracked powder line with some great pillow lines for a finish. We then split the boards down and skied out of there, Great!

I finally seem to have the Splitboard sussed in terms of performance. It's taken a while, but today this afternoon I finally had it riding and feeling like the non split Flagship and now I'm just super excited about the possibilities this is opening up.

With the Splitboard thing, you definitely have to spend some time getting the whole binding thing right. I'm riding the Spark R&D binding but have customised them to work for me and now have them set up just right and they now feel and work great. I've also worked out today that my board rides and feels better if I ride a wider stance than on my other Flagships. As the board is softer, you don't really want to use the middle of the board too much and so with a wider stance I can bend/flex and carve the tip and tail into and out of the turns much more effectively and it works really well. I also dropped my front foot angle 3 degrees to 18 which produces greater outward pressure through my front foot, my rear foot is somewhere around -9 which gives me great power to the rear contact points of the board. I think my stance width is now around 72cm (I ride 70 on the Flagship) and it feels pretty comfortable and powerful.

I'd definitely recommend you try a wider stance than normal if you're riding a splitboard! Some of the guys widened theirs too with the same results.

Anyway, tomorrow we're off on an exploration tour somewhere up the Val Ferret, a line I've often looked at and now have the opportunity to check out. It's the same aspect and altitude as the amazing powder run we found this afternoon so fingers crossed it'll be a good one.

All good!

Neil.