Thursday 27 September 2012


Woke up this morning to Snow on Les Houches…yes Les Houches! Its got to be the first time I've seen snow on Les Houches in September ever!!

I'm sure it's not a first but with snow down to 1400m this morning the CHamonix valley is looking very wintery and its kind of a bit of a wake up call to the fact that the coming season is actually just around the corner…Shit, I've tons to do before then…better dig this 60m trench for a new phone line before the ground starts freezing!

I've just done 2 weeks of cycle guiding for GPM10, a perfect Tour du Mont Blanc followed immediately by a Trans Pyrenees, again in perfect conditions. 2 amazing trips and I came back with super strong legs just in time for no one else to be around for me to smash it up with…

The Track cycling season is just starting. I went down there a couple of days ago for a quick spin, had forgotten how intense it is just riding around and around. I looked down at my heart rate monitor after a couple of short max sprint intervals and thought it must be broken. How can it get that high when there are no hills to climb? Great fun, I've a new Dolan DF3 frame running and it feels fantastic…come on legs!

The Snowboard movie premier's are doing the rounds and I'm going to be at the Tamworth 'Big Bang' event this weekend giving a 'Jones Snowboards BC safety' presentation. Just spent the last 2 days cramming and preparing for it thinking I had to leave today only to wake up this morning and see I'd got the date wrong and leave tomorrow…Great, another day on the bike before I go…I'll start that 60m trench when I get back after the weekend…or the winter…who needs phones and internet anyway!

Things are slipping into position for the coming winter. Ruth has been busy sorting out accom etc for the Tignes pre season course so those joining me on that can start to organise and get excited about it.

Those on Kashmir will need to start to think about applying for visas pretty soon. I'll start to look at all of that after this weekend…my October mission is to get everything ready for the winter…I'll dig that trench in November?

Ok, anyway, all is good…I need to get on with some internet browsing now, pick out kit for the winter and drool over bike and boards before this temporary phone line breaks…Ok, maybe I need to get on with that trench today?

I'll leave you with this shot of the group leaving the camp in Greenland 2011. I love this shot, it shows how remote the camp is, the perfect snow, how big the area is, the slopes in the background, the 'Evening light walls' are about a 2 hours access hike away!





You have a great view of our first descent lines of 'Couloir of the Gods' centre back and the 'Little Alaska face' Back right.

Everything is way bigger than it looks. The first time we headed over there we thought it would be about a half hours hike, a couple of hours later we were still looking across the Glacier at it all wondering if we'd ever get up there. Once the track was in and we worked out the best way up there we got it down to a 2 hour trip to the drop in. Of course midd trip it snowed again and we had to start all over again, putting in a new access track and re tracking all those descents of untracked deep fresh powder under perfect blue skies with no one around for thousands of miles…Obviously it was hard work but we managed it…

Until next time,

Take it easy'ish!

Neil