More news from the Advanced BC Course!

"The JONES Snowboard team"

Quick shot of my name up amongst the greats from the 'Jones' ISPO stand! I've been in communication with Jeremy about future developments of the range and it sounds like there's a lot of good things going to be happening over the next few years.

I'm particularly interested in helping with the development of the Splitboard range and we have some good ideas moving forward with regards this area. You can expect splitboards to be as light as and ride as good as a top end normal boards in the very near future. Watch this space!

I've been busy out amongst the high peaks again the last few days with my Advanced BC course.

On Wednesday we set off on an early start to hike and ride the Glacier de Tour Noire from the high Col d'Argentiere at just over 3500m.

On the atmospheric approach up the Glacier d'Argentiere.

You have to hike up the relatively flat Glacier d'Argentiere in the approach before reaching the base of the ascent.

Glacier Tour Noire runs just above the guys heads to the col on the top right.

It's a long climb, here we head up through the lower easier angled powder fields.

From the bottom the climb takes about 3 hours, the snow was deep and fresh and so I was braking the trail through wide open fields of powder (both up and down!).

The lower slopes are a nice angle and it gets steeper towards the top with some 2 nice 'steep and deep' sections between some quite open crevasses which are hidden from above so you need to remember where they are on the way down.

It was a beautiful crisp cold day and seeing as its full on holiday season out here, relatively quiet with only 5 other people on the mountain!

Daryl and Iain with boards back in riding mode at the Col d' Argentiere.

we reached the Col about 4 hours after putting the skins on way down at the start of the tour.

The ride down was epic, super deep, the steeps felt amazing high up and I even manged to stop lower down to get out my camera to snap a couple of shots of the guys coming down.

Iain in deep powder heaven!

Gwri carving down the lower powder fields.

Daryl reaps the rewards!

Big grins at the bottom!

An amazing trip and another first for me as with snowshoe teams I've never actually made the top before!

Thursday it snowed in the morning so we rode free freshies in Courmayeur and scored first lines off the top lift, the Arp as it openned just as we got there. A lucky score and some great fresh lines all the way into the Val Veni.

Friday was another big day, but the real icing on the cake. With fresh snow from the day before, we hiked out from the Arp in Courmayeur and climbed up Mont Fortin to score a superb descent of a hidden face that I found a few years ago when heli-boarding in the area.

Iain on the ride down from Mt Fortin

Daryl charging Mt Fortin.

Daryl moments before detonation!

Again, we had the mountains to ourselves and fresh lines all the way down to finish off another great week.

Not sure it can get much better than that but I'll keep trying!

Neil.