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Ok, much to the annoyance of my brother it has taken me a couple of weeks to sit down and write the blog. Sorry Piers!

I arrived on the 27th December after a long solo drive with a stinking cold, a broken CD player and an accidently wiped ipod. French radio just about kept me going on the 15 hour marathon.

The first day I was straight into some snow kiting teaching with a good clean wind to blow the cobwebs from the journey. Then all change. The following week brought one of the largest dumps of snow the Alps has seen over the Christmas/New Year period for a long time. There was thick heavy cloud,  gale force winds and endless days of snowfall. This put a bit of a dampner on any snow kiting tuition, but it did make for some good powder runs, beautiful snow laden trees and winter wonderland tobogann runs. Many of the resorts had to close for a few days due to the sheer quantity of snow with the infrastructure struggling to keep up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the storm broke the sun came out and we were fortunate to have some amazing snow kiting sessions comfortably powered on 9m Ozone Frenzys with fresh untracked snow.  The wind was perfect for powering up cliff faces to smash the wind lips as well as parking the kite to scream up 45 degree slopes. (No looping required) There were a couple of brits visiting one of which was here to take photos, one of which is below.

Since then we have had wall to wall sunshine everyday and as the masses returned to work we were able to find some good off-piste runs at some of our favourite resorts namely Belalp and Rothwald. Pretty much everyday has consisted of either teaching (mainly at weekends) to exploring the Simplon by kite or hitting the resorts for some epic snowboarding with Flora (my fiancee). Every year I come here there is always a new landscape to explore. The snowfalls in different wind strengths and directions mean that the Snow Kiting areas are always different. Exposed cliffs become steep snow covered drop ins, deep gullies drift in different ways creating different shapes and lines to take. Your favourite wind lip from a previous year is bigger or smaller, orientated in a different way or not there at all.  Round the corner though maybe a  new snow curled monster lip with a g-force inducing entry and re-entry. You maybe starting to realise that for me, part of snow kiting is about waveriding on snow. As you might see from below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As well as exploring cool landscapes below. This year I brought Pip the dog out to Switzerland. It was a bit of a gamble as to how she would cope with the cold. I also was n’t sure how she would fit in to the routine of driving around the mountains, snow kiting and spending time on the pistes. So far so good especially with her jacket and igloo to cwtch up in in the van.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s all for now. The end of Jan, Feb and March is going to be busy with lots of guests from the UK.

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