tufty

Sounds nasty, and I'll take your word for it. But it _doesn't_ mean that you would be dead, or a vegetable, without the helmet, even though you were no doubt better off with one than without. Is all I was saying, is all. Generally speaking, a cracked helmet comes from either a massively nasty crash, helmet abuse (even unknowing abuse - leaving a helmet in a car in full sunshine can damage it, for example), helmet ageing, or a manufacturing defect. In most cases, a helmet will not show damage to the internal foam after an accident (although the exterior might well do so) although completely unusable from a safety perspective, hence my question about damage - what your photo showed is, I hope, rare. Solid it may be, but still operating within it's design limits? Who knows? There's only one way to find out if your helmet is still within spec. Test it. To do this, you use the services of a testing laboratory, who will charge you ample sums of money for destroying your helmet in a scientific manner;-) Here's a thought for all the "ZOMG MY HELMET SAVED MY LIFE" crew: Would you ride without a helmet? Would you ride _hard_ without a helmet? If not, there's your risk compensation right there... By the way, I'm legally required to wear a seatbelt. And it's tufty :) Simon

Steak and blowjob day? Nah, it's Pi day. European Pi day is 22 July. Simon

BTW, http://www.bhsi.org/other.htm#snow Make of it what you will.

I know that it's a long way, but if you're going to be in the French Alps around the Chamonix / Megeve La Clusaz sort of area, drop me a line. Also, check out the meeting stuff on extremecarving.com. Simon

Just for the sake of poking a stick into a hornet's nest, I'll dispute that fact. That was a photo of a cracked helmet that had presumably sustained an accident. Not knowing the circumstances of the accident itself, I'm obviously blowing smoke, but... Helmets are designed to fail. That's what they do. You fall, they hit the hard stuff and fail catastrophically. That very failure absorbs the impact and hopefully saves your bean without causing any other injury. Even 'small' impacts can seriously affect a helmet's structural proerties, that's why you should replace helmets if you drop them, etc. So, the simple fact that a helmet, post-trauma, is cracked, is not evidence that you would have been dead. Had you ever fallen in that helmet before? Dropped it? Slung it into a backpack and dropped that / dropped stuff on it / smacked it against a wall, etc? This is not an argument against helmets, of course, despite the fact I continue to ride without one. Still, my birthday tomorrow, and there may be a Giro coming my way. simon

Hey Lex. Powder + first time on an alpine board is a bad combination, as you by now know. Start on the greens. Blues at most, but flat blues. Do the norm. Do the norm some more. Practice bending your knees. Stay away from the reds. Stay away from the blacks. Get the feel of carving on the almost-flat. Get bored with it. When you feel like you could do that green run full speed riding switch, that's when you get to move up to the steeper stuff. That 'board wants to turn me hard" feeling you had on backside is the board starting to carve to its preferred radius for the angle / speed you have. It's scary. And fun. Learn to love it. Your board has a relatively tight radius, it's going to really haul when you have it cranked. Be thankful you didn't start with a 9m radius board (as I did, my first real carved turn at speed tried to ram my boots where the sun doesn't shine) Good start. Welcome. Have fun Simon

Girl's blouse. I was out in 1m of powder yesterday, on skis. Salomon Force 9s, 205. Yes, it was hell on my buggered knee, but I didn't fancy taking the Blast SL out for a submarining expedition :) I do fancy a pair of those little racecarvers, though. Simon

I wear the stuff that I work in, cheap arse that I am. It's made by SNC, and the trousers are generally waterproof for at least 2 years (that's 2 years of wearing the same trousers, in the snow and rain, for 8-10 hours, every, day for four months). The third year can get a little leaky if you end up standing around in hard rain. We get to keep them after 3 years. I doubt that they are cheap, but put it this way - my six year old SNC jacket is still waterproof and warm, and my jacket of choice for riding "for myself", whilst my similar vintage "named brand" jacket and trousers are completely dead. SNC don't appear to have a web presence, sadly. If I was looking for an all-in-one suit, it would have to be one like this, the rain and snow would avoid you. Simon

Oblivious. Personal security bubble. Not necessarily stupid in my view, just not really concious of what they are doing. There's levels of that, of course. Not paying attention to a chairlift is one thing, taking completely inexperienced (i.e never been on skis / snowboards ever) learners up to an area of a resort where they will hit reds / blacks is another, skiing off-piste on a black flag day where if you trigger a slide it will hit a slope is completely another. Proportions are different, too - the first is probably 50% of our users, the second we see about 5 cases a week, and the latter I saw yesterday. You're right about the kids, with the exception that, once shown how to do it and left to their own devices, kids generally manage to get on and off lifts better than their parents :) You need a helmet :) /ducks Simon

Like I said before - a momentary lapse. I'm not disagreeing with you that at least the majority of accidents happen due to user misuse, but it's not necessarily stupidity. Inattention, lack of education in how to use the lift itself, inability to see the danger, not often sheer stupidity. The kiddie that dropped off my lift did so because he moved when the adult accompanying him had lifted the bar. But kids do move. So do adults. With the bar down, those kids run almost zero risk of an unexpected freefall experience. I'd suggest it would be close to impossible for a concious adult[1] to fall off a chair with the bar down. Had another near one at the beginning of the season. Father with young (6 or so) child. Rather than teaching child how to use lift properly, father bodily lifts child as chair approaches. Manages to get the rear of child's skis stuck between the bottom of the seat and the frame of the chair. This is putting quite a bit of tension on the skis, the kiddie is having trouble sitting down, father has pulled the safety bar down. I've seen what's happened, and have slammed the stop button, am running down to try and unjam the kid's skis when the father starts raising the bar. Of course, the kid's skis are trying to catapult him out of the chair and face down into the snow, he's screaming for his father to stop, I'm screaming for his father to stop, I arrive and hang onto the footrests to stop him doing it. Explain situation, unjam skis, all is well. 2 seconds later and the kid would most likely have a bloody nose (at least). Nope. Not the bar. That's down to misuse again. I assume it was footrests and not the bar itself - to get clouted by the actual bar on my lift would require you to be either about 9 feet tall or leaning so far forward that you would have fallen out of the chair in a stop situation anyway :) We see quite a few 'obliviots' who go through the gate, then stand rigid at the end of the runway, staring forward despite the shouts of "mind the chair". Quite a good proportion of them get a good belt on the noggin from the frame of the chair, which has a tendency to make you sit down and rub the back of your head. Maybe they should claim the chair is dangerous and needs redesigning? Simon [1] It's possible for pedestrians or "tired" skiers to use our lift to come down, but if you're drunk or badly injured, you can't go down without signing a waiver for exactly that reason.

Well, I wasn't trying to scold, merely pointing out the dangers that you don't necessarily see as a user of a chairlift rather than as the person responsible for a chairlift. It amuses me[1] that people will insist on using helmets, largely because of the perceived danger from other slope users, but find it acceptable to fail to use the provided safety equipment where they personally can't see the danger. Believe me, the danger is there - whether it's a moment's inattention on your part or the part of the people on the lift with you, a technical failure, meterological conditions or some combination of any / all, the danger is there, and just as real as the danger of having some out of control obliviot slam into the back of your head with the tips of his/her skis. According to the Sunday edition of the Dauphine Libere, another kiddie had a fall from a lift over this side of the pond a few days back, in another resort to the one I work on. 2 smashed vertebrae, currently in critical condition. Yes, the bar was up. If you choose to ride with the bar up - fine, as long as you don't do it on my lift[2] and don't put anyone else in danger by doing so. Personally, I think it's a stupid thing to do, but that's only my opinion. Simon [1] I do, however, have an "odd" sense of humour [2] or at least, if you do, that you pull the bar down and then lift it back up where I can't see you, as I am legally obliged to stop the lift if I see you with the bar up.

Never mind the car. Did the blood stain the topsheet?

Whe people fall off lowering or raising the bar, they are generally not high up and not over hardpack. Here's 4 season's worth of driving a chairlift: Departure end : I have _never_ seen anyone fall off a lift due to lowering the bar. Fall off due to having their sticks in the wrong place, being complete tools, etc, yes. But never due to lowering the bar. Arrival end : I've never seen anyone fall when raising the bar. I've seen them fall on debarking due to raising the bar too late, go round the pulley and cause an emergency stop due to not raising it at all, etc. I have _once_ seen someone get caught on the bar. I have seen hundreds of incidents of people getting caught on the rest of the chair, and I only man the arrival end of the lift for an hour a day, at lunchtime when there's nobody about. What I have seen is an incident of a small child falling 30+ feet onto hardpack due to lifting the bar en route. I never want to see it again. Basically, and please don't take this personally, but I think you're very, very wrong. [edit]According the the Syndicat Nationale des Telepheriques de France http://www.sntf.org for the season 2004/2005 there were 15 serious accidents for 702,000,000 passages in the whole of France. At least one of those was a small child trapped and subsequently killed in a 'rolling carpet' travelator that resulted in serious legal consequences for the people responsible (they had turned off the security mechanisms as it kept stopping) and one other was an English child at Chatel who fell 10m from a chairlift onto a grooming machine 25m from the departure. I can't find a full breakdown of accidents, those two were two I remember from last season. Not sure if the helicopter full of pisteurs killed at Chamonix last year in colliion with a lift cable is included in the number. Here's a video of the typical chairlift accident : http://www.zone-videos.net/video-1034-telesiege-accident.html And here's one of what you do not want to see. http://tufty.ath.cx/~simon/chairlift.wmv Simon

You _believe_ that it is unnecessary. Having seen a child fall off of our lift, 8-10m onto hardpack[1][2], earlier this season after lifting the bar to adjust leg placement, I'd say you are dead wrong. If there was no need for a safety bar, there wouldn't be one. Let's look at what constitutes a chairlift... there's the chair, which is suspended from the cable. The suspension articulates both side to side and front to back, and in theory allows the chair to swing just enough but not too much. However, it has to be damp out the swinging otherwise there would be pools of puke under the entire length of the lift. This damping is accomplished by adjusting the suspension, and sometimes the adjustment slips, either due to worn pieces, cold, or other reasons. The fact that the adjustment has slipped is _not_ obvious to the operator - The lift I work on has one chair that we have to adjust twice daily and the only reason we know about it is because it nearly broke my frickin' leg when I got on, it de-adjusts to a completely rigid state. The chairs quite often have seat covers on them to make the ride more comfortable. They can also make the chair more slippery. Next, we have a cable, running over a bunch of pulleys. Depending on the loading of the lift, this rises and falls. Then we have the main tractor and return pulleys, bastarding great things which can not allow the cable to slip. Either the tractor or return pulley is on a moving base that takes up the slack in the cable as it stretches / loads. the tractor pulley is generally equipped with a big-ass emergency brake. Then there's the whole drive mechanism, usually an electric motor with a diesel backup. There is a second "normal usage" brake in the drive mechanism. So, there's the machanism. Now, what happens when it's running? Let's assume my lift, which is a "pince fixe" lift (i.e. the chairs don't come off the cable). It runs at 2.5 m/s full speed and 1.5m/s slow speed. There are 3 ways in which the operator can stop the lift: 1: Electric stop. This doesn't touch the brakes, instead powers up the phases of the motor to stop it dead. We don't generally use this unless we're doing "precision" positioning work (for example moving the chairs about) as it run a risk of burning out the motor 2: Normal stop. Turns off the motor, and activates the normal brake. This stops the lift fairly gently (roughly 5 to 7m of movement before a complete stop). 3: Emergency stop. Turns off the motor and activates both brakes. This stops the lift fairly rapidly (roughly 3 to 4 metres of movement before complete stop), takes an age to rearm, and generally scares people. There is another stop, which is the failure mode stop. If the electromechanicals detect that the lift is running too fast, slipping backwards, the gearbox is failing, the cable has overstretched, etc, it slams _everything_. This is basically an emergency stop plus an electric stop, and it stops the lift _dead_. If you're on the lift when this happens, it's terrifying. This is all pretty much common to all chairlifts, the only real difference between "pince fixe" and "debrayable" lifts apart from the mechanics that hold the chair to the line and the the fact that the chairs come off the line on a debrayable is that a debrayable runs at much higher speeds. So, your assertion as to the fact it's safe to leave the bar up: You have an interface between bum and chair that is of an unknown coefficient of friction depending on chair cover, trouser type, and weather condition. You have a chair that may or may not swing in the way it is intended to. Even in the best case, it doesn't swing completely freely, so there will always be a certain tendency for your trousers to slide on the seat when the lift stops. When the lift stops, the cable "bounces". Depending on where a chair is on the line, how loaded the line is, and a host of other factors, this may coincide with the forward or rearward swing of the chair, and will affect the coefficient of friction between chair and trouser either in a negative or positive way. A failure mode stop is immediate, and an emergency stop is near-immediate. This is why we stop our lift if anyone gets near the first pylon without having pulled down the bar. And having looked on in horror as a child plummeted from the lift, knowing full well that I could do absolutely nothing, I'd ask you, for the good of the mental health of your local lifties, to pull down the bar. Simon [1] Without the lift stopping, even [2] He got off lightly, 2 smashed wrists, one broken leg and a few broken ribs.

Well, I just had 2 days of shovelling. Luckily, I was asked to go replace some people at the top of the resort while they had lunch, so I got to play as well. Of course, a hot blast 160 SL and hardboots plus 40cm of powder (on the untracked bits) and 40cm of chopped up crud (on the heavily tracked bits) plus a fouled up lateral ligament on my front knee made for some "interesting" moments, but hey. Beats shovelling, at least. "tempete de neige" tomorrow and Saturday, by all accounts. We'll see what that brings... Simon

Shovel. That's what I end up doing on powder days. Shovel the snow to get the car out of the garage. Drive to work. Shovel the snow to get the lifts working. Watch as my colleagues go up and track all the snow. Sigh. Shovel some more. Watch as the tourists go and track it up some more. Sigh some more. Shovel some more. By lunchtime it's not worth getting anything other than the crud skis out, the slopes are too chopped up to be worth bothering with on a race deck and the backcountry is too far out to get to in an hour. After lunch, shovel some more, then drive home, shovel some more to get the car back in the damn garage, ready to do it all again tomorrow. Anyone want my job? Simon

Today, we had 3 people helicoptered off the slopes. 1 snowboarder with smashed wrists and a broken leg, 1 kid who took the boarder's plank full-face, and the friend who took the boarder and ended up with a broken leg. This wasn't actually due to human-gating, but the related sport of snow-showering. It makes for an unfunny end to the holiday. Simon

Yesterday, guy arrives in the lift line with a brand spanking new hot blast GS. And a brand spanking set of super-cheap plastic softboot bindings, and some set of budget-basement softboots. Boot overhang all over the place, of course. I asked him where he'd rented it (intending to put that shop on my personal blacklist) but no, he'd bought it, full retail price. "I liked the look of the board, the guy in the shop recommended hardboots but I thought they looked uncomfortable and anyway the soft boots were loads cheaper..." Takes all sorts, I guess. Simon

Well, that's that for a while. Coming down gently after having eaten at lunchtime today, not going too fast but cutting some nice trenches, all of a sudden someone screams at me from behind, I tense up, miss a transition and end up with the board going into a large hole while my head tried to make a new one on the slope. Of course the straightline skier who wanted to pass me didn't bother to bloody stop So, pick myself up, ow that hurt and suddenly - eeeeagh! Left knee is screaming pain. Boarded down anyway, very gingerly, knee's okay with normal articulation but as soon as it twists it's hellish. Medial collateral ligament pulled, knee brace for 3 weeks. Drat it all. The snow's bloody awesome. Simon

Husquvarna make scary bikes. I've only ever been really scared by 2 machines; one was a KH750, and the other was a race-tuned Husquvarna WR360. I owned the WR for a while, and it scared me until the day I sold it. I'm now scared that I'll go out and buy another one. Simon

Funny this should come up. Although I don't knowingly suffer from shin bang, or painful shins or whatnot, I realised in the shower the other day that my boots have, without me noticing, managed to strip all the hair off my lower shins. Looks well odd. But you may find shaving works. Simon

Of course. But the difference is not anything discernible, and down to personal preferences. As far as I'm concerned, jumping off a 250 foot cliff is bloody stupid, but hey, if it's what he wants / needs to do, then fine. Remember, personal estimations of relative risk differ considerably : there are people who would suggest that screaming around a racetrack on a highly tuned 400cc motorcycle is stupidly dangerous, but who would themselves happily ride a bicycle to work through rush-hour traffic, or who smoke, or, or, or... Advice to wear helmet, etc, is all well and good, but when it comes down to it, I'll make those decisions myself, and leave others to do likewise. As such, you're welcome to completely ignore this, but it was my opinion that you came across a little harsh and preachy in your condemnation of others based on their actions and presumed family circumstances. Just saying, is all. After all, if someone said to you "that alpine snowboarding is extremely dangerous, you have no right to be doing it if you have kids" you'd probably not be chuffed, I expect. Simon

So you can have kids who say "my dad was a sad man who did nothing in case it was dangerous, and died of a heart attack at 40 anyway"? Sorry, but balls to that. When I peg it, I'd like my kids to say "well, at least he didn't regret anything". Because that's how I'll feel about my parents when they go, and it's how I felt about my grandfather when he died. And my grandfather really was a mad bugger. Simon

One of these was my summer ride until it got stolen and trashed One of these is my current summer ride. I'd go back to another FZR in an instant, but I can't find one over here for decent money. Simon

Am I the only one to prefer short boards? I guess so. I'd have to say that my favourite board of all is my current carving tool, a Hot Blast 160. It's a slalom board, and it shows; everything happens blinding fast, including the 'ejects' if you get it all wrong. It's not going to be the tool for the OP, especially if he wants GS turns, but it's my favourite, so there. It's also a particularly vile shade of lime green. The silberfeils are really nice boards, I enjoyed riding the one I had on loan, a bit too soft and floppy for me though. Had a play with a few boards over the weekend, nothing exotic just the usual 'grand public' stuff we get over here : a couple of the 'softer' Hots (a 'shine' and - umm - something else) and a 'Fanatic', which were horrible compared to the blast, all floppy with no 'snap', an Oxygen Proton which seemed like it could be quite a lot of fun for the money and an F2 Speedcross. This latter I am seriously considering buying as a powder / chop day board, loads of fun on piste and wide enough that it should be relatively good in the puff. ISTR quite enjoying the Burton alpine boards I borrowed from a friend, No idea what model, must have been around 170 long, flat blue with '2000' on the base. It was, as they say, a good crack. But it's been a while. But when it comes down to it, it doesn't matter what the weather's like. I always seem to pick up that vile green slalom board and head out with it. Back to the original question - of the boards I've ridden, I'd recommend the silberpfeil if you're after something that doesn't spank you. And a Blast GS if you want a good smacking from time to time. Simon