Snow Club Blog – Ed and Graham take delivery
A month ago Graham Bell and Ed Leigh were preparing for their annual
drive down to France with a car full of skiing and snowboard gear ready to
start a season of BBC Ski Sunday filming. In amongst packing and unpacking boxes
Graham handed Ed a shiny new box of Garmin toys. Here's Ed's first impressions
"GPS have for some time both
intrigued and bewildered me. I am the first to admit that I’ve never been a huge follower
of technology but having recently been introduced to some of the products out
there by a guide friend I have started to show an interest. To me the function
of GPS devices in extended backcountry treks is obvious as they provide such
valuable information and back up in what is essentially a survival situation.
But for everyday use on the mountain they have always seemed rather cumbersome.
dancing Dakota 20 and the other the Foretrex GPS watch. I’ve never seen a GPS
this compact before so was instantly drawn to the practicality. (I like things
small, if you watch any of the Ski Sunday or High Altitude series you will note
Grahams pack is always twice the size of mine). After slogging out the links
for Ski Sunday and watching it dump for three days Graham and I finally made it
onto the slopes. First priority was filming some innovation pieces for the
show, but once finished we were free to get stuck into some very good snow.
lot of the best runs and as you can imagine we weren’t
hanging around. I by the end of the day had hit 55mph and travelled more than
30 miles. If you’re interested then the routes taken are the Banane, an off
piste run to the skiers right of the Face and then there are a couple of runs
off the Borsat ridge, the latter is a bit of a hike but if you watch the Ski
Sunday product innovation section on Rocker you’ll see why we made the effort.
You will also see the Olympic cable car and the La Daille funival lifts on
there as well as our final descent down the Orange back into La Daille.
pick up a Geocache behind the Rocher du Charvet, but tired legs from an
afternoon of powder took their toll and we were forced to call it a day"
Stay tuned for Ed and Graham's next Snow Club blog instalment and stay up to date with the latest edition of Ski Sunday on the BBC iPlayer
