Apple kernels

Some interesting speculation on where Apple might be heading - a native Win32 API implementation in a new kernel? One can sure see how this would piss off Microsoft. Customers would be delighted, of course.

Lisa E8

Lisa Rands recently climbed 'Gaia' (E8), Johnny Dawes' Black Rocks grit masterpiece. You may recall the heart-stopping opening sequence from the film 'Hard Grit', where JMTT falls from the top of it and is very lucky to walk away reasonably unscathed. That's Lisa's second E8 after the other JD masterpiece, 'End of the Affair' at Curbar. She's the only woman in the world operating at this level on God's own rock.

Chris & Nana

St Anton 05 042
Originally uploaded by hvs.

Vara vanner Chris och Nana ska gifta sig! Chris tog modet till sig och friade pa ett Walesiskt berg under en MTB-tripp. Vi ar overlyckliga for dem - vara varmaste gratulationer!

Manchester Passion

Tim Booth as Jesus doing Joy Division's 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'? Brilliant. Followed by Smith's 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now'. Genius.

The Gospel According to Madchester.

Ship to billing address only

For some incomprehensible reason, certain on-line retailers appear to have started to only ship to the billing address. This is supposedly due to some security concerns. To me, this makes on-line shipping worse than useless. If I have to take a day off work, hypothetically speaking, to sit and wait for a delivery specified as 'between 8am and 6pm' the cost to me can easily double, and negates the convenience of on-line shopping. If I can't take the time off, I have to go to some central depot to collect the item myself.

If that's the case, I'd rather take the day off, go to town and visit actual shops, handle the merchandise and shop the traditional way. The attraction of on-line shopping is that one can have the product sent to wherever one happens to be.

Look, eXpansys, Dabs, Watford Electronics etc etc -- can you really afford to reject custom like this?

EFR

Today we completed an EFR course - Emergency First Response. This is a jazzed up (or dumbed down, depending on your viewpoint) first aid qualification, designed by PADI primarily to be able to do their own first aid courses which form a prerequisite for certain dive qualifications. We intend to take the Rescue Diver course whilst we're out in Sweden for six months.

I've done first aid courses before, notably through my 'military' service many, many years ago. Just like with any other skill you don't maintain or use, it fades quickly. CPR has been simplified a lot from back in those days. Many people, even those who are trained to give CPR, frequently hesitate in a sharp situation, afraid that they will not get it right and make the situation worse, rather than better. Our instructor reinforced the point that if someone's suffering a cardiac arrest, they're tecnically dead, or 'in the worst possible state of health'. Whatever you do, you can only make the situation better. You can't be deader than dead. Imperfect CPR is infinitely better than perfect CPR witheld.

Lafaille

The Observer recently published an excellent article on the life and death of Jean-Christoph Lafaille.

A truly inspirational character, and the mountaineering world is a lesser place without him.

Jump

Just witnessed Paul Anka do a 'swing' version of Van Halen's 'Jump' on Parkinson.

Very disturbing. Aren't there laws against this sort of thing?

Walk like an Egyptian

Saw the nice people at Fracture Clinic again yesterday. The consesus is that my leg wasn't broken. Probably. Either way, I'm free to walk, if I can. Basically, the general idea is that if it hurts when I do 'this', don't do it. I can sort of walk without crutches, in a slow, hobbling kind of way, and the doctor guesstimated that it would probably be at least a month before I can start trying to run again. Nevermind.

I got a new laptop, by the way. As a die-hard Microsoft free Zone, I've taken the plunge and got a wintel machine. Why? Well, after a few days of aquainting myself with the machine, I ask myself the same question. Don't get me wrong, the machine itself is a model of lovliness as all Sonys tend to be, but compared to the sleek, good looking efficiency of Apple's OS/X, or the industrial bullet-proofness of Solaris or the clean minimalist lines of FreeBSD, Microsoft's latest OS is just dire. Just dreadful. Why do people accept such brokenness in software that they would never dream of accepting in other engineering disciplins? Of course, I used windows at work for a long time, as a developer when I was forced to, but I had hoped that as a home machine it would be acceptable, but it just isn't.

I can live with its ugliness. I can probably learn to cope with its long-windedness in getting anything set up, and the constant reboots (why in this day and age of modular kernels do people accept this?). Possibly, I can overlook the constant 'handholding', the 'are you sure' and 'do you know what you are doing' pop-ups. What I can't live with are the little broken details, how things just not quite want to play together. Why do I need a mega-application (Norton Internet Security came pre-installed) just to stop the box from getting hacked, 0wn3d or overrun by spyware? Well, *I* don't, as I know how to secure a machine, primarily by not using any application written by Microsoft, ever. Why should one trust a software company that expects you to run a 'live update' such that they can install a constant stream of patches to correct bugs and software insecurities?

I'm itching to put a proper OS on this box.

Culinaria

We went for a meal to mark Sarah's 29th yesterday, at Culinaria on Chandos road, very close to where we're staying this week with Henk. I know that the term is frequently abused by the Guardian set, but this is a real 'foodie' restaurant. Blissfully short menue that changes every week. Simple, but fabulous dishes cooked to perfection using only the best quality ingredients. Culinaria is run by Stephen and Jude Markwick who for the last 13 years or so have run one of Bristol's absolute best high end restaurants, Markwick's, down on Corn Street. Culinaria is less 'noveau' and more, eh, foodie. Rumor has it that they haven't had an empty seat any night since the day they opened, which is quite impressive indeed, given its non-centre location. Needless to say, booking is essential, and I can only add my voice to the list of people recommending this place. I had Poulet au Riz Basquaise - a pot-roasted chicken dish, and Sarah went for the Grilled Fillet of Dover Sole. Both were sublime, and although not cheap, certainly not by any stretch of imagination the most expensive meal I've had in Bristol. Mains coming in at between £11 and £14 felt like a steal for the quality. Sarah then indulged in a Warm Chocholate Brownie with hot chocholate sauce and vanilla icecream whereas I tried the British cheese selection. Service was competent but understated, like it should be.

A great addition to the restaurant scene in Bristol.

Legs

Went to Fracture Clinic at Frenchay today. I'm continually amazed by the quality of care available through the frequently picked on NHS. Seen one day after I saw my GP, the French xrays were dismissed as unusable as the clarity and quality were below par. New ones were shot, and the conclusion is that my leg is in fact not broken at all. Cheers all around. However, my leg is 'messy' since the last break and umpteen operations, so the French doctors are not to be berated for playing it safe, given the medival xray gear they had at their disposal. I had the cast sawn off, and my foot prodded. It's still a bit sore, blue and battered, and the doctor was a bit reluctant to have me start running around on it, so I'm now sporting a fancy brace attached with various Velcro contraptions. It's removable, which means that having a shower becomes less of a hassle, so I'll be smelling better in the process. Due to revisit in a week's time for a reassessment, and hopefully to start my rehabilitation properly.

Three cheers for the NHS. And for not breaking my leg.

Stef up at the Byron Bay lighthouse

Stef up at the Byron Bay lighthouse
Originally uploaded by hvs.

Australia is warmer than the UK. And drier.

A Sort of Homecoming

So, the story ends here, sort of. We're back in the land of warm beer, constant rain, rolling green hills and BBC Radio 4, and very nice it is, too. We flew back courtesy of CheesyJet, which in combination with a million other skiers at Geneva Airport was a rather underwhelming experience. So, dear CheesyJet, here are a few elementary hints on how to make the Geneva Airport experience a smidgen more pleasant.

1. A strict no checkin prior to 2h before departure means more, not less chaos in a place where all people arrive at the same times. Busses arrive from the bigger resorts only a few times a day so many people have to wait around for hours before being allowed to check in. With the bulky luggage involved in skiing, this means that the people who ARE allowed to check in struggle to do so due to all the others in the way. This is too obviously stupid. A numpty could work out the consequences. Spoke to a very nice gentleman who'd bust his knee - first injury in 40 years of skiing. He skies every year in Zermatt for a week, and - until now - always flies BA. However, this time the BA flight had meant a very early start so against his better judgement decided to fly CheesyJet on the homeward bound leg. He was caught up in the melee, too, and vowed never to peruse their services again.

2. Your system of forcing all people to use the checkin machines first will only save time if they actually work. If they don't work, or constantly crash, as was the case at Geneva, this means that queues get longer and tempers more frayed. Incomprehensibly, your checkin staff does not appear to have the option of checking in people at the desk, which rather amusingly led to your staff continuously having to leave their desk and queue up infront of the few working machines in the hall to try to fix the issues of people not getting their boarding passes or baggage tags.

3. When the machines break, and frustrated passengers ask your staff what to do, if the member of staff then says to line up in front of the handicap checkin, the frustrated passengers will be more, not less frustrated when they reach the front of the queue and get turned away because they actually don't need special boarding assistance. Maybe educating your staff such that they all agree on the procedure might be in order?

4. Some people do need special assistance - like me. If multiple seats have been booked, and payed for, to ease the pain of a broken leg, say, then maybe your staff need not query this to try to get the passenger to go back to a single seat just because the flight is overbooked. Not all crippled passengers have the advantage of a Sarah to argue their case. If I pay for three of something in advance, I expect to get three of that something, rather than one, without having to make a scene.

Anyway. Once we got on the plane, the rest of the trip was uneventful. And I really appreciated my three seats.

We'd arranged for a hire car at Bristol Airport such that we could transport ourselves and all our kit down to Sarah's parents in sunny Dorset. They've kindly let us park our cars on their drive way whilst we've been away. Now, Sarah had left her driver's license at home, given that we didn't expect to need it, which presented us with a tasty little problem when it came to picking up our hire car. However, Sarah managed to wangle it beforehand over the phone. She could sell sand to the Arabs, I tell you. She also managed to talk herself past the jobsworth airport security guard to pick me and all the luggage up outside the door.

It is nice to be back, even for a limited time.

We'll head back to Bristol tomorrow so that I can see my doctor. We'll be staying with our good friend Henk who's kindly offered to put us up for a few nights. After all orthopedics have been sorted we'll be coming back down here to Dorset to stay with Sarah's parents for a few weeks to be spoilt with good food and drink, and in Sarah's case - cat therapy. Cats are funny. They seem to prefer laptop keyboards - the moment you sit down and switch your laptop on, they jump up and sit on it.

We're heading out to Sweden after that for an extended period. Sarah's starting an intensive Swedish course on the 8th of May, and we expect to stay out until about October.

The Financing of a Fracture

If you're in France, don't break a leg without a solid insurance. In a ski resort, the business of fixing up the results of accidents is indeed big money. And they bloody don't take credit cards either.

Break A Leg

Dave and Simon have been staying just outside Chamonix for a week and came across to ski with us for the day. They picked the right day for it, gorgeous sunshine and -10, although they probably did underestimate the time it would take them to get across. Sarah and I succumbed to some fast piste cruising before lunch whilst we waited for them to arrive. After skiing primarily gorgeous powder off piste lately, the fear was that pratting about in the pistes would feel like a let down, but with these conditions, it's oh so much fun. The TroubleMakers really bring out the hooligan in me. Simon is a beginner boarder, and wanted to take it easy in his own pace. Dave has skied with us for one or two weeks a year since Meribel '03, and we've seen him progress from first timer to confident intermediate. We'd decided to try to help improve his technique a bit, and picked the gentle slope of the youth Stade De Slalom, a blue, short run. I set off first, with the intention to stop a bit further down to watch. Suddenly my left ski stops completely dead, and with a nasty sound my binding releases, and I find myself careering down the slope on my front, with a searing pain in my foot. Immediately I know that this is almost certainly the end of the trip for me. Sarah picks up my left ski and joins me. I struggle to my feet. Out of the bottom of my ski there is a foot long, centimetre wide gash down the middle, all the way into the core. Putting the ski on almost makes me pass out. Sarah offers to call rescue, but I can't bear the embarressment. I limp my way down on one ski to the restaurant at the bottom of the slope and against the received wisdom remove my boot. It's just typical that it's my left which I've broken badly before. The foot is painful to touch and move, but somehow it seems infeasible to break a bone inside a ski boot - normally when people break legs skiing it's a tib-fib jobbie just above the boot. We have some lunch, and I reluctantly face up to the fact that there's just no way in hell I can make it down to the resort of my own steam. I swallow my pride, and Sarah calls for piste rescue which arrives in the shape of a Skidoo which take me to the medical centre in the resort. Many x-rays later the conclusion is that I've chipped a splinter out of the corner of my tib, and a back slab cast is put on. I hate being immobilised, but at least it's almost the end of the trip anyway, but the idea of prolonging the trip for a few weeks would appear to be out. Nevermind. Shit - as they say - happens. I haven't done too badly, having skied for 30 years and this being the first, and so far only injury I've ever sustained in the process. Having broken my left leg before, I know pretty well what to expect, and hopefully should be able to keep my spirits up a bit better this time around. I am a notoriously bad patient. The doctors here have basically done the emergency patch-up, and relying on the fine orthopedics department at Southmead Hospital in Bristol to do it properly. As I'm here for another week, they're actually putting on a new, full cast on Tuesday which hopefully should mean that this week 'counts' in terms of the number of weeks in plaster game. Two days after the break, I can vouch for that pain hurts, and the first pain killers they gave me were about as effective as pissing in the ocean to make it sweeter. They since switched me onto the curiously named Ixprim which seems to do the job, allowing both me and Sarah to at least get a few hours sleep each night.

We took out a British Mountaineering Council (BMC) annual travel insurance before we set out on this trip. It is a bit more expensive than other alternatives, but I'd recommend this to anyone that does anything more active than frying on the beach on their travels. They know the difference between the various strands of climbing and mountaineering. For example, a competing insurance provider disallow 'unroped climbing' thus in the process also cutting out bouldering. Other insurances also put a depth limit on their diving cover, or disallow off-piste skiing. Apparently, this can mean that if you even put one foot outside the poles marking a run, you are not covered. Not what you want to have to think about when you're skiing. The BMC insurance covers every aspect of climbing, mountaineering, diving and skiing (and other outdoor activities such as kayaking, mountain biking, caving etc etc), no ifs and buts. Any profit is plowed straight back into the good work that the BMC does for its members. And, most importantly, and worth the admission alone, the professionalism and in-depth knowledge on hand when you need assistance is just extraordinary. The piste rescue service kept one of my boots, my poles and my skis and would not release them until their costs were covered (€278 for a 2 min Skidoo ride). The BMC took care of it without a single question. They told me that CheesyJet is notoriously reluctant to fly people with limbs in plaster and arranged for my doctor here to give me a certificate of flying, and also phoned me up to see if I wanted an extra seat on the flight home for the leg. They will cover the repairs to my skis and refund the cost of my ski pass for the eight days of skiing I will have missed.

As a happy member and customer, I think that you're unlikely to find a better travel insurance product when push comes to shove and you really need help. I take my hat off to the BMC, and heartily recommend them to anyone into the outdoors.

Terminal Velocity

Saw someone get really hurt - or worse - a few days ago. Sarah and I were taking advantage of the spectacular conditions to do a classic off-piste run, the Lac Du Lou off the Cimes De Caron gondola. After a magic run we'd nearly reached the end, and stood for a while admiring the views across the frozen lake and up towards the other mega classic off-piste run off the back of La Masse in Les Menuires, which we'd done twice the day before. Gathered atop a snow covered, heavily corniced cliff we see a couple of boarders, peering down. It's seriously steep terrain, a vertical drop off the cliff of at least 10 metres onto a thin tongue of snow between rocks, gradually easing off from vertical to a 40 degree, untouched run down to the lake surface. Suddenly one of the boarders jumps. We can't believe our eyes as he fluffs the jump, picking up a slight forward rotation in the air, briefly striking the snow tongue with the tip of his board some 10 metres below and bouncing his way down the rocky terrain, coming to an improbable stop about 150 metres down, still on seriously steep ground. His mates are still stood on the cliff top unable to believe their eyes. From where we're standing we can see he's not moving, and not responding to the frantic calls - in English - from his mates. They carefully make their way down to him through different routes, but as far as we can see he's still not moving.

We have no way of knowing if the fall was terminal or not, but if he walked away unscathed, it would be a miracle. He might have been the most accomplished of snowboarding cliff jumpers in the world for whom these sort of drops are everyday feats, but from where we were standing it looked obviously suicidal even by the most casual of glances. A modicum of self preservation instinct must surely count as a valuable commodity in freeride skiing. There is nothing we can do, and we complete our run, and head for lunch, still with a sick feeling in our stomachs. We do another run along a slightly different route in the afternoon pausing briefly in the same spot a few hours later, and they've all gone, either rescued, or - hopefully - made it down by own steam.

MORE snow

It's snowing, blowing and zero visibility, so we decided to take the day off. It has in fact snowed pretty much continuously over the last week whilst our good friends Cath and Dave were here. They'd just come back from the Maldives, and the weather was a bit of a shock to the system for them. Still, the snow situation is now well within the seasonal normal, if not above, and it's still going. Sadly, with massive snowfall comes the inevitable avalanche dangers, and several people have been reported dead or missing over the last week across the alps, amongst them some Swedish riders, apparently prompting the Swedish Foreign Ministry to issue a stark warning to skiers heading down to the alps to heed local notices and take extreme care. Obviously, after weather like this, off-piste is a tempting lure, all untouched and powder heavy, that's hard to resist, but still, at a well published 5/5 level of danger it is somewhat unreal to see fresh tracks across snow fields where the avalanche debris is still clearly visible at the bottom from the previous dump. Some people obviously feel immortal.

We've been honing our powder skills, and Cath and Dave threw themselves into the deeps with gusto. Sarah took the tumble of the week, funnily enough on-piste, and she landed heavily on her face, pulling muscles in her shoulder and neck, knocking her goggles clean off the helmet mount in the process. It could easily have ended her trip, but she dusted herself off, gritted her teeth, and carried on, battered and bruised. The goggles left a 2 inch cut down the side of her face (possibly putting further worries in the way of her future modelling career :). Nothing broken, at least, and a day off should help ease the whiplash.

Cath and Dave kindly brought us some badly needed essentials - proper English pyramidal tea bags being most welcome - and couriered an 'entertainment bundle' from another good friend, Da Goose, a spindle of shiny discs with Scrubs, Boston Legal and last but not least, the beginning of season 5 of 24. Jack's back from the dead, and he's not happy. The problem with 24 is that it's too addictive, and we've already exhausted the stash. Still, from what we've seen, this series is already looking better than the last two. Thanks, Cath, Dave and Goose! Cath and Dave also made sure that we actually left the apartment and went out for a change, to sample some of the lovely Savoyard fayre on offer in the restaurants around here.

By the way, Da Goose is coming to VT to ski for a week at the end of the month with friends Oli and Paul, which almost certainly will be a right riot, coinciding as it does with our last week here. Time really does fly when you're having fun.

Anyway, after writing harshly about vomiting Danes, I got my just desserts in the shape of a bunch of Swedish teenagers from some one-horse back water in the middle of the country who moved in next door. What seemed like about 12 lads crowded in an apartment designed to sleep six, we were treated to the whole spectrum of teenage angst, usually at 4 am most mornings, stemming from them evidently not being able to work out the optimal distribution of two sets of keys amongst 12 people after a night on the lash. They appeared to believe that the only way of gaining after hours access is by kicking door with ski boots, and screaming abuse at the top of one's voice. Sarah sorted them out one night clad only in a towel. As this more than likely is the nearest any of them will ever get to a naked woman for the next decade or so, they were lost for words, and apologised profusely after she told them off in that inimitable way that only the English can - with impeccable politeness, yet leaving a lingering after taste of having been told to STFU in no uncertain terms.

Overheard

You pick up the most extraordinary things if you keep your ears open. We were sitting in the lift, gazing desolately at the incredibly bare ground underneath, not long after we arrived. Little Lisa had evidently dropped a ski pole, and daddy was inching his way down a narrow rock-strewn ice streak to retrieve it. It was actually quite steep, and he seemed to realise that him managing to get back up would be a Herculean task indeed. Incredulously, he seemed to think that sending little Lisa, 7, down the neighbouring icy streak would be a better idea:

- You can get down that, darling, and then we only need to scramble over those rocks to get back on the piste below.

Little Lisa tentatively, but bravely, tries to make one plucky snow plough down the 40-degree ice, and promptly falls on her front, proceeding to slide the length of the streak, head first, rapidly picking up speed, shrieking. Needless to say, daddy on the neighbouring streak is to far away to be anything but an apprehensive observer.

Hysterical wife, from the top:

- IAN DOOOOO SOMETHING!

Luckily, Lisa stands up, dusting herself down, unhurt at the bottom of the streak. By the time they started to try to get back on piste, we'd passed. Guess you had to be there, really.

Another day, in the lift queue, we were treated to the following exchange. Livid, middle-aged British woman:

- The stupid bloody woman, skiing right over my bloody skis, and then she just stood there, on my skis, and I just couldn't bloody move, and she didn't even apologise!

The young son, about 7:

- But what do you expect, mum, she was French.

Priceless. Indoctrinate them young to get the old traditional prejudices to stick.

A recent morning, Sarah critically examining her legs:

- I have a lot of scars on my legs from climbing, you know. I'll never make a model now.

Rest Day

After four weeks and two days of skiing (sadly just past the half way mark) we are finally taking a full rest day. We woke up this morning to find Val Thorens in the middle of thick cloud. It's snowing and it is forecast to get worse - a large dump of snow but with 40-60kmph winds. There is poor visibility and my legs are feeling weary so today seemed like a good day to take a break. I also have a very swollen little toe joint. If I could remember hitting it I would suspect it could be broken. Instead it's very swollen and I have no idea why. I just know that it protests alot when I strap it tightly into my ski boot. My boots have never rubbed before so I don't think that's causing it but now it's swollen they certainly are rubbing. Hopefully a day off will give the swelling chance to go down. We've also run out of clean clothes so we need to find the laundrette. Yes, we've been here this long and haven't done any washing yet. Our friends Cath and Dave are coming here on Thursday and we thought they might appreciate it if we smelled nice if we're to live in such close proximity for several days. A rest day also gives us the chance to take our ski boots apart and get them thoroughly dry. Damp boots are not good for keeping the toes warm.

This isn't to say we have been skiing 9-5 every day either. There has been the odd day where we've come back for lunch and the weather has been bad or the pistes have been in such poor condition (when there was little snow) in the afternoon it has been uninviting to venture out again. There has also been more than the odd day where we have retired early to a deck chair and enjoyed a small beer or two in the sunshine.

Since the large amount of snow nearly two weeks ago the skiing has been fantastic. We had several days of powder snow on and off piste. Although it's amazing how quickly this gets tracked out and how quickly the snow disappears. The pistes have been kept in great condition. There is nothing quite like cruising down untouched corduroy snow. I had my skis serviced again last week and new sharp edges are great for the confidence. They don't give an inch even on hard stuff. It's made a surprising difference to my skiing. When I say we have been off piste its mainly been between pisted runs or off piste that can be reached easily from a lift and joins a piste further down. I'm starting to feel more confident skiing off piste and would like to venture further into the back country. This is for two reasons, the opportunity to ski untouched deeper snow and to be somewhere everyone else is not. We could 'go it alone' but we do not know the local area and we don't own avalanche transceivers or a shovel. Transceivers cost around £150-200 which seems expensive but not if you consider it could save your life. I'm thinking that surely not everyone pays the high price for a guide every time they try some new off piste. I'm sure some people don't and some survive on their own. However, there are also stories like the 7 people who died in the three valleys after the large dump of snow a few weeks before we arrived. They were apparently all separate incidents and involved people skiing off piste where they shouldn't have been. Last year we hired a guide in St Anton to take us off piste for the day (when we were somewhat better off than we are now). Although it was one of my most memorable days ever, I remember being rather perturbed on the last run when our guide said several people had died in an avalanche on this run at the start of the season and one of them was never found. They had to wait until the melt at the end of the season. One advantage of hiring a guide is obviously he knows where he's going and he should prevent us from getting lost but secondly he will have knowledge of the snow conditions. This will mean he will hopefully take us to where the skiing is best or where there is a lower risk of avalanches. The downside is that a guide is expensive. To hire one for a day cost €300 (approx. £200). Our best option is to join a group for €70 each (about £50). However, we also need to hire touring skis for the day as there is usually a long walk in. In total it will still be a costly day. We spoke to the mountain guide service yesterday and if there is another large dump of snow he said there is some good off piste to be done from the lifts in Val Thorens so we wouldn't need to hire the touring skis, but I probably wouldn't bother hiring a guide for these anyway. There is one off piste day they do where they walk 1 1/2 hours up to a glacier and then ski for 22 kms into Meribel. Irrespective of cost this may be a must do! He said conditions were good at the moment for people with little off piste experience - about 15cms of snow on top of a hard base making it easier to ski. Now that I'm feeling capable to try such skiing I'm wondering if we've made the most of being here as we haven't skied anything in the back country yet. However, I have to remember that it's only because of the past four weeks of skiing that I have improved enough to feel confident to go and try skiing such things. We'll see..

I guess skiing off piste is like climbing a mountain route. You don't want to set off without knowing the conditions or where you are going. Like I mentioned before there are some off piste runs that can be easily reached from the lifts in Val Thorens and are marked on the piste map. We have tried one of these off La Masse which was great. We knew where we were going and where we'd end up. The avalanche risk was low, it was well tracked out and there were several people ahead of us. Could have been a case of the blind leading the blind of course! These sort of runs I'm happy to try without a guide. I just don't want to set off on a 1 1/2 hour's hike into the unknown back country on my own - I might never be seen again!

On a different note we have both bought helmets since we've been here. They are becoming more prolific amongst skiers and we have been thinking about buying them for a while. Hitting your head on a hard packed piste or a hidden rock off piste could hurt. Something that could be prevented for the cost of a helmet and looking 'uncool'. They recommend the helmet fits perfectly as a helmet that doesn't fit correctly will probably be left on the shelf after a couple of days. It should be tight enough to move the skin on your forehead when you move the helmet but not too tight to hurt. Like clothes there doesn't seem to be a standard for sizes and sizes vary greatly amongst different brands. I could need a small in one but a large in another. Stef apparently has a very large head. After trying several different shops we finally found that a Scott XXL fitted perfectly for the bargain price of €60. As any of you who have had the displeasure of shopping with yours truly before will know, me buying anything is a nightmare. I just couldn't find a helmet that fitted properly. I seemed to have an awkwardly shaped head and always felt like I needed a helmet between two available sizes. I eventually found a Uvex helmet that is adjustable and fits like a glove. It also addresses some other reservations I had. It's so light I forget it's on my head. Being able to adjust the size means I can make it larger if I want to wear a hat/balaclava underneath or smaller if the padding condenses after a while. It also has large vents that can be opened or closed so it shouldn't be cold in bad weather or too hot when it's warmer towards the end of the season. Sadly this of course cost much more than €60! Fortunately the gentleman in the shop was happy to give us discount even though we're not actually working here. I particularly like the sticker inside the helmet that reminds you that a helmet does not make you invincible.

We've had some good news that Rossignol will replace Stef's broken ski. Not his skiing that broke it after all. Unfortunately he's still had to pay for a new pair in the meantime so in true Stef style he now owns two pairs of skis.

Lastly, we've just had a couple of great days skiing with some friends from Bristol. John, who is Lorne's partner who is out here for a season on an instructors course, is out here for a week and two other friends called John and Annabelle have just been here for a long weekend. We all met up for a few days. In true boy's fashion it deteriorated into a who can jump the highest and go the fastest competition. John managed 91kmph through the speed gun. Though this is disputed by the fact there were no other witnesses than Annabelle and previously he'd managed 67kmph! Furthermore, apparently an instructor went though afterwards and it recorded 6kmph. It must have been broken! Earlier, I finally broke the 80 mark and managed 81.33. Not quite Stef's 88. Otherwise much fun was had.

Branding the Outdoors

Saw a guy in the mid-piste bar the other day wearing a Buffalo mountain shirt. From this observation alone one can easily infer that he is British, and almost certainly a climber or mountaineer. Several brands are equally keyed to either niche sports, national identity or both. If someone is wearing 5.10 shoes or prAna clothing, they're almost certainly climbers, or at least somehow aware of the 'scene', as it were. If you see a person wearing a Crux rucksack, they're almost certainly a British mountaineer. A Klattermusen jacket is probably the sign of a Swedish off-piste or ice climbing demon. Helly Hansen used to be a sure sign of a Norwegian, but the brand has now gone pretty global. The excellent Mammut stuff is almost solely worn by Germans. Skiing-related brands are a mish-mash of hard-core, true performance and vanity fashion, and many of the latter pretending to be the former.

Peak Performance is a clothing brand from Sweden that used to make true high-end gear for the cold weather athlete for whom the right clothing is a matter of survival. This market being somewhat limited, and with the costs associated with manufacturing in the reverse tax haven of Sweden, somewhere down the line their finances suffered, and they got bought out by some big shot Euro clothing manufacturer, and they're now firmly rooted in the vanity fashion pretending to be real camp. Judging from its visible proliferation across nationalities here in Val Thorens, it's a stonking success.

The aforementioned Buffalo is arguably one of the best performing bad-weather clothing system ever designed, yet you rarely, if ever, see it outside its British mountaineering core market domain. Sure, no one can accuse Buffalo of being stylish, and its against the market grain quirkyness probably doesn't help. If you ask your average punter how to dress for cold (or wet) weather performance, you'll get the same, well-rehearsed answer that the big manufacturers want you to give: base layer in the form of thermals, mid (or insulating) layer, probably in the shape of a fleece, and then a 'waterproof breathable' membrane laminate jacket made from an expensive corporate fabric probably ending in '-Tex'.

There is no such thing as waterproof and breathable, unless you count the umbrella. You can have either or. If you don't believe me, put on your £500 coat and go for a run in the driving rain. Even the most breathable membrane can't keep up with even a modest level of exertion. Worse, it also assumes a temperature gradient across the fabric. Fine if you're out and about, but step inside for a hot chocolate, and suddenly the fabric is soaking on the inside. The expensive '-Tex' coats are ideal for walking from the front door to the car, and from the car to the entry to Tesco on a Saturday shoppping expedition. The 'Guaranteed to Keep You Dry' tag line is pure marketing genius, but very little to do with real performance.

If you really want to be comfortable whilst active in changeable weather, the first realisation is that true breathability is much more valuable than true waterproofness. Who cares about how many metres of water column the garment can withstand without incursion if you still end up cold and wet due to condensation? Real performance means wicking away moisture from the skin, and not placing a membrane in the way. A manufacturer that understands this (apart from Buffalo) is Paramo. A wicking liner is placed under a wind proof DWR-treated tightly woven microfiber shell. The Durable Water Repellency treatment means that water beads and rolls off the surface of the garment like water off the back of a goose. This DWR coating is infinitely replenishable by the owner using an inwash additive. This means that rain can't penetrate the outer layer, yet moisture passes freely from the inside out. Yet, by the accepted industry norm it is not waterproof. It can't take any size water column at all. Sit in a puddle, and it will soak through. In normal use it will keep an active user bone dry. The Scottish mountain rescue teams, who know a thing or two about bad weather, wear the Paramo Aspira jacket. The disadvantages of the Paramo concept is that the garments tend to feel bulky and heavy, but this is partly offset by the user needing fewer layers underneath.

The Buffalo system is far more minimalist. A Pertex shell is bonded to a pile inner. Pile is the ancestor of fleece. It looks a bit like a kind of short sheep's coat - certainly not fashionable, but with superior insulation qualities and with virtually zero moisture retention. Pertex is a windproof microfibre weave, favoured as a shell material for sleeping bags. It's exceptionally breathable, wind proof, light and if it gets wet the moisture quickly spreads to a large surface area which dries in an instant. Buffalo's approach to waterproofness is: 'being dry is for wimps' - yes, in driving rain you'll eventually get wet, but the pile layer will keep you warm in the wet, and the pile/pertex combination will dry in an instant the moment the rain stops. Buffalo recommends you wearing its garments next to skin, and this has probably contributed to the reputation of the odour of the British mountaineer after a few weeks in the wilderness.

Quirky makes like Buffalo and Paramo survive as purveyors of niche products for people who need real performance in atrocious conditions. These guys will always be big fish in a tiny pond. Some makes from a similar background (amongst others North Face, Patagonia, Arc'teryx, Berghaus) are gradually making the transition into the more profitable 'life style' markets, yet still manage provide the good stuff aswell. Arc'teryx in particular seems to be surviving with their soul intact after being bought out by the Adidas/Salomon mainstream giant.

So, how should you dress for an active life in the hills come rain or shine? The problem with being active is that as long as you're moving you need a lot less clothing than when you're stationary. Walking in to a winter route in the Scottish mountains is a lot more sweaty than the climbing itself. Belaying is cold. Skinning up a mountain side is far more taxing than the long ski descent on the glacier on the other side. Most people over dress, become warm and sweaty, and when they stop they get cold, despite wearing all their clothes. With a traditional layering system, adjusting your temperature becomes an arduous chore, involving taking off multiple layers to remove or add an insulator before putting the outer layers back on. Apart from being time consuming, this process also leaves you exposed to the elements. This usually means that people can't be bothered to adjust to conditions correctly, instead choosing to put up and shut up. A better system is to wear as little clothes as possible for the action, and then layering on top when stopping to rest or belay. Sometimes, perhaps it is sufficient to wear a wicking base layer and a feather weight Pertex windproof, and then a synthetic duvet on top when stopping. Putting on or removing a thin duvet jacket takes five seconds, and the new synthetics, such as PrimaLoft, are almost as warm and compactible as down, yet unlike down stay warm if wet. You will also perform better as your body won't have to spend effort cooling itself down from the heat of overdressing.

True waterproof membrane fabrics have no place in the hills unless you're sitting still in prolonged driving rain - and those days I'd rather stay at home.