Disaster Strikes
Posted: Tuesday, 5 April 2011 by Mark Kinnon in Labels: D.I.Y., Firem VS, France, SkiBike
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And the day started so well.... I assembled my skibike and whizzed down the hill to the ticket office at Tignes les Brevieres bright and early. Having paid for my lift pass I joined the queue for the gondola only to be pulled to one side before I could get on.
I thought I had everything necessary, in my communications with the resort office the only stipulations were that you had to have a skibike leash. However it turned out that you can only use factory made skibikes on the chairlifts, DIY skibikes like mine are restricted to the gondola lifts only. This was exactly the situation I had encountered before at La Clusaz.
I had to get my skibike back to the hotel, so I had a miserable ride up in the gondola and thought about what to do next. I hadn't planned on 5 days of SnowBlading and the gondola lift access option was going to be too limited in scope.
The idea then occurred to me that I could phone Serge at Firem VS and ask if he had a spare veloski to loan me. He calmly replied "Of course Mark, come to the factory before 17:00".
This left a few hours to fill before heading off, so I got my SnowBlades on and made a quick whistle stop tour of the Tignes area.
On route to the Firem factory with 10 or so km to go and plenty of time in hand disaster number 2 struck; the local mountain road to Villard sur Thones was closed. This made it necessary to make a huge detour around the lake at Annecy; I arrived at the factory bang on 5.
Then it was another 3 hour drive back to Tignes to arrive at sunset.
I thought I had everything necessary, in my communications with the resort office the only stipulations were that you had to have a skibike leash. However it turned out that you can only use factory made skibikes on the chairlifts, DIY skibikes like mine are restricted to the gondola lifts only. This was exactly the situation I had encountered before at La Clusaz.
I had to get my skibike back to the hotel, so I had a miserable ride up in the gondola and thought about what to do next. I hadn't planned on 5 days of SnowBlading and the gondola lift access option was going to be too limited in scope.
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| No STRMTG homogation label - no chairlift access |
The idea then occurred to me that I could phone Serge at Firem VS and ask if he had a spare veloski to loan me. He calmly replied "Of course Mark, come to the factory before 17:00".
This left a few hours to fill before heading off, so I got my SnowBlades on and made a quick whistle stop tour of the Tignes area.
On route to the Firem factory with 10 or so km to go and plenty of time in hand disaster number 2 struck; the local mountain road to Villard sur Thones was closed. This made it necessary to make a huge detour around the lake at Annecy; I arrived at the factory bang on 5.
Then it was another 3 hour drive back to Tignes to arrive at sunset.