Salut!

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the view from the balcony of our apartment in downtown Bourg St Maurice. Flights and transfer went without a hitch. Lifts open next weekend and snow is at least a possibility between now and then. Reports indicate that we are currently a little short. We do however have plenty of beer and baguettes. I'm pleased to report that all is therefore well in the fifth republic.

À bientôt.

Ever since I visited France in the spring of this year I knew that I would be going there for a season soon enough. Well, over the summer I've done some reorganising of my life and in only a few weeks time I will be heading out to Bourg Saint Maurice (BSM) in the French Alps for a season in the snow. This is pretty exciting as I'm sure you can imagine.

I decided that I would like to be based in Bourg based on my experience of it last year. I've never boarded Les Arcs, but everything I read is good. What appealed to me most is that Bourg is a proper little town and definitely not a manufactured location. As much as I am going there to snowboard, I am also going there to experience France and improve my French.

Susan mentioned it recently and with winter well and truly on the way it is probably high time to think about getting fit for the mountains! Fortunately Adam at HighlyObsessed is a few steps ahead and has done a quick roundup. There is also a top 6 exercises article at about.com which looks ok.

Opening Weekend reports:

At exactly 9 a.m. on October 13, 2006, Arapahoe Basin cranked up its Exhibition chair lift and sent skiers and snowboarders off for the first official run of the season in Colorado.

Google are entering a team in the 24 Hours of Moab world-class race event on October 14th & 15th, 2006. There is a race limit of 450 teams from around the world. Self confessed amateurs, the Google team don't expect to win but they will be demo'ing Google Earth and other google products of interest to the Mountain Bike community. Check out the Google Earthlings team blog.

Len at Megève Ski has recently completed and passed the Peak Leaders BASI Ski Instructor course in Argentina. He has been blogging about it along the way and has just posted a bit of a roundup and review. If you are at all interested in doing BASI instructor training at some point then this series of posts makes really interesting reading. Really well done dude, sounds an amazing experience.

Schweeet :D

First Snow at Whistler 4 days ago. This must surely signal the start of a countdown to winter. Pics.

[Via Adam]