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december 31st - New Year!
So early November I put down the streetboard and joined long-time compatriot Ross Elliott for the annual pilgrimage to the Tignes 2011 Ski & Board Camp, for a bit of pre-season snowboarding shinnanigens.
As usual, Piers, Eli and the gang at Chalet Melezes provided excellent hospitality, free test boards and a solid base from which to hit the glacier up every day...
 In contrast to last year, we had bluebird skies and the sun shone every day - but without the abundance of powder which Matt & I had enjoyed last year. Still, you can't have it all - and trading excess snow for great visibility meant that we could make more of exploring the terrain that the snow coverage provided us with.
Due to the fact that we could actually see, Rosco and I covered far more ground than we did the previous year - and our first days was spent finding powder stashes in the lower areas that had been inaccessible last year, complete with some great rock drops into powder landings to bring us back up to speed...
We hit the powder faces again and again, until we had ridden out much of the easily accessible terrain, and compacted the rock drop landings until the rocks beneath were starting to make themselves known by the bangs and scraping sounds coming from our board bases.
The glacier runs are great for hooning down at top mach, leaving all the punters behind in your blazing wake - but they are also wide enough to find peace at the sides for jibbing practise.
Both Rosco and I made much use of wide slopes to try and nail our current butter combos and switch spins, although the inevitable sketch-out contrived to keep us humble while trying to film for the camera...
I was really chuffed to be able to meet up with Ricey and Rachael, two of the Chalet Melezes staff from last year who Matt &amd; I had kept in contact with - went riding together on the last day and had a blast, although unfortunately Rosco had blown his knee out at that point :(
We returned to the UK, refreshed and revitalised from our 3 days back on the snow, but gutted it was so short - gonna have to ramp it up and get another couple of weeks on the snow this season...
I found out just before returning that Ricey & Rachel are now back in the UK near Winchester - so as soon as the weather improves and parks are skateable, gonna look to head out and hit some bowls with him.
In other news, the 2012 World Streetboarding Championships went well - with Max Anderson cleaning up as usual, top marks Max ;)
Happy New Year! See you in 2012...
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