Quit your day job. Go on. I dare you.

After a week or so away from the computer I was feeling pretty relaxed. After a couple of days working for London clients this week I was suddenly back to being a bit stressed again. Luckily, there’s been a bit of a lull in the work today so I’ve been able to chill out.

The weather’s been great since I got back from the coast, and I’ve been sorting out the garden. I inherited an old tin bath when I was in Germany which I’ve decided to grow herbs in . There it is in the back of the picture. My smartarse friend was worrying me the other night by telling me that if I didn’t bang holes in the bottom of the bath to drain the excess water, then it wouldn’t work. But I don’t want to bang holes in it. It destroys it’s purpose as a bath.Apparently my mother was bathed in it when she was a baby & you never know - I might bathe my own baby in it one day.

So that’s what the yellow hosepipe sticking out of the soil is for. The pipe goes down to the bottom of the bath and if I need to I’ll be able tot lift the bath up a bit and syphon any excess water out if it starts to build up. The seeds for 8 different of my favourite herbs and a mish-mash of mountain flowers are propagating on seed trays in front of the bath, so my gardening’s done and it’s time to light the BBQ and let the charcoal heat up for an hour or two before grilling the pork chops and chicken I’m marinading in the fridge.

I love my life today. Just pottering about, cooking, gardening, sitting in the sun listening to Wimbledon on radio 5 - playing a bit of xbox when the sun gets too hot. Perhaps I’ll watch the footy down the pub tonight to see who’s going to meet ze Germans in the coup de Europe final. Perhaps not. Either way. The sun’s over the yard arm and I’m going to crack open that cold bottle of rose while I watch the BBQ heat up.

This is the ski season which keeps on giving. April is always good here in Chamonix. It’s high enough above sea level that April showers fall as snow. And it’s been snowing for a week.

A break in the cloud yesterday gave us an almost blue sky powder day. Shame it was a Saturday, though - it meant Grande Montets was busy. No queues for the bochard or herse, but no chance of getting up the top lift without a reservation. Unlike during the week at the moment, when it’s possible to walk straight onto the next lift. I love this time of year for that. Laps off the top. A veryagreeable way to spend a morning. An even better way? heliskiing. Hopefully the weather will hold for tomorrow’s Ice Hot Alpine end of season heliwopper trip.

Wednesday was a big day in Chamonix. Starting early on Brevant was the 3rd race in the Helly Hanson Winter Ride competition organised by Evolution 2. Somehow I found myself entered as a competitor, along with Fred and Mark. We met at the bottom of the Brevant bubble lift to sign in at 8:30 am. The race format is simple. A course is set down a massive chunk of off-piste terrain. The course on Wednesday was over akilometre long, with a height difference of nearly 700m. It was huge, steep and straight down the Hotel Face. The rules are simple. No gates, no turns, just boot it down the course as fast as you can. The fastest skier wins.

They say you should do something which scares you every day. Well, I properly scared the hell out of myself that day. Helmets, avalanchetransceivers and insurance were mandatory for every racer, with good reason. The course was down a chunk of mountain it would normally take me 5 minutes or more to ski, stopping 3 or 4 times to rest, regroup and look where I’m going. This time I was just going to throw myself down it as fast as I could without stopping. Worse, the cloud was quickly coming up the valley and half of the course was in very limited visibility.

(a few pictures here… )

I couldn’t even see where the first flag was when I started - it was in cloud. As I hit the cloud layer at full speed my heart was nearly exploding from the physical effort of staying on my feet, and suddenly not being able to see what was coming was genuinely frightening. This was not a piste. There are rocks, cliffs and hidden bumps all over the place. The cloud thinned and I came storming out of the bottom of it doing massive high speed GS turns in great powder towards the finish line which I could finally see.

Then disaster. Past the last flag I hit a compression they’d warned us about. I failed to absorb it and went over the handle bars; crashing onto my head and loosing a ski. Thus ruining my time. Ah well - I still did that course in about 2 mins flat - which is pretty mad. Even though I was a bit annoyed with myself for not staying on my feet, it was fun & I’ll do it again when I get the chance!

So then it was over to Grande Montets for the Boss Des Bosses competition. As a spectator of course. It’s a real social event this one, seminaries from all over the alps come to drink beer & watch teams from Chamonix, Zermatt, Val D’Isere, Courcheval, Meribel and Verbier racing the bumps course. Zermatt beat Chamonix in the final as usual, this time on the very last run.

By the time Sarah and I had finished our dinner at l’Impossible that night, there was no question of going out for the after-party. It was all we could do to struggle back to the office to fall asleep. A great day.

I’m back at work today after a marathon 5 days in a row of proper skiing with my friend Phil. Starting off with a full day’s off piste on fat skis in good powder on Wednesday, we then toured up to the Argentiere hut on Thursday to get a bit of experience on skins. Friday was the Vallee Blanche and as it turns out was the least taxing day of the whole week - just a leisurely boot down the punter route & back in the office for 3pm.

Then on Saturday something very different. I joined Mark Gear’s All Mountain Performance special Freeride Frenzy course as the photographer. The special bit was that Arno Adam - the freeride champion of the world in 1999 was the guest star. To get an idea of what kind of skier Arno is, take a look at this clip from his film Do You, Do You Chamonix?

The idea behind this brand new course is that Mark provides world class coaching alongside Arno who’s role is as a demonstrator. It was a stunning day. To ski with someone with that level of talent was inspiring. Freeride skiing is all about skiing the whole mountain, expressing yourself with the line you take, dropping rocks, tearing down steep couloirs and jumping off stuff. All at mach 5. In fairly hard, bumpy off-piste conditions keeping up with the group challenged my skiing more than it ever has been in the past. I learned loads, took a great set of pictures and generally had an amazing day which left me knackered and broken.

For Phil and I, Sunday was the day of the big finale of our week’s introduction to a skiing/mountaineering partnership we hope will last many years. We did a route called the Col du Passon. It’s non-trivial to say the least. It involves skiing down from the top of the Grande Montets, across the argentiere glacier, then skinning up for a couple of hours on the other side, culminating in climbing a very steep couloir for which we needed to wear crampons and carry our skis on our backs. That’s the mountaineering half, and then the decent - a beautiful hour and a half through some amazing glacial terrain down to Le tour on the other side. We did have a sketchy few minutes when we got trapped in a system of small, avalanchey couloirs which cliffed out just below us, but we managed to traverse out of that and make it safely down to the Le Tour car park and jumped on the bus back to GM to collect the car. It was an excellent day - we got the weather window just right, and did the whole route as safely as we could have done it with the experience we have. Next project is a section of the Haute Route when we both have the time.

Today I’m feeling every one of my 32 years.