Monday 31 December 2012

Live With Passion

Martin Hemsley 

Regular readers may recognise this post title, it’s a phrase I use a lot at the end of some blog posts, and also a phrase I use whilst teaching. Regular readers may also recognise John and Gilly who have featured on this blog a couple of times before over the last few winters. So what’s the link between ‘Live with passion’ and John and Gilly?

Martin Hemsley

Everything. Everything they do is done with passion. Sport, cooking, family life, oh and skiing amongst many other things. So I know that when they book me for lessons, we are in for a fantastic time. Over the last couple of winters their skills have developed to the point where we can venture off-piste, not only within easy reach of pistes but also much further afield.

Martin Hemsley

This is all well and good, but if snow and weather conditions, as well as avalanche risks aren’t in your favour then off-piste skiing can become challenging.

Martin Hemsley

Fortunately we had some precipitation just after we started skiing together. To be honest, some of the weather was pretty filthy for a while, however we eventually ended up with a wonderful present from Mother Nature of a decent blanket of fresh snow.

Martin Hemsley

I could bore you with all of the details into where we skied, but I suspect it would all sound very foreign to you. All I’ll say is that we skied the full width of the fabulous 3 Valleys, from Val Thorens, Méribel through to and beyond the other side of Courchevel.

Martin Hemsley

In between skiing fantastic powder snow we worked on our core technical skills, spoke about tactical options, and shared our psychological experiences at various moments. Our final day together was an absolute beauty of a day. An off-piste route over in the Vallée des Avals. I’ll be blogging about this day over on www.mh2ski.co.uk in a couple of weeks time, so without spoiling that post I’ll just include a few images now.

Martin Hemsley

Martin Hemsley

Martin Hemsley

Martin Hemsley

Martin Hemsley

Martin Hemsley

Don’t forget if you are a Facebook or Twitter fan you can stay more up to date with musings here in Méribel via the www.mh2ski.co.uk website. Feel free to leave any comments. Happy New Year. Oh, and ‘Live With Passion’.

Martin

1 comment:

Smorgasbord said...

Wow Martin, what an amazing week's skiing. We loved it - even the scary bits! Thank you so much. Can't wait to ski with you again in February. John and Gilly.