The GB Junior Snowboarders headed out to Les Deux Alpes this summer for some sunshine and shredding.  Becky Menday sent us this great update of her time on the One Camp…

Arrival Day

Friday morning found  me at home all excited, I was waiting for fellow Boarders Boards team member Calum Paton to arrive. Our big road trip to Les Deux Alpes in the French mountains was about to begin and I was so looking forward to riding the glacier again. The last time I was at Les Deux Alpes was my second time ever on a mountain and I was 10 years old back in 2009.

My Mum and Dad drove Calum and myself to a service station on the M4 where we were going to meet up with our GB Junior Team coach Dan Wakeham. Dan then drove us to pick up a friend of his called Emily Williams who was also coming with us and finally we set off for Dover.  On arriving at Dover we missed the ferry by 3 minutes and had to wait to 9:00pm to get the next one. Being really hungry we all decided to have a burger king and that filled me up lots. On the ferry I did some home work and then slept!

We arrived safely in France and once back in the car I fell asleep again . I got woken up by a sudden stop; I thought we were there but it turned out we were stopping for breakfast, after breakfast at the sketchy services we carried on our  journey. After about ten hours or more of car travel I was really pleased to arrive at the mountains, and a few games of ‘ping pong’  later I was ‘so happy’ to hit my bed for more sleep. I love the mountains to bits, but the endless traveling in cars sucks and it is so hard to stop the boredom.

Sunday

Today Katie Omerod and Aimee Fuller arrived and it was great to have their company. I was really looking forward to hitting the mountain with them on Monday. We did not have much to do today as we were all settling in. I took the opportunity  to make sure that I had all my school work completed, that way I would not have to worry about it and could concentrate on my riding.

Monday

After waking up at about 7am and having breakfast Katie, Aimee and myself headed up the mountain in a gondola with the rest of the guys. The snow park is located on the glacier at 3200m above sea level so we have to travel over lots of bare mountain first. The views are amazing and you hang over some huge drops. So its July, Summer time right?  Well guess what? it was snowing when we got to the top!!

Because of the snow we decided to hike and hit the stair set box feature. This was really good fun and I was so pleased to progress and learn some new rail tricks and it is always cool to hit features on the mountain as it all feels so different to being indoors at a snow-dome. later in the afternoon I tried  hitting the gong feature which was basically something like the monks used to hit to finish praying or something like that! I was really pleased as I got a grabbed tap on it, as well as a tap without a grab! It was great having Katie and Aimee there as we gave each other encouragement and support and this really helped my confidence levels.

Because the park is located on the glacier all riding is stopped and the drag lifts are closed at about 1pm. This is to help preserve the glaciers conditions through the Summer months. So we headed down the mountain back to our hotel for the afternoon.

Tuesday

Today the park was ‘bulletproof’ this means so icy that the park is like riding concrete and does not feel nice at all. Because it was so icy we decided to leave the very hard landings of the kickers alone and concentrate on the half pipe! I was trying to become more familiar with the pipe and was going a bit faster and higher on each run despite the icy conditions i still managed a few grabs. After a while the conditions in the pipe softened up and I started to get front 360s quite high up in the pipe. On my last run I tried to go as high as possible and reached the coping on my heel and toe side as well as getting my nose out of the pipe! When the lifts closed I stayed with the group  to session the z pipe. This was a really cool and unusual feature, it was really hard to get down but Aimee captured some footage of me making it all the way down, which i was really happy about!!

Once we were off the mountain Amy showed Katie and I some core exercises and yoga; This was difficult but really good fun. We tried things like ‘plank walking, press ups, v sits (sit ups) and stretchy tape exercises for our core muscles. We then went to the trampoline area where they have  a big olympic size trampoline. We had a small board to put on our feet and worked on spins and grabbed 3′s. Then we worked on backflips, I was really pleased landing mine.

Dan Breen who works for One snowboarding was trying a double back flip, landed to heavy and spun backwards of the trampoline and missed the crash mats and broke both his heels on his feet on the concrete We had to keep him company until the ambulance arrived to take him off to hospital. He returned in wheelchair  and stayed until he could be flown home. He will be off his feet until September. This kind of killed the mood for a bit.

Wednesday

Today was a bad kicker day everybody was struggling to get speed to hit the 15m with lots of knuckle hits and bails. The speed was very slow due to the snow conditions. But we still had a great time trying things out. Because of the speed issues Katie and I decided to wax our boards together that afternoon, when we got back down of the mountain. We then spent the afternoon doing core exercises in the hotel lobby. And we played football outside on the sand!

Thursday

Today I was having a good time in the half pipe reaching the coping and the tail of my board came out a few times. Today was backflip day in the mini half pipe  I tried a backflip and rotated but landed on the nose of my board bailed and hurt my shoulder. This knocked my confidence back ,So I  went back to working on my  halfpipe riding. By the end of the session I had grabs on both sides of the pipe and front 360 spins and switch front 360′s. After the glacier closed, I went to the lake with Katie Omerod and Dan Wakeham and we tried to work on our tans and went swimming in the lake.

Friday

Today was a good day working in the pipe; I managed to get my back 360 rotations and switch back 360 rotations. I was so pleased because now I have all four rotations down. Then we went to session the huge hip feature,as the slush was slowing the kickers down too much. This was the largest feature I think I have ever hit and my first run was fairly scary as I was not sure if I would be able to go fast enough. Everything went well and I managed to get a nice big stylish method grab for the camera. Katie was being towed in by Aimee to be able to go fast enough.

Then in the afternoon we did our core exercises again but this time with a forfeit for the first one to wimp out. The forfeit was to eat a squidgy desert without using your hands. It was one of the lads who wimped out first but I won’t reveal his name to save his embarrassment.

Saturday

We spent the morning at a photo session with all of us hitting the various features on the park. We made the most of our last day shredding together and it was great fun. Katie and Aimee left the next day to travel on to watch some surfing, but I was staying on for a second week. I would be sharing a new room with Natalie Silkstone and Gemma Marshall.

My first week in Les Deux Alpes was really cool, it had high moments and low moments but was an amazing experience so far. Thanks to Dan Wakeham and One Snowboarding for a cool first week.

BeXx xx