Please take care when on the piste or off piste. You should know the signs of danger marked on the piste, for example the flag for avalanche is yellow and black squares and is usually at the bottom of the pistes nr the chairlifts, with a number 1 to 5,(5 being the worst), the poles black and yellow signify something dangerous like a hole on the pist or at the side or an overhang. The elastic cords black and yellow mark a danger and you should not go under. Yesterday a youg man of 24yrs went under a cord (in fact just to pee! next to the piste), he fell through a corniche (overhang of snow created by the wind), caused an avalanche and died! Please, please respect the signs on the piste, its not just the haute mountains where accidents happen.

Conditions are great with a fresh 40cm having fallen over the past days and more due this week.

A word of warning if you are out there there are lots of different snow types just now, having been mild, cold, misty and snowy conditions are variable. The conditions are just right for avalanches, not a funny thing, the chunks of snow that fall in an avalanche can be like blocks of concrete… I have seen one or two close up and you can’t believe the chunks, so take care and stay on pisted/managed areas. In Haute Savoie the deaths on the mountains here hardly make the headlines as so many! Think of that when you think its just soft snow falling when avalanching.

I am trained in sports massage, we were taught the goal should certainly be to get to the full depth of the muscle in order to ease it, however, we were not taught necessarily to inflict unnecessairy pain for the sake of pain. I can feel when at the bottom of a muscle, whether or not there is a thickened area or knot, so why should I have to force extra pain because the client demands it? The experience and knowledge is to know and feel the difference between clients, obviously no one ever has the same muscle bulk as the next person. We have to tailor our techniques accordingly. I will admit there is some pain experienced when first we massage knots in muscles, but if I hurt more surely the muscle will spasm more as a reflex and therefore, make my work more difficult and time consuming. Not sure what the research is on that. If you have a sports massage with me, let me find the knots and do my job, you don’t question how the mechanic fixes your car or the vet your dog.