La Plagne Apres Ski Report: 10th January 2013

I first realised that this wasn’t your average sledging when I was instructed to bring a helmet, and then when I spotted a second timer strapping on wrist guards and I asked if that was really necessary, he replied, “oh it’s necessary, it gets animalistic out there”. Sounded promising!

At 5pm all twenty of us headed to Oxygene to collect our sledges then boarded the Telemetro up to Aime. It was getting dark so we were assigned our headtorches and given an exceptionally brief safety chat, oh and the rules: first rule of luge – do not let go of your sledge. Second rule of Luge – do not let go of your sledge. Rules one and two didn’t really work out so well for me.
Since we were up in Aime I was preparing to make my way back down the blue into Plagne Centre and call it a night but the instructors took us for a ‘getting to know your sledge’ run to the top of La Roche lift whilst we got used to steering and braking and then let us loose on the 5km blue run all the way down from Aime 2000 to the bottom of La Roche.

That first run was chaos in itself as we all tried to get to grips with the steering: the sledges have a handle on each side and in theory if you pull the left one you go left, and the right one you go right and pull them both together to brake to a gentle halt. Easy right? Wrong. In practice if you pull left, you roll left, and if you pull right, you capsize right, and if you pulled them both… absolutely nothing happened.

The day we went had been snowing constantly and so the piste was covered with a good six inches of fresh snow which did have the benefit of giving every bail a soft landing but the downside of giving the brakes absolutely no purchase meaning that the only manner of slowing down quickly was to completely abandon sledge.

The instructors did not seem at all fazed by our lack of co-ordination and ability and sent us off down the rest of the run with no extra instruction other than to avoid the trees on the left and the sheer drop on the right. Brilliant. The competitive vibe kicked in at that point and twenty sledges under various levels of control began vying for the front spot, name-calling and smack talk abounded as people’s egos outgrew their abilities.

I was having serious problems steering my sledge until I saw that the instructors weren’t using the handles at all and were guiding themselves by dragging a hand on the snow either side of the sledge, once I adopted that system I began flying down the hill gaining on the front runners and adding my own jibes to the others. Then just as I was getting properly cocky I saw in the feeble circle of light thrown by my head torch a body crash and roll directly in my path too close for me to avoid, I screamed wildly and felt my sledge ride straight over someone as I tried to turn and ended up rolling into a fence. I lunged to grab my sledge just as another person smacked into it at speed and sent it flying over the edge of the piste and down into the darkness. Struggling free of the fence I chased it down the mountain yelling “grab the sledge, grab the sledge” to anyone who could hear. Luckily an instructor was on hand to grab it and I was able to rejoin the race although I had definitely lost all advantage. I did manage not to come last though and arrived at the bottom of La Roche lift more or less in one piece to be met with a vin chaud and much laughter at my sledge chasing antics and to find my father clutching a handful of snow to the fat lip my sledge had inadvertently given him.

Absolutely brilliant activity, I genuinely cannot recommend this enough, it runs several nights a week from 17:00 and you are shuttled back up from La Roche by 18:30. Remember to wear a helmet, goggles and gloves and watch out for fallen family members!