Pond skimming events have been taking place at ski areas all around the world over the past month.
There are plenty of variants on the theme of skiing or boarding over a pool of meltwater to mark the end of the ski season.
This year there’s even a Pond Skimming World Championships set to take place in Banff at the end of their long season on Monday, May 23rd
This weekend sees one of the big events on the annual ‘pond skimming spring calendar’ (not that such a thing actually exists) with the Defi Foly contest in La Clusaz, one of the Lake Annecy resorts in France.
It’s rather more than a ‘pond skim’ in fact as rather than a small shallow pool of melt water as is normally the case, the la Clusaz event takes place on the large, 180m wide, Confins lake, and competitors whizz down the snow ramp and on to the lake’s surface with thousands of people gathered to watch and rescue boats at the ready.
The action takes place this Sunday 24th April from 9am-4.30pm with competitors allowed two slides each. There’s a prize giving and after party from 3pm by the lake.
The dream one day is that someone will make it right the way across, and they’ve got close, with the record 155m, set back in 2010, the distance to beat.
La Clusaz is in good shape for its final weekend of skiing with a 3m base and 40cm of fresh snow in the past week, including a powder alarm set on Tuesday for 25cm of fresh snow in 24 hours.
