I spent the last 2 weeks skiing in the interior of British Columbia. The weather gods were on my side as during the 2 weeks over a metre of snow fell. So conditions were pretty epic both at Fernie and Red Mountain.

Here’s a quick 2 minute video from my GoPro camera. All filmed at Red Mountain.

Any tree skiers out there? This is well worth watching and thinking about.

This is something that skiers in North America are much more clued up on.

It’s amazing how you can get stuck in a tree well, this video documents a great example of how impossible it would be to self rescue.

So my top tips for Tree skiing are: 
1) Try to avoid falling in a tree well.
2) Always have a shovel. (You should have one for avalanche safety reasons)
3) Always ski in a workable buddy system so you can rescue each other.

I think this group deals with the situation pretty well.

With the benefit of hindsight: If I was the lead rescuer I’d try to be a bit more communicative at the start, and organise at least 3 or 4 shovellers to evacuate an area just below where the guy is buried, then dig in from there. It’s pretty obvious early on that it will take a few minutes to get them out, so I’d try to use the group resources a bit better. But he did a fine job really under the circumstances.

Got to have it by Christmas?

Our advice is to order early to guarantee Christmas delivery, but if you must leave it to the last minute then these are our deadlines which will still get there by Christmas.

For the UK:

Next Day Delivery £4.95
Order cut off for pre-Christmas delivery is 3pm on Thursday 22nd December.

Tracked Delivery £2.95
Order cut off for pre-Christmas delivery is 3pm on Wednesday 23rd December.

Free Delivery
Order cut off for pre-Christmas delivery is 3pm on Tuesday 20th December.

For International Customers, please refer to our country chart.

Thanks
Jake

For the month of October we are offering Free Economy shipping to the whole of Europe. Now is the time to get ready for the winter season ahead.

Free Economy delivery takes 3-7 working days. If you need your delivery quicker then we offer a great value Priority service by DHL from £ 9.95

See our table of countries / shipping prices and times here: Facewest International Delivery Charges.

Stage one of getting ready for winter 2011/12 is to sell off our remaining stock from last season.

We still have 10-20 pairs of skis, which are now up to 50% off.

Check out our latest ski sale page here, remember you also get £30 off if you buy bindings at the same time.

I am working on new ski range for 2011/12 now, this should be live on the site by 1st September.

Cheers, Jake

Well finally we can offer shipping to the other side of the world.
Customers can now also see prices displayed in Australian dollars or New Zealand Dollars.

We will not charge UK VAT, but you will be liable for any import charges made locally.

We offer 2 services:

Australia / New Zealand Economy Shipping £9.95.
This is sent by Royal Mail on an air service, and typically takes 4-10 days.

Australia / New Zealand Priority Service £70
This take 3-4 days by DHL / UPS.

There are a few exceptions to the above, certain item like food and luggage are just not economical to send or will require a surcharge, but we’ll always let you know about that before shipping.

Happy shopping.

Our European delivery service has been growing in popularity over the years, we have always strived to give the best possible service to our European customers.

In the last year our dispatch volumes have increased and this has enabled us to get better rates for shipping.

We now offer 2 delivery options for our European customers:

Standard shipping is £5.95.
This will be sent on an economy service, and typically takes 4-7 days.

Priority Shipping is priced from £9.95
We now use DHL for these, this guarantees a quick and professional delivery in typically 2-4 days.

See our new country specific chart for your country prices and transit times.

We have been very intrigued by the new Jetboil Sol range . The Titanium version offers an amazing weight / performance combination in a stove.

This lead to some office discussion about if it would be lighter than the MSR Pocket Rocket / Titanium pan option, a comparison made more complex due to the Jetboil being more efficient in it’s fuel use.

At this point Stu became very excited. Most of us would just mull over the possible weight differences and leave it at that. Stu however, decided to do an experiment and spent all morning making a video of his experiment. At one point all I could hear at my desk was the roar of gas stoves, maybe time to update our fire escape plans.

Here’s the result:

Trawling around our Google search data, I noticed that one of our most popular search terms is “Facewest Discount” or “Facewest Coupon”.

Well it’s nice to be searched for, but unfortunately we don’t offer any discount codes for use at our checkout. But it’s interesting looking at the 145,000 results for “Facewest Discount code”

Google search results are loaded with results for “Facewest discount codes” or “Facewest Coupon codes”, but they are all spam.

The good new is that we do offer a discount scheme, called our rewards scheme. This gives customers a 10% credit from every order, which can be used against future orders. So spend £ 100, get a £ 10 credit. This applies to customers who create an account at checkout (We need that so we can track multiple purchases for you)

We think that this makes our prices even more competitive. Plus you be be assured you are dealing with a professional company. We have an independent 99% satisfaction rate at Trustpilot, based on over 1000 real customer reviews of our service.

Thanks and happy shopping.

Well the dry warm weather has been perfect for some great spring flying in the UK.

The North of England and Scotland has seen some amazing conditions recently, and some remarkable flights have been achieved.

I had a great 80km flight from Kettlewell in the Yorkshire  Dales, a 5 hour flight got me to the coast in Southport.

Jake’s Flight from the Yorkshire Dales. (Click to enlarge)

For those in Scotland conditions were even better. A  UK record was broken in the Scottish Highlands in the same week. Brendan Reid flew a 100km flight around a triangular course, so landed at the same place he took off from. This was a very committed route over some very remote areas. This flight took him to over 8000ft over some of the most amazing mountains. His flight took him over a good chunk of the Highlands, and right over Ben Nevis. You can read Brendan’s Blog here, with full details of the record flight and some inspiring photos.

Photo . (Click to enlarge)

Brendan’s Track Logs. (Click to enlarge)