Wednesday 16 June 2010.-.4 55 pm
Super Car, Super Cool
~ Morten:
Supercars are design and engineering wonders. Sports cars and GTs are a thrill to drive and they are comfortable on the road for everyday use. Supercars are in another league. They must have drama, have to be a bit scary and pushing the boundaries of what is possible. And of course their extraordinary key specs (top speed, the nought-to-62mph acceleration time, weight-to-power ratio, etc.) are what make them Supercars.
When you look across various Top 10 lists of the fastest road/production cars in the world, there are the usual suspects: Bugatti Veyron, McLaren F1, Ferrari Enzo, Lamborghini...
Then there is the lesser known Koenigsegg.
Supercars are normally associated with Italy; only a few come from the rest of the world. Koenigsegg is one of the exceptions and it hails from Sweden!
Here, in the cold north, a young man is fulfilling his childhood dream.
Christian von Koenigsegg is building Supercars, and has done so for 15 years now. The cars from Koenigsegg are some of the fastest on the planet, also with fantastic track performance. The cars are designed and produced with one purpose only: high speed driving!
This simple mission is far from being simple to achieve. The forces of a car at 300+ km/h are hard to grasp. To make a car go fast in a straight line is the easy part, to make a car controllable at such a high speed is an astonishing accomplishment.
The build quality is extremely high and the materials are chosen with painstaking attention to detail. I don't need to tell you the vital statistics which will take your breath away. Just watch this video if you have 10 minutes: Jay Leno's Garage - Koenigsegg Trevita CCXR
If this video were a watch interview, I would be saying pretty much the same things for Linde Werdelin. Koenigsegg is a small independent niche company competing with the big boys in the car industry. Big companies may have easier access to most resources and cutting-edge technologies. The fact that Koenigsegg can build superior cars to most of its contemporaries against all odds is what strikes a chord with us.
Above all, we relate to them in that we are fulfilling a dream.
Saturday 3 April 2010.-.10 59 am
Travel Back in Time in Grimentz
~ Jorn:
Grimentz is a beautiful little village of the postcard perfect Val d’Anniviers in the Swiss Alps. To stroll through the village is like wandering into the 13th century, the period from which many of the wooden houses originate. For a long time, I had planned to return to the incredibly unspoiled Val d'Anniviers to do alpine ski touring, and to experience the authentic feeling of how skiing used to be, much before it became a mass tourism industry. I took the opportunity of being in Switzerland for
BaselWorld to make a quick getaway for the weekend.
When I say “to experience the authenticity of skiing”, what I mean is the skiing, nature and snow like it was way before lift systems, shopping, and Michelin-starred restaurants ever made it to the ski resorts.
In the early 1900s, there were plans of building a railroad up to Val d´Anniviers. But when WW1 came, raw materials used in building railroads were needed ielsewhere. Therefore, the project was stopped, and the place was thankfully “forgotten” ever since. After WW1, Val d´Anniviers became a nature and wild life reserve. It is now prohibited by law to further develop the area - which is fantastic for people who like unspoiled villages, powder, and “skins” under the skies (skins are pieces of plush fabric attachable to the bottom surface of the skis to allow grip for uphill skiing or crossing a flat).
We arrived in Grimentz in the late morning and took the lifts up to the top. Because it had not snowed for about two weeks, and this was the first really warm day since the beginning of the season, the snow was very unpredictable and it was not at all easy to ski. So, it must be stressed that, if you venture into this area, you are better off with a guide; bringing The Rock, our ski instrument, also proves to be quite handy.
We skied until lunch, then stopped and had our picnic while taking in the amazing views. After a few more hours of skiing in the heavy snow, we put our skins on and walked for about an hour to bring us to a charming old hut called Cabane de Becs du bosson at 3000 meters above Grimentz. This is where we had to spend the night, get back to basics, do it real and do it like the old days.
When I woke up at 6.30am, I felt I hadn't slept at all. The altitude and the lack of oxygen can make it difficult to sleep - at least the first night for me. The morning was warm and miserable. We left the hut at 7.30am and walked for an hour to a local peak. We skied down the other side and were going to ski up to another peak. By this point The Rock started to show weather and avalanche warnings. Our guide also decided that we should ski out of the valley instead. This turned out to be quite a long but beautiful trek to ski down.
Half way down the weather improved and we ended up back in the village in full sunshine. We found out an avalanche did occur and cause the closure of a road to Grimentz. We enjoyed lunch at a local restaurant before headed for Basel, and arrived back at the fair at 6pm just in time to speak to some of the last customers – all in a day's work!
Grimentz and other villages in Val D’Anniviers are featured in our Ski Guide. Read it online on: SQUA.RE, or in the LW Ski Guide iPhone App.
Related Posts:
BaselWorld: The Moment of Truth
Heli-skiing in Turkey
Sunday 21 February 2010.-.11 16 pm
Heli-skiing in Turkey
~ Jorn:
What a unique experience! Last Saturday I flew from London to Trabzon via Istanbul. It was slightly unnerving being the minority, surrounded by people who didn't speak any European language and looked very different. Old women dressed in traditional shawls and dresses, men with large moustaches and serious faces.
I felt more at ease as we landed and were greeted by the rep from the Verbier-based
Turkey Heliski SA. They put us up at Otel Hasimoglu, located in a small mountain village called Ayder. The area is a national park but the town is for tourists and the locals don't ski. Houses are made of stone and wood - most of which being summerhouses for people from the larger cities in Turkey. The inside of the hotel is traditional Turkish with good local food aplenty.
Each morning, we would start the day with an extensive breakfast buffet serving all kinds of Turkish delicacies - fresh and dried fruit, local honey, eggs of every kind, bread, cheese, olives..... And freshly squeezed local orange juice. We would be off to get ready for the first lift at 8.30 just outside the hotel. Except for the first day when we spent half an hour to go through the obligatory safety information (which makes you not want to go skiing, especially not with a helicopter!). The guide team was professional and with new helicopters brought here every season from Switzerland. They only have heli ski here for 10 weeks per season.
We would have four to six lifts each morning/afternoon skiing approximately 4,500 vertical meters. The snow was so deep that it was hard to get any speed and turn when we first started. It literally was about leaning back and surfing. All you can think about is "do not fall in this snow". Because of the depth of the new snow it is very difficult and tiring to get up again; it may also be a little dangerous as you do run the risk of disappearing under the snow and not being able to orientate or breathe. At most times when you are on a peak you can see the Black Sea in the background - pretty awesome.
When the snow had condensed, the skiing was much better, which also reduced avalanche danger. At least our skis would bounce back from the snow. It wasn't particularly cold which is always good. The temperature there is normally just around zero and it is rarely extremely cold. On the 2,800 meter peaks we have had down to -6 degrees. A reason for this is that the proximity of the Black Sea acts as a regulator.
After a day’s skiing, a massage was in order. They do a very good deep massage there, which is very good for your back and tired legs. Dinner was a sumptuous affair where the Grand Chef donning a white hat carved the turkey (yes turkey) in front of us. It was baked in grapes leaves and salt crust. Very tasty and succulent. Plus a large Turkish mezze buffet, with cakes and fruit for desert, all very good.
Everyday the guides would make snow test by digging out the various layers and checking the stability and other things of the snow. Habitually I would check the barometer on The Rock (our ski instrument) every morning which would suggest the weather conditions for the day. The readings corresponded to the forecast we received. Our guides got fairly interested by what The Rock could do and tried it out. A lot of the functionality is relevant to heli skiing, and especially in areas where the mountains and their behaviour are so unknown. Altitude, total vertical meters skied, number and history of runs, temperature, freeze level and temperature changes, barometer for changes in weather, inclination for testing of slopes, compass for orientation of slopes.
On day 3, having done six lifts and 3770 meters of vertical skiing, the barometer went down which suggested a storm coming in hopefully bringing snow. The freeze level (2200 meters) had also gone up slightly, meaning that we would have to ski higher up. We finished the day before a 30 knot wind called because having wind alone does not help the skiing conditions.
We decided to take pictures of the local places and people so we ventured to the nearest village (Camlihemsin) from Ayder which in a European context certainly is authentic. It mainly consisted of one through road with a lot of small shops selling tea pots, carpentry, steaming cows meat, fruit and vegetables. We photographed the men who on a Monday afternoon played cards, drank tea and smoked cigarettes in the local tea houses. For religious and cultural reasons there are no bars, pubs or anything like that. After that we drove up to a small deserted village in the mountains where the houses are more than 300 years old. In the house at the farthest end of the path, the only ones living there were an old couple. We were invited in for tea in the only room heated. It was heated with wood as electricity or any other energy source is apparently unreliable up there. One of the nick-nacks on the wall was a magnum German schaumwein from 1873 (before Kaiser Wilhelm was born!). This is also skiing in Turkey for you.
Day 4, I woke up at 7:15 and looked at The Rock - pressure slightly up at 873 and looking out I could see blue sky with fast-moving white clouds. And, what a day! It had to rate among the top three heli skiing days in my life. Perfect snow (not a snow flake in the wrong place) blue sky, a few degrees below zero. In the morning before lunch we had done ten lifts skiing more than 6,000 meters vertical. After a lunch by the helicopter in the sun we skied another 5,000 meters totalling 11,000 meters vertical skiing all in immaculate powder, knee and some times thigh deep. All of our skiing was on north facing 30 - 40 degrees faces with no crust, no rocks, sometimes trees - just woaw. After this I have to say that skiing in Turkey is absolutely top class - forget travelling to Canada from Europe when you can get to this with no jetlag, much better food and all.
There is a traditional Turkish bath in the town and apparently the water of Ayder has healing powers. We went to the local (Turkish) public bath. Their water comes straight out of the ground at 42 degrees. It was very calm with about 10 local men enjoying the baths which is really a large marble pool where you walk around in it and wash off in the adjoining rooms where water flows straight out of taps. Even if there are separate changing rooms you are told to change in a cabin.
Day after day things started to become a little repetitive - wake up early, look at the weather, eat breakfast, go to helicopter, ski powder, come back to hotel, get massage, have dinner, go to sleep. It got to a point where I thought a nice little mountain town such as Champoluc would do wonders. Go to a restaurant, see other people, buy a drink in a bar and maybe go touring the next day rather than going up in a helicopter again. It sounds spoiled but it can become too much of a good thing. [Continue to 'Final Thought' in the next post...]
Sunday 21 February 2010.-.11 15 pm
Heli-skiing in Turkey - Final Thought
[...Continued from Heli-skiing in Turkey]
Having said that, Turkey is a rather spectacular place to ski. Imagine if you would be all alone with a helicopter for a whole week in Zermatt or Chamonix after a snowstorm had left one meter of perfect snow - and that Chamonix or Zermatt had suddenly turned back to what it was 150 years ago. When we fly up or ski down we don't see any trace of humans except for some barns low down which are only used in summer when the locals drive their animals up to graze. What we look at must be similar to what the early skiers a la Dr Payot saw when he skied the haute route in 1903 (one of the most famous and most coveted ski tours in the world, with fantastic scenery and exhilarating skiing from Chamonix to Zermatt over remote alpine passes, traversing glaciers and requiring a number of nights in mountain refuges). Only he didn't have a helicopter to get an extreme experience (skiing 11k vertical in perfect powder is extreme) of empty big mountains.
I think the ideal skiing experience would be to combine heli and touring, and to stay in a nice mountain village with some life but it is difficult to get it all at the same time.
Thursday 18 June 2009.-.10 57 am
The Rock Steady Partner
Linde Werdelin is proud to yet again supoort extreme climber, Leo Houlding. Houlding is one of the original Linde Werdelin testers. He wore a LW watch and Land Instrument on his Altitude Everest Expedition in June 2007, led by renowned American climber and mountaineer Conrad Anker.
"After wearing my Linde Werdelin watch and Instrument to the Mt. Everest expedition in 2007, I met up with Morten and Jorn to pass on my feedback. I was really pleased with the overall performance. My main suggestion was whether they should look into altering the weight of the watch", Houlding says.
Houlding's experience with the LW watch and Land Instrument during this Mt. Everest expedition led to the creation of the skeletonized Spidolite, which was introduced at the Basel World watch show in April 2009. Houlding asked for a lighter watch while snowboarding, skydiving and base jumping, just to mention a few of the extreme activities that make this adrenalin junkie's blood pump. We basically embraced his request and created the SpidoLite - milling away all excess material as well as using super light titanium for the case instead of steel, inspired by the Formula 1 car chassis structure. The result was a far lighter and striking watch that neither Houlding nor we had imagined.
"At the beginning of 2009 I met with Jorn Werdelin in London who showed me a prototype of the Spidolite and the drilled-out skeletonized case design was incredible! The weight of the SpidoLite was half the weight of the first watch I wore, my steel version!" Houlding says. The Spidolite is also inspired by the 'stripping down' of a street car such as Porsche, Aston, or Ferrai, converting it into a race car. You take out the air-con, passenger seat, carpets, stereo etc. to make it as light as possible.
Recently we sponsored Houlding a Hard Black Elemental which he prefers to wear with a black rubber strap. This watch can clearly be seen in the pictures here. These pictures were shot in March 2009 while he speed-climbed the conglomerate towers of Riglos, Spain, together with team mate Carlos Suarez.
By wearing the Hard Black on these rough climbs and in tough environments, he clearly proves that the black DLC coating LW offer is among the best and toughest in the watch world.
Leo Houlding can be found participating in almost any high-adrenaline, high-risk and high-adventure activities and he will be wearing the Hard Black Spidolite and The Rock, aka Land Instrument, on his August expedition to Mt. Asgard in arctic Canada. His collaboration is essential to Linde Werdelin as his lifestyle demands extremely tough watches and useful functions that can be activated instantly. Houlding surely offers the ultimate test grounds for Linde Werdelin watches and Instruments!
