Courchevel 2019

Once the team arrived in Courchevel Le-Praz they pulled into a small layby and Mark called Sebastien who was our main contact while over there to find out the location of the hotel. While Mark was on the phone Scott realised there was a lot of smoke / steam coming from their van which was quite alarming, so he jumped out and opened the bonnet and saw that there was coolant was pouring out all over the floor and he ended up with a face full of steam, so he closed the bonnet and took a steady drive to the hotel only 2 mins away from the layby and left the van to cool down. Later that evening the team went and had a look at the site at 1850 followed by a 3 course meal in the local restaurant.

The next day was spent prepping the final items in readiness for the show on Thursday. The set piece was finished, and the slices were bundled together, waterproofed and plugged into I-Fires. Everything was then placed back into the container and the van was fixed and filled back up with coolant before the team headed out for the evening where they discussed the plan of action before having an early night.

Show Day was a tough one as they couldn’t get the vans to the site, so they had the use of two snow bully machines with baskets on the front and trailers to the rear to get everything to the site which was a task in its self! They managed to get everything to site where they started to set up. Tom and Scott started on the shells while Mark and Steve hit the front line and a quick staggered lunch broke the day up quite nicely. Roughly an hour before they were due to fire, they could finally position the set piece on the slope including 20 jets sporadically placed around it. Everything tested 100% so a quick final walk of site was done before they headed to mission control to watch the display.

Twenty minutes before the show, Courchevel Ski Instructors completed a torchlit decent and finished in front of the awaiting crowd. Unaware to them they went rather close to the set piece which resulted in Tom and Scott making a quick dash through the awaiting crowds and up the ski slope to the set piece where luckily only 3 jets were knocked over but the Centronics cable for the module had been pulled out, a quick check over and everything was good to go.

The show fired perfectly and was a huge success, the only downside was the wait to find out the results of the competition which was in two weeks’ time! The de-rig was completed straight after the show, which was hard enough, but the cold weather and soft snow made it even harder, but the team pushed through and everything was packed away and loaded into the vans. The following morning, they left Courchevel and headed home.

Two weeks later Scott set off from Birmingham airport on the Thursday afternoon heading to Courchevel for the prize ceremony. A quick drive from Lyon Airport took him to the hotel he would be staying at for the duration. Later that evening he met up with the organisers and the other teams’ representatives at 1850 and they were all whisked via a gondola (Cable car to me and you) to a higher meeting point where they would wait before being driven back down the slope in the snow bully machines to the stage area in front of the crowd.

After a few nervy moments waiting for the results, we are delighted to announce that we won 1^st prize (jury award) and the Prize Courchevel award!  After collecting the awards Scott headed off to watch the closing show. After the show he called Mark (who was in the Philippines) to tell him the good news and safe to say, he was ecstatic!