Manchester skiers descend on Alpe d’Huez party land
It was full of beautiful people
Last Saturday, 450 skiers, snowboarders and socialites departed from Manchester on a 26-hour long coach journey to Alpe d’Huez.
Once the coaches finally got to the Island of the Sun (as the locals call it) they arrived to blue skies, fresh beers and more fancy dress than they could handle.
SKUM wasn’t the only snowsports club in the Alps. A rowdy group of 900 people from Newcastle and smaller groups from unis like Loughborough, Sheffield and Northumbria who were all there to compete in BUSC, the uni ski competition.
While everyone settled into their hotels, Yubl, a new social media platform, which has been described as a mash-up of Instagram, Whatsapp and Snapchat, set up Après parties, free giveaways and competitions for the week ahead.
Download Yubl Now
The Après scene in Alpe d’Huez is fantastic, with both traditional mountain top bars and loads of places in town, meaning après can last a while here. Although not everyone in the resort was there to just drink and social ski.
Competitors from almost every university competed in the annual BUSC competition. SKUM were in a good position for most of the competition but there was strong opposition from Loughborough, Durham, Nottingham, Birmingham and Edinburgh, who all finished in the top five.
[infogram id=”results-042668183″ prefix=”60A” format=”interactive” title=”Results”]
Credit: The legends SKUM University of Manchester Snowsports
When people weren’t competing they were probably either drinking at one of the bars up in the mountains, La Folie Douce, or they were in one of the bars at the bottom of the slope.
People tended to congregate outside Le Taburle, a bar-restaurant venue where the Yubl cube was set-up at the start of the week.
On the Sunday evening, Le Tarbule and the cube were decked out with speakers, strobe lights and security while artists like Becky Hill and Jack Jones played until 11pm on the main stage.
When a few people had a little trouble finding the venue they took full advantage of Yubl’s Whereabouts button to find out when and where their mates were going out.
Jess, a History and Sociology second year said: “Après is the best thing ever, we literally spent the whole time drinking.”
It wasn’t all fun and games, when Yubl weren’t at big Après events, they ran a competition at La Folie Douce with Accessorize where they got people to use the app’s unique voting functionality.
Yubl asked people in Alpe d’Huez if they’d prefer to see their friends in a dino suit or a bikini. Obviously, Manchester opted for bikinis.
Monday night was just as big with Yubl teaming up with BUSC Events and SKUM to throw a huge party in the resort’s biggest venue, Palais Des Sports.
Artful Dodger played a massive set while Yubl launched a free bar tab competition. All they had to do was get ten people in a Yubl group chat – the group with the best chat won a €1000 bar tab for the week. Unfortunately, a lucky group of mates from Durham walked away with the bar tab.
From pool parties to bikini competitions, the maddest week had to come to an end at some point, as Manchester faced a long journey back on the coach.