Last day in La Rosiere

Making Tracks

Alison and Henry were snow-boarding today, so I went over to Italy, where the weather was excellent, there was new snow, the Argillien lift was open, as was Maison Carrel, and they even had pistachio ice cream in the cremerie.

Pistachio Ice-cream

Petit St Bernard pass with clouds rising from France

Looking into France

More Pictures

Excellent "Dream Turnip"

Vue sur la Grande Motte

Encore un vue sur la Grande Motte

Maison du Tourisme

Pictures from La Rosiere

Now in La Rosiere, with Jo (and a chalet to ourselves), Alison, Henry and others are all slumming it in hotel La Roz.

Alison's chocolat chaud in the pass

Jo walking to Roches Noires
(with le Mont Pourri)

View up the Isere valley and of le Mont Pourri

Tignes, SkiBug, Snoworks

I am in Tignes this week staying in Skibug's Chalet Sauterelle, which I think I first stayed in on the first Inmos ski trip in 1981. Paul and Lorraine's hospitality is impeccable!

When I arrived here on Saturday, I discovered that another couple in the chalet were booked on a Snoworks back-country course. They had just finished another Snoworks course, and were very positive, so, a few emails and texts later, I was booked on the course too.

Given the poor state of the weather and the snow, our guide/mentor/teacher Nick  has been doing a great job keeping us moving around the mountain and finding pockets of powder, despite many of the real back-country routes being un-skiable (at least safely...).

Making tracks!

In the Charvet gorge

Entering les Pays Deserts

A well deserved demi de pression at the

end of the day.

p.s. Google's "Auto-Awesome" created the panorama above on its own when it backed up the photos from my phone.

Apres Ski

Roger feeling at home in Bourg

and so on to Tignes, staying in the chalet (Chalet Sauterelles with SnowBug) which I first stayed in in 1981 on the first Inmos ski trip!

Two More Sunny Days

Changes in La Rosiere

The new Plan du Repos chair lift is fine, but (perhaps to ensure that it justifies its existence), Choucas has disappeared. The top part is now Mouflon, but it then routes you down to the Plan du Repos lift, so there is now no way to get from the top of the Fort to the Maison du Ski without taking another lift (the Plan du Repos). This change will also make the top of the run back from Roches Noires to the Maison du Ski even more congested at the end of the day. I'm not convinced it's an improvement, even though Choucas was tedious!

Coffee Survey

An espresso coffee in France is generally 2Euro up the mountain, though cheaper in town (e.g. 1.80Euro in Aux Trois Ours in Les Eucherts). The best deal therefore seems to be at l'Antigel, where you get a macaron with your coffee.

Espresso in l'Antigel

Espresso in the pass

Lunch

We ate in Lo Tata in La Thuile which is indistinguishable from its previous incarnation as le Rascard. The Pizza remains as good as ever. Getting there is hard at present, since there is very little snow and only one run down into La Thuile. Here's the state of the slalom piste!

You have to walk right down from the piste to get to the restaurant; no skiing down to the road!

After lunch, to la Cremerie for an ice-cream

Unfortunately no pistache on the ice-cream menu this week!

Today we had lunch at Le Meleze; Roger was unable to resist polenta...

Stats

Yesterday: top speed 83 km/h 58.3km travelled

Today: top speed 86 km/h ~70km travelled (approximate since my logging is incomplete as "Ski Tracks" doesn't seem to record tracks when running on my phone. A whole 89p down the drain unless/until they fix it!)

Miscellaneous Photos

View at breakfast

Sunset over the Maison du Tourisme

Le Mont Pourri

Another Sunny Day in La Rosiere

A good day's skiing in the sun including a lunch at the Relais du Petit St Bernard. The snow in the pass seemed the nicest in the afternoon, though some of the runs in La Rosiere and Les Eucherts were good in the morning.

Here is Roger in front of Mont Blanc.

Progress so far...

Travel

A fairly uneventful trip. Roger and I left Bristol at about 8am, and were at the channel tunnel at 11. We were offered (and took) the chance to travel on the 11:50 train instead of the 12:36 and reached Le Val Moret as it was getting dark.

We resisted the lobster menu and the deconstructed crunchy irish coffee, but had a very pleasant meal.

Unpleasant fog from the off on Saturday most of the way to Dijon, but no traffic or road problems, so we were in La Rosiere about 3:30pm.

Skiing

A rather unpleasant day on Sunday, doing two runs in zero visibility, which made me completely sea-sick, so I retired to bed for the afternoon.

A good day today, over to La Thuile in bright sun all day for coffee at La Cremerie, so here's the traditional picture of coffee there.

La Cremerie Coffee

A lot of La Thuile is closed, all of the Arnouvaz area is shut, and some of the lifts in the pass are also closed. There's even a pond on what is normally part of the piste in the centre of the resort!

Roger in front of Mont Blanc

We came back through the pass and had lunch at the fort restaurant. Then tried to find Choucas to get back to the front de neige, but it no longer exists! My theory is that they're funnelling you down to the new Plan du Repos lift to ensure that it has lots of traffic and can be shown to be useful!

"My Tracks" reckons 51.78km travelled in 5h 37m with a top speed of 75km/h and 4,863m of elevation gain.

Another sunny day is forecast tomorrow!