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| Haig, Jackie, Cassie, Si and Gabby at the top of Mosettes Swiss/French border |
Another week here in Portes du Soleil and it’s been cold – a
good thing in a ski resort, but cold! A little bit of light snow, some sun, not
much wind, but temperatures rarely above freezing. The snow is still in good, powdery
condition as there has been no ‘freeze-thaw’, but it’s now fairly ‘tracked out’
with little fresh powder, but off-piste is still good and worth doing if you’re
happy negotiating moguls.
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| Si looking round to see Jackie and Cassie waving |
We had a good day out on Monday, skiing with Si and Cassie
and their relatives/chalet hosts Gabby and Haig. A fairly cloudy day, with a
bit of light snow but the plan was the ‘Swiss Loop’, which is a 60km+ circuit
through six linked resorts, starting off in the French resort of Montriond,
through Chatel and Super Chatel and then into Switzerland (in a seamless border
crossing), but skiing alongside a road on a snowy path, to Morgins, Champoussin,
Les Crosets, then back up and over into France and back to Montriond. We’d done
it on our ski orienteering only two days before, but who were we to argue,
fabulous runs, good company, a nice circuit and built in hot chocolate stops!
66km and nearly 6 hours later with 48km of skiing and numerous lifts we came
back happy people and in time to look after Gizmo dog at 3:30pm.
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| That'll be me 'n 'er. Photo taken by Cassie |
Our plan was to have a day off on Tuesday as we’d had long
days out since Friday and needed to rest our bodies,
(and do some washing as I
was nearly out of pants!) but Si and Cassie asked whether we’d like to ski the
off-piste Valle de la Manche, which is an 8-9km mountain descent, not only
off-piste, but also outside any ski resort. We had already skied this descent
as part of our ‘Big Day Out’ ski tour in February 2016 (see:
http://brianandjackiecross.blogspot.fr/2016/02/our-ski-tour-big-day-out.html)
and know it to be a fabulous descent, so our day off had to be postponed!
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| Art! |
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| On Col du Fornet looking back at the resort before we ski off |
Although the route is outside the ski resort, it is possible
to get up on ski lifts in Avoriaz as high as they will go, then take the skis
off and walk up to a col at the resort boundary and look over the edge at the
huge expanse of the valley beyond, click the skis back on and head off down. It’s
a serious route in a snowy mountainous area so we needed to be prepared with
full ski touring gear: skins for the skis in case we needed to ascend and transceivers,
probes and shovels should we be caught in an avalanche. We had to position a
vehicle at the end in order to get back to the start so we met them at Nyon,
left their van there and drove round to Montriond to get three lifts up to our
start point, the Col du Fornet. Having checked out transceivers were working
and switched on we set off.
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| At the top looking down the Valle de la Manche. Jackie in the foreground, Si pointing out the route to Cassie. We headed down over and to the left of those bumps, the round to the right of that nose and on a long way past down to the bottom well beyond |
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| The three of them are down there, I'm still near the top |
The descent involved a short walk up along a path in the
snow to access the valley, ski down a small chute that caused a few butterflies
and down left into a huge bowl, avoiding the steep avalanche prone slopes to
the right. Although many people had gone before there was still fresh, deep
powder to be had and superb scenery. The navigation was relatively
straightforward, just being aware of steep slopes to the sides, so we were able
to just enjoy the experience completely away from any marked pistes or ski
lifts.
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| A group of six deer or goats making their way across the snow |
Lower down we came across a building with pitched roof, deeply buried in
the snow, perfect for skiing over, so it just had to be done! Cassie went over,
followed by Si and Jackie and finally me. As I went straight over I saw a gap between
the edge of the iron roof and the snow bank on exit, with no time to make a
change of route. It all worked, I just heard a slight scrape as I contacted the
roof edge, but fortunately glided smoothly back onto the snow and a quick stop.
‘Didn’t you hear me say go left or right, but not straight on?’ said Cassie.
Well, possibly, but it all happened so quickly.
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| Half way down, looking back up of where we've come |
The final section was quite icy
and not so pleasant, but apart from a slight mistake, taking our descent
towards a river, followed by a backtrack to find the correct route, it all went
smoothly and we were back at the van, connection to our car and home again
feeling happy people. It was at the return to the van when we unzipped our
jackets to turn our transceivers off that I realised mine wasn’t on. Don’t know
how I managed that and it was a good job nothing happened. There’s a lesson
there (a very basic one!), check and double check in future!
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| Teddy adding load to my exercises (I didn't realise how badly I did pressups!) |
Wednesday was our day in, very cloudy and miserable, we chilled!
Well he chilled, I spent all day up and down making a chicken biryani and
vegetable curry, which although I say it myself was fabulous! Thursday we
thought we’d go out, but it was still miserable and cloudy. In the hope it
would clear we went up the lifts in Avoriaz hoping to break through the cloud
into blue sky and see a cloud inversion below us. No! As we went up it just got
foggier. At the very top of Avoriaz it was almost sunny, we could see the top of
the cloud and blue sky above, but we were about 50m short of altitude and, as
soon as we started to ski down the cloud thickened. After following the side of
piste pole markers in thick fog we gave up and came home.
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| Looking down the Torgon black 'Freeride' |
Friday was much better, clear blue skies and fabulous
sunshine, although it was still bitterly cold. I had a plan, I wanted to head
off towards the Swiss Torgon ski resort, ski a lovely black run down to a
remote ski lift, try out the several red runs there then go and look to see if
the unpisted black ‘Freeride’ run that is the only run left in the entire PDS
that I haven’t done. In the last two and a half ski seasons I’ve never seen it
open and, although I’d have gone down it while officially closed, Jackie was
dead against it. A lift goes up over it so it’s possible to inspect it first
and we have done this many times in the past and seen it looking very doable,
but still closed. This time, as we went up the lift we could see yellow marker
posts with orange tops, indicating a very hard unpisted black descent. It
looked open and, as we got to the top, the fence blocking the entrance had a
small gap in it with a flag alongside. I asked a ski patrol man if it was open
and he said ‘yes’. ‘Be careful at the top, it’s very narrow and you have to go
a long way across the top until you get to the start, then its straight down.
Be careful, but if you can do it, you’ll be able to do anything in the Portes du
Soleil’. That was it, off we went. The scoot across was very uneven, narrow and
difficult to control speed, but it took us away from the lift and appeared at
the top of a very steep lumpy slope down.
Although very lumpy, the snow was not
too bad and it was possible to plant the poles, skim round the edge of a mogul
and slide down its side, repeating as we went. It was very steep but so
enjoyable and I was so excited. Jackie skied brilliantly and we got to the
bottom in what seemed like no time, deciding it was probably the hardest, yet
most enjoyable run in the whole of the resort. We skied down to the lift, got
back up to the top and did big thumbs up to the ski patrol man, who seemed
quite surprised we were back so quickly.
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| We did it! At the bottom of the Torgon black 'Freeride' |
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| This blackbird vists us most days to eat cat biscuits. Here he is checking us out |
We finished our day by continuing through Switzerland to re-join
the Swiss Loop we’d done with Si and Cassie a few days earlier, completing a
day of 50km of skiing and 74km total distance, feeling very tired but very
happy people. A great weeks skiing. It also tipped us over the 1000km skied
distance since we arrived in December.
Today is the start of the half term holidays and, if
previous seasons are anything to go by, everywhere will be full of people, so
our enthusiasm to go out skiing on crowded slopes of unpredictable skiers,
queue at lifts amongst people who don’t believe in queuing and intend to get in
front no matter what and then find people get off lifts in front and then stop
to regroup with their friends and to chat, blocking exits and pistes,
completely oblivious to anyone else – no, I think we’ll do other things for two
weeks, go ski touring and/or try to find less used lifts and slopes. Grumpy old
man? Not me surely!
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| And here he is with a cat biscuit in his beak. We saw him eat seven in one sitting earlier |
