powder powder powder…
March 6th, 2007Chong isn’t the only one enjoying fantastic Ski conditions. I’ve been in Val D’Isere for the last week and a bit and the snowfall has been phenomenal - last week saw something in the region of 120cm of new snow; though it was accompanied by bad visibility and high avalanche risk the on and off piste ‘boarding and Skiing has been generally excellent.
The snowfalls have tapered off since Saturday and the pistes are nicely packed (off piste is mostly tracked out) providing the perfect conditions for some real power carves. Today was the first time I remembered to take my GPS onto the hill, and it revealed some interesting statistics. Max speed was 81km/h and total distance traveled was 50.6km. The distance traveled obviously includes time spent on the lifts, but some rough arithmetic shows that to be about 40km actually on piste.
Val D’Isere offers some fabulously varied terrain – the tree line is about 500M above the village, so there’s some nice forest trails to complement the usual high altitude desolation. There are a reasonable number of black runs and loads of reds, though I’ve noticed that the piste grading is somewhat random, erring towards under rating rather than over rating (I’ve used a few connecting runs which have been labeled as “green” when they should really be blue).
There really is something for everyone. If you’re looking for moguls, “Face” (famous black with a drop of almost 1km) and “Rocs” (a red at the top of the Tommeuses chair) offer some ridiculously rutted terrain. For cruising and carving, “Piste M” on Solaise and “Face/Double M” over in Tignes are superb.
The lift system is extremely modern and completely “hands free” - an RFID pass stuck in your jacket pocket is all that’s required to get around. As a snowboarder I have a hate-hate relationship with drag lifts - I’m perfectly capable of using them (even the horror shows that can be found in parts of Eastern/Central Europe) but they’re tiring and I’d rather avoid them. There are a few drag lifts left in Val, but they’re mostly to be found on the glaciers and can be avoided without missing anything really special.
Val is part of Espace Killy - Tignes being the other part - and offers access to something in the region of 300km of pistes. Tignes is probably the ugliest ski resort I’ve ever seen and the terrain is far less varied (no trees for a start) but there’s a lot of it! It reminds me a bit of Passo Tonale, a high altitude Italian resort.
This has definitely been my best ‘boarding trip so far. It’s not been without incident though – one of our party (Anias father) managed to injure himself on the first section of the first piste on the first day. He missed almost a week of skiing and was only able to start skiing again on Sunday. I managed to wreck my knee doing some off piste last week – a high speed impact with a hidden rock resulted in a nasty “crunch” noise. NSAID’s (eg. Ibuprofen) and an ingenious hinged knee brace have allowed me to continue abusing my board, but walking around is rather more painful than it should be…
Panorama from the top of the Funicular in Tignes
Four hours snowfall…
