I was again with Didier and Kiera of iSKI and their regular client Bernard, but Liz was along too. On Thursday she had a morning powder lesson with Wayne from Alpine Experience, and the results definitely showed on Friday. Our warmup run was to the side of the Fontaine Froid piste, mellow intermediate pitch and south facing, but it was immediately evident that powder quality was outstanding. It was mostly sunny, so there was definitely a priority in hitting the sunny exposures early before the powder quality declined.
Next we stepped up around the top Bellevarde gondola station and traversed skier’s left to Cairns. Here’s Bernard making the second track there after Didier.
Liz and Kiera followed me.
View into town from that same spot, a couple of tracks continuing lower:
We traversed right and rode the Noyes lift back to Bellevarde.
From there we skied to the Grand Prix lift. I stopped to take this pic of some skiers who had climbed Rocher de Charvet.
Arrow shows top of the couloir where they dropped in. There are two skiers spraying powder in the open midsection below and left of the upper couloir, and there are a couple of tracks coming out of a chute below that. Didier said, “Not that difficult, maybe 35-40 degrees at the top, only about a 20 minute hike to get up there.” It sounds like a piece of cake for Staley compared to Entre Rios.
We skied the Tour de Charvet around the backside of that mountain. Liz on upper wide section:
This is also south facing but it’s before 10AM, which means before 8:30AM by sun time.
Scenic continuation:
Here Bernard points across the valley at his favorite off piste sector of Val d’Isere.
It takes about 45 minutes to climb up the backside of that.
Bottom of Tour de Charvet:
The exit trail continues left to the Manchet chair.
Le Manchet is a wide open west facing sector of about 2,000 vertical. There was plenty of room for powder skiing there, but of course Didier knew better. We skied down the easy piste to Madeleine, which takes us maybe 100 vertical higher than the top of Manchet. After a short step up from there and a traverse far left, we have a vast area of pristine snow to ski. Liz on the top part:
Didier often zigzagged to avoid rollover pitches that might be unstable.
But then he set us up on the best powder of the trip, completely hidden by his spray as he sets the line here.
I zoomed the camera so Didier’s head is barely visible.
Liz and Kiera enjoying the goods:
Close-up of Kiera:
After another short traverse, Didier skis the final pitch.
Liz on that, viewed from below:
Here we are exiting the far end of the valley on the way back to Le Manchet lift.
It’s no wonder I returned here late in the day.
We did not take an encore run, as the off-piste program lasts only until 1PM and Didier wanted to check out the powder off the Signal poma east of Le Fornet. On the way there we skied some powder on the hillside skier’s right of Piste L to Le Laisinant. We rode the Laisinant and Pyamides chairs and the Signal poma to Grand Vallon.
Here we are traversing high above Grand Vallon.
The traverse track below us leads to a saddle entry into the next drainage, Vallonet.
But we also did a 5 minute step-up to get a higher entry to Vallonet.
The high entry ensured that our first turns in Vallonet would be pristine.
I skied next after Didier with Liz following.
In the middle section there are few more tracks but plenty of room to set our own line.
Notice the traverse track from the bottom of that pitch out the lower right of the picture above. Didier led us that way to avoid a steep rollover with that much new snow in the Fornet sector. You can see the track going off to the left, which led to a very unfortunate result viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12654 .
Here are Kiera and Liz on the lower part of Vallonet.
It was past 1PM so our guided day was done. Needless to say with these conditions I was not done. Liz broke off a pole basket and took the bus into town with Didier and Kiera to replace it. She later went up Bellevarde and worked her way over to Laisinant.
Meanwhile I rode the tram out of Le Fornet and the Pyramides chair and Signal poma to Grand Vallon. I stuck with the more heavily skied first bowl, tracked but not that difficult to make my own.
View back up after skiing about 1,500 vertical:
There’s another 1,500 vertical below me.
However, just beyond that small gully I heeded Didier’s advice to avoid sun affected snow and bailed out skier’s left to the piste for the lowest 1/3 of vertical. You can also bail out left at the halfway point and return to the Pyramides chair and not go to the Le Fornet base at all.
In retrospect I probably should have lapped Grand Vallon the rest of the afternoon. But I was quite sure the far left of Le Manchet with the 2 chair sequence and short bootpack would still have quite a bit of untracked snow. To get there I rode the Vallon gondola to the Lessieres chair. Riding that chair I saw these tracks below.
You have to jump off the chair to ski that as Lessieres is a transport lift that does not stop at the top. There were a couple of tracks on the other side too. Didier said you will get your pass pulled if you get caught.
My first run far left Manchet was indeed untracked but it was 2:30PM and the sun had turned the snow into heavy “Baldy powder.” I avoided rollovers but still set off a small wet sluff. So the second run I traversed higher and farther to bend the angle bit farther from the afternoon sun. From there I had a view of a few skiers coming into that drainage from a more direct north exposure.
I’m guessing it took at least half an hour of hiking or skinning for those skiers to get out there.
I ended the day skiing down to Le Laisinant, arriving 4:10PM. The view below was the most direct north facing I could find.
It was still winter snow but cut up more like at a North American resort late on a powder day.
Liz pronounced this “the best ski day of her life.” I have maintained a few records to evaluate my ski days. I skied 29,100 vertical, 17K of powder. By the crude measure of vertical + powder vertical that ranks 10th lifetime out of 1,470 ski days. Qualitatively it was better than 3 of the days where that stat was higher, but you can also say that a few snowcat ski days with blower powder but less vertical might rank ahead of this one. At any rate, it was clearly my best day lifetime in the Alps and probably best day anywhere in 2017-18. Feb. 25 in Fernie was close, quality of snow was better there, but most of the skiing was over buried moguls or in trees requiring lots of adjustments. As I told Liz, the first 4 hours here were like a good day in the cat or heli. 65 Euros for 4 hours of guiding in the Alps is quite an attractive deal on a day like this.
