Sunchasing!

Tagging up with my girlfriend, we left Grenoble chasing the snow sun in Villars, Switzerland. Located in the Vaud canton, about 65km from Lausanne lay the Villars-Gryon-Les Diablerets-Glacier 3000 resort.

With a high pressure system in place for a few days and some bright sun on the forecast, we took off thinking more about the sunscreen than the down jackets. Even if I do prefer the cold powdery snow, I actually really don’t mind skiing slushy snow in the resorts when the spring shows up!

We started our discovery of the domain in Villars and headed out towards Glacier 3000.
I don’t think the trail map accurately represents the ground that really separates those 2 places! I also don't think that was my greatest idea ever! Linking those two fairly distant resort together in a day forces you to sit and use a lot of lifts. One would be better serve into making its idea in the resort he really would like to ski than to try to check them all out in a single day!

Good thing that there wasn’t much people there since crossing from one resort all the way at the top of the other resort can take quite some time! There is also quite a big difference in the resort style when you compare the terrain available on the Villars and Diablerets side to the Glacier 3000.

For Villars and Les Diablerets, it is more traditionnal slopes cut through trees or open field as there is some really good alpine freeriding opportunities to be found on the Glacier 3000 side.

Certainly that the most spectacular view is at Glacier 3000, we even had the chance to score some nice cold-snow turns there!

After riding there and back we went to Gryon to check out the afterski of the first day of the Telefest organized by the Worst Crew. There was a pretty cool ambiance there and a lot of people showed up for the live one-man band!

We met a lot of the same people the following day at the tent festival where free-demo gathered around 150 persons trying different ski boots and binding.

Part of the festival was also the Televasion. It was a discovery tour of both the resort and the slackcountry. We took off with on the tour and even if the skiing was good, the best part was the lunch.

In a traditionnal alpine chalet that was originally used for the summer pasture, we were serve wine, cheese and soup. We both had way to much food and with the warm sun shinning strong, it was kinda hard to leave! After almost 3 months of almost non-stop skiing, I start to almost enjoy as much to relax and drink wine than to ski!

We left Villars to go back to Grenoble after 2 days that were way too short!

With the high pressure still in place, I rallied with Nicolas Attal my friend who lives in Valloire to check out the nearby Valfréjus. Located near the border of Italy, Valfréjus was one of the first resort in France to open for the season and got spanked with snow from the storm coming in the pasta-land side all season long.

 Valfréjus is not really what one could call a ‘’resort’’.  There is certainly some other activity than skiing, but don’t expect Rolex shopping here! With only 3 majors lifts, it is nothing but a major ski-hub. But for what it lacked in impressive number, Valfréjus got something that cannot be put down in number: nice terrain, real alpine feeling and awesome view.

For 28 euros, you get to a 600m vertical of nice alpine terrain. I don’t think there is that much to do when you don’t have any visibility since all of the interesting turns are made above treeline.

I was also fairly impress about the speedriding skills that some fellow were showing up. Speedriding is like paragliding but with a wing a bit to small to fly. People were flying down and putting loops in the air.... Something just got put on my bucket list!

An other great discovery in the Maurienne valley!

I certainly like resort skiing but with the Chamonix-Zermatt traverse already plan at the end of our season, a bit of touring wouldn’t hurt to get my legs in shape!

With Amelie, we left towards the Rocher Rond in the Matheysine massif just southeast of Grenoble. It is really hard to separate what I call a great outing from what people in Europe call a great outing.

I like to ski down steady 30-45degrees gradient slope with my skins on, they don’t mind bushwacking or hiking with their skis on their pack for hours without any chance of skiing.

I like to climb straight up and ski down, they don’t mind long, long, looonnnnnng approach just to get to a summit with a view.

I climb to ski, for some skiing is a mandatory pain required after the quick skin up.

But for once, I was able to find a great tour that looked like providing a steady gradient up and a good spring-skiing destination.

After hiking for 5 minutes, we started to climb on some hard refrozen snow. We were quickly joined by a local stinky farmer’s dog that would eventually climb all the way to the top with us.

Our progression was slow with the packs loaded to test how it will be on the coming Cham-Zermatt traverse. As we gained elevation, we could more easily see the smog coming from the valleys around and especially from Grenoble.

I really like this city, but I can’t convince myself that it is good for you to live there on the long run with so much pollution.

We timed our climb and ski down perfectly since the snow was nice and soft all the way down! It is one of the best tour I’ve done around Grenoble and I was really surprise not to see any other tracks on the mountain...

Looks like spring is here now...
Hope winter will make a comeback!

evans

Let me introduce you to the Maurienne Valley!!!

The last wind episode that cut our last day short in the Vercors left some major scars on the snow around the mountain near the Rhône valley and around Grenoble. With Babiche back on track, we figured it would be better to try some other nearby valley that run perpendicular from the Rhône valley.

We left and did a first stop in the Lauzière massif. This submountain range lays at the confluence of the famous Tarentaise valley (in which you’ll find some of most renowned ski resort like La Plagne, Les Arcs, Tignes, Val d’Isère, etc...) and the much more unknown Maurienne valley.

We left Grenoble anything but early and following the obvious signs towards Celliers, we eventually park where the road stop to be plowed during the winter.

We had look at different options on the website Skitour , but we hadn’t really made up our mind. The parking lot was high and it seemed that there was multiple options from there. After hiking for a few minutes, we realized that a nice north facing face was still mostly untrack. That was our plan for the day. After 2 nice laps, we hoped in the car and start driving towards the end of the Maurienne valley also know as the Haute-Maurienne.
                                                 

From the very end of the valley, you’ll find the nice and quiet mountain village of Bonneval-sur-Arc. Nothing close from the touristical mayhem of Val d’Isère even if only a few kilometers (by a close winter road) separate the two places from each other.

This little village kept the lay back pace that once would look up to for some relaxing holidays. With only 10 lifts and about the same amount of marked runs, Bonneval-sur-Arc is mostly known as a familiy destination. What is really nice about the family destination in Europe is that they are pretty often bigger than your local mountain. After a few warm up runs where we score really nice powder, just next from one of the very first chairlift, we went up to the highest lift.

As we were going up, we found a nice (almost) untouched area that look like it was reserved for our personal use!

We headed there not really knowing if the snow would be as good as it looked.
And luckily for us, the snow was not good, it was plainly GREAT!!!

After lapping the run 2-3 times, we realized that no one else was skiing it and the only tracks that weren’t there on our first run were our own!!!

It was kind of a weird feeling.
We didn’t need to hike at all to reach it.
We didn’t need to rush at all since no one else was using it.
We could just ski back to the lift after the run, without poling or hiking.

Nevertheless, snow was dreamy!!!
It happens once in a while that we have those days where I take so many nice skiing picture, that it is hard to decide which one to put up on the blog! Not wanting to work to hard, here is some raw skiporn!

Following that awesome day of skiing, we drove down to Lanslebourg which is the biggest town of the Haute-Maurienne. The lift of the Val Cenis resort starts straight from town.

There was much more people there than in Bonneval-sur-Arc even if the resorts are separated only by a few kilometers and are linked by a free shuttle. With the last snowfall dating about a week ago and with more people skiing it, we were both pretty surprise to still find some great untrack snow!

Here is Babiche rushing to get some freshies before I got skied by some locals.

After another great day of skiing, we headed out to check out the local cheese production. Since I got to France, I discovered the Beaufort cheese. This cheese is similar to Gruyère, but just better. I have never tried it before settling down in France and since then, it ranked on the top of my favourite cheese list.

Since that delicacy is coming from the area and is produce locally, it was then a no-brainer to have a look at the local production of it. There were 6000 cheeses in the warehouse, costing about 500euros a piece. Yes, this is 3 millions euros worth of cheese!!!

This is actually something that I really love about ski-tripping in Europe. You can get some world-class delicacy and learn about mountain lifestyle without having to cut out on the quality of the skiing you did during the day.

We kept driving down the Maurienne valley back towards Grenoble and stopped this time in Valloire. We hooked up with Nicolas Attal, a frenchie that I’ve met a year back in Montreal as he was looking for a good skiing plan.

Valloire is also considered as a family destination even if there are more than 150km of groomed runs to ski on. After a few laps on them, we headed out with Nico to check out the nearby slackcountry. After about 20 minutes of skinning on a flat ridge going East of the resort, we ended up on a nice run on which it was pretty easy to get some freshies.

We were both amazed about the surrounding mountain and the quietenest of the area. I’ve mostly only heard about the big skiing super-resort before this year, but I have to say that there is a lot to discover and some great under-the-radar destination in France.

We painfully had to decline the invitation to stay (and party) overnight since my Dad was arriving in Grenoble.

We drove back to Grenoble to pick him up and Amelie and drove back to the Maurienne valley to do a little backcountry the following day. We spotted a nice start from which it seemed to have multiple options. The parking from which we needed to start was around 1700m near the station St-François-Longchamp (that I learn the existence on that day...) From there, I thought we would have some good chance to still get some nice cold snow.

After 5-10 minutes skinning up, with the warm temperature and the harsh sun, we decided not to try the north facing slopes, but instead to go more towards the south facing aspect and try to harvest some corn.

Warm it was certainly for sure!!!

After a pleasant bread-salami-cheese snack, we were down for the harvesting! Snow was just perfect. With 5-10cm of melted corn sitting on top of a steady surface, we were all able to carve some buttery turns as you would usually dream on in April!

                                                   

With Babiche leaving the following day, we drove back to Grenoble to enjoy a relaxing après on our patio!

Some more snow is on the forecast for Italy, so I guess that will be our next destination!
Cheers,
evans