Les Deux Alpes

 

This is around our 15th time in France, mostly in Les Deux Alpes out of the last 21 years, the others being in Breckenridge, Colorado.  However, whilst it is getting a bit steep everywhere, our days of affording to ski the beautifully groomed corduroy runs in America are behind us.  ….and skiing their double black diamond mogul runs never was realistic!

We have a ‘ski in, ski out’ hotel (l’Oree des Pistes) and it is very central, overlooking one of the main bus stops, the main lift and the tourist info office.  I doubt it is the plushest by a long chalk but it is the one that we are into double figures re stays with so you could say we like it.  We usually go with a tour company.  I like to have someone responsible for me on a ski holiday but we could not get what we wanted a couple of years ago and opted for another resort as a result …..   resort was fine, hotel ok but ……So this year we are doing exactly the holiday we want independently.  This may explain why our holidays are getting so much more expensive.  A total refusal to compromise!

So far, so good and everyone we have come across since Friday evening seems to have been inclined to aid our holiday plans and lift our spirits.  The stroke of luck with and efficiency from Ben’s Buses got us to the hotel before the room was ready and whilst the extra time did throw up the possibility of an extra afternoon of skiing this was going to be a bit of hassle, kit wise, from the hotel baggage room.  So that potential deviation was parked in favour of a walk around the town and a Leffe Blonde at The Polar Bear Pub.  Actually two pints but we are on holiday so who’s counting!  After two early starts in a row it was probably the safer choice.  Thankfully, on this occasion, I do not need to get into an argument with the NHS re 2 pints versus a broken leg. 

Got to bed at 9pm Friday and got up at 8am Sunday.  Can’t say that was entirely uninterrupted but then I mentioned I was female and 60 didn’t I?  

Sunday out on the white, slippy stuff was a good day.  Might have been better if we were lighter, fitter etc but that is why I keep coming back to, at least, making preparations for retirement.  We need to be fitter than we are right now to so what we want to do which, as it happens, includes 6 weeks skiing a year staying in a motor home.  As they say ‘the gods laugh when we humans make plans’.  Leaving aside the need to be fitter thing, not insignificant in itself, there is the small matter of needing to learn to compromise in order to bring this about - ski in, ski out, decent breakfast and dinner cooked for you, rainfall shower/bath etc = tricky to find in a motorhome.  

So, anyway, today…… great morning over on Vallee Blanche/Pied Moutet.  We haven’t done this for a few years either due to weather or more enthusiasm for the Glacier side of the resort.  Actually proved to be a rather fun and straightforward playground.  Some of the runs had changed since we were last on them.  Some not so much and I sympathised with a couple who were walking down the side of a blue run.  I’ve done that before on that stretch when it was let’s say, a tad glissant!  Sheet ice and terrifying in the run down to a sheer drop to a road might, possibly, be another way of describing it.  Today, however, I did not find it that bad but they still had my understanding.

Țhe cloud was, however, closing in and S threw in the towel around 2pm.  I went back out with plans to do a couple of gentle runs up the glacier side of the mountain (but not that high).  Hit a huge queue on a drag lift which I needed to get me high enough to get over to a chairlift to take me up.  This should have been my first warning.  Ànyway when I got up to where I was intending it was like there was a swarm of ants across the mountain.  I got to the top of the run and discovered the traverse to the next sector was closed due to avalanche risk.  Visibility was ok ahead but S would have struggled with the under ski/snow definition ie I could barely tell what was soft piles and what was scrunchy ice to look at.  

Getting a general sense that there was a hot bath, cold rose and/or a cup of tea at base camp (ie the village) I got to the bottom of the run, back loaded in the lift, staggered to the drag lift and then skied from the top of the drag lift to the entrance of the hotel/hotel ski lockers.  Seems there was also a bar of Milka Daim bar chocolate.   S may have made the right call.  

Apres Ski on the deck outside the hotel was just getting underway.  It reliably stops at 7pm for dinner which is just shy of the point at which my enthusiasm for crowd karaoke to ABBA, Queen and Sweet Caroline starts to wane.

A good, if gentle day!