This is the collective (Mr P is around the corner). This was early ish in the day, but we went on to make some epic runs. Here's the rundown on where I got to, and with who:
Start: take the La Daille funicular up to the top of Bellevard peak: 2827m
- Take the Verte green run - the first of the week. A wide and forgiving run with some great undulations. We speed through to the bottom of the Borsat express and my legs are feeling pretty good - off piste is in abundance at the moment. When we arrived it was snowing, and it's WARM in resort - 10-12 degrees - as the night drew in it kept snowing and the pistes out there look amazing, with plenty of little kickers to keep you amused.
- Get on the Borsat express - this is a beautiful lift, over a large expanse of pristine and glittering snow. Ski bling!
- Take Genepy - this is in the tranquil ski area and it's a wide, sweeping green, again with so much interesting stuff just off the edge with a lot of fresh snow - floaty floaty! We're all together and getting around nicely - feet are warming up, skills are re-emerging.
- Get on the Grand Pre lift - again, this lift has excellent views - the picture above was taken at the top of Grand Pre.
- Now 2 of the Party take the fantastically wide arcing Grand Pre - which has an amazing gulley off to the left where some nice little jumps can be had and it's all good. The sunshine is beating down - I've opened every flap I have and the coat is open to the waist! The other 4 take Club des Sports, a nifty little blue with some great areas on both sides - moguls on the right of me, a wicked hill on the left.
This turned out to be a slight mistake - you can get back across to Grand Pre from Club Des Sports but it's all off-piste and you have to get through the gulley - tricky - as it turned out we all met up at the bottom of Club Des Sports after a quick text. Gawd bless mobiles.
- Then we all go up Fontaine Froid lift - I get a gondola to myself and recline languidly across it, to applause from the rest of the party on the lift behind. We arrive back at where the funicular dumps you out from La Daille... At the other end, we talk about getting back down into Val D'isere and getting up the Solaise lift to check out the whole area out of the back of Solaise (2560)
A little background. There's 4 ways to get back into Val D'sere from the top of the Bellevard : the bubble L'Olympique, and three pistes - Santons (blue), Epaule Charvet (black - and closed today) and Face olympique de Bellevard (also black). La Face is a right of passage I haven't tried yet, promising myself each time I'll do it - storing up a myth it'll be so hard it'll scare me witless. From the ground, it looks terrifying - it's wide, but it's so steep it looks like you'd never get a grip.
- So, 4 of us decide to try La Face, and I think "I'm up for this. I'm ready." the music swells in my ears as I think about what I'm about to do.
Turns out La Face isn't a pussycat - but it's not that bad! A lot of it's quite narrow at the top, but those pistes are nice. What's excellent is that once you do that part, you reach a ledge: this ledge has lots of people standing looking over the edge.
It's a frickin precipice. ARGH! Steeling myself, I started getting the wide S turns and slides out, getting a feel for the grip which the edges have (I'm now edging my own board! This holiday gets better and better - engineering for sports equipment can now be added to the moneysaving tips. I've done 4 people's kit!)
I'm realising that my legs are still strong, no fatigue yet, and I start to enjoy myself - not too much speed, controlled stuff, but definitely not falling leaf in any way. I'm not feeling intimidated!
I get to the bottom in one piece, and in a respectable time, without getting exhausted - and at one stage I helped a guy who wiped out, losing his skis, by picking them up and BOARDING DOWN LA FACE CARRYING TWO SKIS. In my own tiny mind, I am now a god.
So, we're all back together again at the bottom of Solaise express - a 6-way where we all get the chance to share a single lift. It's a moment I'll remember.
- Now we head on down to the Madeleine Express and much hilarity ensues: at one stage Jim and I and Nic and Kim pair up, and we lose track of where each other are. I invoke the radio protocol, only to find that Nic has pressed so many buttons on the radio that she had turned on the automatic transmit, and Jim and I spent 20 minutes in hysterics listening to Nic and Kim talking - mainly about feet shapes - and I heard the lift noises when they got on lifts.
So while we're trying to find each other we did the classic "figure of 8" of the back of solaise - Madeleine express lift / col de la madeleine piste or fourche piste or marais piste / Glacier express lift / glacier piste or plan millet piste or lessieres piste down to Datcha lift / back onto the madeleine
Now we finally meet back up again!
- Lessieres express over to the Fornet Valley - this has the Fornet Glacier and this is our objective. We take Pont Abatte piste, pre-chemin, and vallon pistes down to the bottom of the Vallon de L'iseral bubble lift, which gets us up to the top of Lac Cema - we take this blue down to the bottom of the Cascade Express lift and make our way up the glacier, taking moraine piste (red) and a fantasically named piste called "traverses arses" which isn't nearly as hard or as comedy as it sounds.
So we make our way back to the Lessieres express, come back over to Solaise doing the Datcha lift and Madeleine green run as the last fast run of the day. My legs are definitely shot at this point, but I got some lovely edge speeding along towards the Terrasse lift which took us up high enough to get back to Solaise.
Nic and I got down on the Solaise Express lift - this was a good idea, as it turned out, the other two in the party of 4 we had at this point went down the red Piste M back down to Val; this was apparently a slushfest littered with the bodies of Conan the Barbarian's enemies. I.E. a nightmare ;-)
Highlight of the day: lunch at the Solaise restaurant - pricey, but great group feeling and sun-blasted with some good chillout music.
Here's Jim on the bubble up to the glacier.
The resort feels new to me again as most of the party haven't been here before - the vistas which you get on a lot of the lifts are breathtaking, wide with many many mountains in, especially the Lessieres express.
Tomorrow who knows... we may take Tignes :-)
