Back from a week in Flaine, stayed at the UCPA and did the off piste course. Talk about striking it lucky! The snow was falling as we cruised the autoroute from Geneva on Saturday night, so the free skiing day on Sunday was spent messing around on gentle, piste side powder. Situated on a huge limestone massif, Flaine is known for the huge potholes which can easily swallow a skier, so we were reluctant to get more adventurous without a proper guide. The equipment provided by UCPA was good, I brought my own boots but the cost includes skis (Rossignol Sin7, mine were 180cm- I’m 177cm myself) and an Ortovox Crossrider backpack with shovel, probe and beep.
Having heard horror stories of groups of 13 people to a single instructor, we were pleased to find that our group comprised just six people: three Brits (me, my mate Andy, and a chap from Bristol called Colin) and three French (Grégory from Paris and a couple of Toulousains, Arnaud and Delphine). Our guide / instructor Denis has lived in the valley all his life and spends about 12 hours a day on skis in season- he drives from his home in the valley to the lower reaches of the resort then skins up and skis down into Flaine each day, reversing the process at the end of each long day of teaching. As an aside, his Movement Random touring skis were awesomely light- under a kilo for the pair!
Guiding started on day 2 and it was in at the deep end: none of this nonsense about doing a run on the piste to gauge ability, we exited the gondola, donned skis, quickly warmed up then ducked under the ropes and hit the fresh snow.
Not going into detail about each day, but the week went well. The glorious sunshine on Sunday morning turned to fog then snow in the afternoon: Monday was glorious till we finished skiing, then it snowed over night. Overall, we had well over a metre of fresh snow from the snow on Saturday to the time we got out on Tuesday to spend a day in the fog. The rest of the week was glorious sunshine.
The downside of the combination of fresh snow, glorious weather and modern ski equipment meant that more or less anything visible from the ski lifts, or at least anything with a viable visible entrance, was tracked out by the end of Monday. Not a problem for Denis who’s been skiing this area for over 40 years, we had fresh tracks each and every day, although as the week progressed we did have to work a bit more each day to get to the good stuff. Unlike the mixed ski/snowboard group who were hiking from day 1, the fact that our group comprised only skiiers meant that traversing was much more viable. Not easy: we had some very long, quite exposed traverses along aretes, over snow which had by Wednesday become very crusty, which is not particularly nice when you’re traversing a metre wide arete above a slope of about 30 degrees. It was only on the final day of guiding that we reached the point of taking off skis and hiking for ten minutes, nothing like the forty minute hikes the mixed group were doing.
We had a couple of issues as the week went on. On day 1 Colin ejected and lost a ski in the powder. After half an hour of fruitless searching we decided to call piste patrol to get a lift for Colin, only for me to ski over his lost ski some ten metres further down the slope than we’d been looking. My mate Andy struggled with the stuff we were doing: his technique wasn’t good enough which meant he fell often and then got knackered digging himself out. One incident could have been more serious as he fell head first into a tree well, luckily I was behind him and able to help him out. The fog on Tuesday combined with the increasing steepness really did it’s business on his psyche, so when he hit a buried block of ice (massive bruise on his knees by the end of the week) enough was enough and he cruised home on piste, spent Wednesday in bed and transferred to a piste group for the rest of the week. That left five of us, all around the same standard, which made for a great dynamic. Denis pushed us all to the limits of our personal comfort, with each day getting a little harder in terms of the skills required. We all felt a little uncomfortable at times, some more than others, and we all had falls at times. Thankfully, no one feel when it counted, like the point we were skiing down a slope that just kept rolling away out of view. The lovely deep powder meant it was beautiful to ski once you committed, but you had to commit and keep going. We looked at it later and it was around 50 degrees at the steepest part. Squeaky bum time, indeed! For me the other bit I struggled with was jumping, never had the bottle for it but eventually made myself give it a go when we had a chance. 1.5 m drop into lovely snow meant that the fact I stacked was not going to hurt me, I just slid a few metres till I managed to stop myself. Well, I tried!
On the non-skiing side, UCPA was good value for money. The centre at Flaine was formerly a hotel and while it’s not exactly luxury in absolute terms, it’s one of the better UCPA centres. All rooms are en suite, normally you have four to a room but you can pay a little extra (£30 a head) for a twin room. Rooms are not exactly spacious and one of the ways that costs are low is that you are expected to make your own bed on arrival, and on leaving to strip the bed and clean the room. The hot water is HOT and plentiful though, as is the food which includes lunch – either make a sandwich at breakfast and take it with you, or head back to the centre for lunch.
Would I do it again? As a boys’ trip, definitely. As a “nice” holiday with my wife, probably not, but then we normally do like something a bit nicer. Overall though, GREAT value for money and some excellent conditions. More pics to follow when I get them sorted out.