We are leaving Scotland tomorrow evening for trip to the Haute Maurienne. We have first week in Valfrejus, with the pass also allowing us unlimited skiing at La Norma and a day at Aussois, Bonneval and Val Cenis. Our second week is in Val Cenis with my siblings and their families – 11 adults and 11 children from 1-11yo. I am glad we all have separate accommodation.

I think you’ll find it’s that good.

Woop, Woop. Better get the waxing kit out again then! I’m driving down so may as well take it.

Getting excited now!!! Heading to L2A in the motorhome at the weekend for 5 nights, then might try a few days elsewhere (maybe Alpe d’huez)

I’ve got a real hankering to spend some decent time in the Park….not really ridden freestyle since smashing my knee in 2016!

I’ve not been to L2A before, not actually been to a ‘new’ resort since 2017 either. Just need to get my board waxed now.

We are leaving Scotland tomorrow evening for trip to the Haute Maurienne. We have first week in Valfrejus, with the pass also allowing us unlimited skiing at La Norma and a day at Aussois, Bonneval and Val Cenis. Our second week is in Val Cenis with my siblings and their families – 11 adults and 11 children from 1-11yo. I am glad we all have separate accommodation.

Trip report please, pref in real time, that’s one of the areas I’m looking at for next year – though we’d probably go in January. Also considering Montgenevre and possibly (but less likely) Serre Chevalier

@Tom-B the L2A Aire isn’t the best, it feels like a bit of an afterthought at the end of town and a bit grubby.

It’s perfectly fine and does the job well enough and the service point works well.

ADH was much nicer when I was there, but the water Point is a couple of minutes drive away. Take ramps for ADH as It’s on a slight slope.

Les Monetier Les Bains at Serre Che was ace, brand new nice clean Aire. Lacking snow though.

Ooh cheers for the info Phil. We’re actually staying on the campsite in Venosc as we didn’t like the look of the Aire at L2A.

Interesting about Serre Che, I’ve never been but do fancy it. Maybe next season.

Booked to be in VT from Sunday. Daughter has come down with ‘something’, currently testing -ve but poorly so we’re on a waiting game, tomorrow will be the decider. Utter PITA but these things happen.

Anyone else out for Easter? Great conditions in Tignes so far, a delightful mini dump of fresh on Sat gave us some fresh tracks yesterday. Looks like temps on the up and rather more unsettled weather for the rest of the week.

We’ve done 4 days in L2A and 2 days in Serre Che. Some of the best ski and snowboard days ever for me. It felt like we had Serre Che to ourselves over the weekend! L2A had a crazy amount of snow whilst we were there. Will sort some pictures when we’re home.

Venosc is great isn’t it @Tom-B? Easy access to the ski area but proper little mountain village feel to it, being on a dead end road. I stopped in the hostel/gite there with the Dutch owner, really nice family too.

Wife and Jr at Les Arcs, arrived yesterday and skiing today. Can’t wait to hear how it goes for them, hope good!!

These resorts needed a big dump, as conditions were getting bad when we left a fortnight ago.
Friends in Les Arc said they had fresh snow yesterday, but the rest of this week could be spring conditions.

Yes, Likely to be spring condition’s. 😀
Surprisingly not too busy here in Tignes, mostly brits.

In Les Gets at present. Yesterday was the last day of the season but we’d planned on going up to Avoriaz anyway.

Last couple of lifts of the season in LG yesterday afternoon were fun, with fairly empty slopes and spring snow holding up well.

Avoriaz was spectacularly good yesterday morning, but variable today. Even Avoriaz got into the teens centigrade today.

Spectacular spring skiing weather though.  And no real queues.

Sorry, just saw the request for an update. We are in Val Cenis now, having stayed for the previous week at Valfrejus. While at Valfrejus we had everything from perfect bluebird days, to fully hostile windy snowy “Scottish” conditions. We skied at Valfrejus 2 days, La Norma 3 dausand Bonneval Sur Arc for 1 day. Fresh snow up high has pushed the Avy risk to 4. Unfortunately I have taken something in my left knee trying to ski some nasty breakable crust. A stupid decision, but I have to limp with it. I am able to ski with theratape and anti inflammatory gel. I am taking it easy.

Overall the pistes are in amazing shape for this time of year. Above 1800m is excellent. Below that is being nurtured. Solid first thing, very very soft late on. Some of the lower link runs are very tenuous.

Frustratingly Val Cenis have closed 2/3 of the ski area. Not due to lack of snow, probably as this is the last week of the season and lower demand. When I reflect that the liftpass for an adult FOR THE WEEK cost 64€, I can’t complain, as for that price you also get a day at each of Valfrejus, La Norma, Bonneval, and Aussois, although Aussois (South facing) looks very thin.

Our week in Valfrejus cost £534 for apartment and liftpass (same deal as above) for 4 people. Insanely good value. We even had a pool and a sauna!

Venosc is great isn’t it @Tom-B? Easy access to the ski area but proper little mountain village feel to it, being on a dead end road. I stopped in the hostel/gite there with the Dutch owner, really nice family too.

Yeah we really liked it there. Had some mega snow too! However, we moved on from there via a fairly heart rate raising drive in snow conditions over the Col du Lautaret, and did 2 days in Serre Chevalier staying at the free motorhome Aire at Chantemerle….quite possibly my new favourite place in the world! We did 2 days there and it felt like we’d got the resort to ourselves 90% of the time!!! Slushy from lunchtime onwards (I actually enjoy it on a snowboard tbh) but hard to argue when there’s 0 queues and mega snow above 2000m all day.

Serre che is a bit of an odd one. Everyone has heard of it but not that many go? It’s a tricky one to get to from some parts of the uk due to Turin flights but speaking to a mate who had a bar there it’s never really taken off. Club Ned investment may change that so if you have had quiet pistes there you may not next time! I love it there!

Our ski club has already identified a trip for next year.
Price seems significantly higher (£200) than what we paid this year.
The guy who is booking it is saying availability for next year is limited.
Of course could be the fact he is looking at booking 20 plus rooms!

@TroutWrestler, thanks for the update. It would be good to know how you think the various areas compare, which offers the most interesting skiing, what would be the best place to use as a base and so on. We’re looking at the area for a two week trip next season, an we’d probalby travel down by train since it’s pretty easy to get to Modane, so we wouldn’t necessarily have a car available. That shouldn’t matter IF the inter-village shuttles are useful – have you had occasion to use them? Can you comment? We’d probably base ourselves in one location for the two weeks and mostly ski there, then perhaps take day trips out to the others – which naturally points to Val Cenis as the logical base, since it’s in the middle of the valley. Do you think Lanslebourg or Lanslevilard would be better? We’re probalby going to use a hotel rather than two studio apartments (it’s really difficult to find fully en-suite apartments in france – we want one bathroom (ont toilet!) per bedroom)

Val Cenis is the largest resort. In good snow conditions the entire strip from Lanslebourg to Lanselvillard is ski-in ski-out.

I haven’t used the shuttle buses, but they exist and are running. All the details are on the HMV website. The bus from La Norma to Valfrejus runs back and forth constantly, and links in to the other resorts. It might not be possible le to go from every resort to every other resort every day.

I would love to come by train. It took is 21 hours of driving from Scotland.

I would love to come by train. It took is 21 hours of driving from Scotland.

That would be 3 days travel for us. It took us 2 days each way from Manchester to the Tarentaise (similar distance to Maurienne)

Train is doable, but can get expensive and it’s only bookable about 3 to 4 months in advance.

Paris – Modane is only about 4 hours, so it’s entirely feasible that we could do Manchester – London – Paris – Modane in one day.

Based on random dates of Sat 4th June – Sunday 19th June
06:03 Stockport – London 08:09 (could make it a later train based o 10:22 Eurostar)
10:22 St Pancras – Paris Gare du Nord 13:47
14:43 Paris Gare de Lyon – Modane 18:46

Return timings:
09:15 Modane – Paris Gare de Lyon 13:13
15:03 Paris Gare du Nord – London St Pancras 16:37
17:37 London Euston – Stockport 19:38

From Scotland, you may not reach King’s Cross / St Pancras in time to get the 10:22 Eurostar, but that would just mean a train down the night before and an overnight stop.

On another note, what’s the skiing like in the different resorts? We have just been to Ste Foy Tarentaisem, and had a day in La Plagne, Tignes Val d’Isere and Les Arcs. It was noticeable that in the larger resorts (Les Arcs and the Arc 2000 bowl especially) that rather than actively skiing, you were just pointing skis and sliding along. It just wasn’t as enjoyable.

Tignes has some pistes that will have you very actively skiing, Leisse down from the funiculaire arrival for example. The face de Belvarde should leave you with legs full of lactic acid. In La Plagne et les Arcs it’s the easily reached off-piste where the challenging skiing is to be found.

Difficult to assess these resorts in just one day!

Back late last night from 10 days in the Aosta valley.

6 days in our usual destination of Cervinia with one day over in Zermatt. Cervinia was great as always. Zermatt was pretty icy though we found some great spots. Couple of decent snowfalls over the 6 days freshened things up nicely.

Did a day in Pila, which I usually like, but was exceptionally icy when we rode.

We spent the last 3 days in La Thuile with a ride over to La Rosiere on day 2. First time visiting either resort. La Thuile is absolutely fantastic. Lovely wide open pistes and it was virtually deserted. La Rosiere seemed like a nice place but the slopes were sheet ice when we visited. The winds were brutal which had whipped off all the recent snow fall. Special mention to the drag lifts you have to use to get back to La Thuile. Even with 30+ years of snowboarding experience, that was one of the most traumatic experiences on a board. A massively rutted track which was also full of massive icy drifts that were doing their best to knock us off our boards. I can imagine many a beginner or intermediate rider will have struggled to get up these lifts and had to walk up!

Result, we have negotiated an extra day in the apartment in Tignes 1800. Ski Saturday (hopefully quiet due to changeover) leave Sunday morning to drive back. Fingers crossed for lighter and truck free traffic and an extra day skiing! We did consider skiing Sat then leaving apres ski but thought it more relaxing to stay here rather than finding a place 3 or 4 hours from here.

Hot in Avoriaz today.  Sweating just sitting there hot.

Soft by 0930.

Absolutely roasting in Val Thoren today I’m amazed there is any snow left but a combination of well groomed slopes and low skier numbers meant the slopes were fairing better than I expected. High up still good coverage.

We hit the slopes before the lifts opened and skied until 2pm when the going was just too heavy to be fun. Coming back down you ski ribbon of snow through dry mountains.

Picture of the lowest ski-able run – I would not be sure this will be open tomorrow, though I can hear the piste bashers out moving snow around now.

Just back from Tignes. A mate came over from 3v his view was that it was better conditions in Tignes than in 3v. I thought conditions were great but I have often skied at Easter and quite like spring conditions! Top of Grand Motte was perfect conditions.
Worked well staying an extra day driving Sunday, traffic free. Only problem was getting fuel on the M4! That was a bit tense for a while.
Thinking of next year now!

Hi all, question for the avalanche ponderers of the group.

We are splitboarding in Norway. Having an amazing time.

Anyhow the avalanche warning is currently 3+ out of five , significant. This is due to warm weather and likelihood of wet slab avalanches especially over 30 degrees. There was heavy snowfall a week ago . We have seen avalanche activity but on steeper slopes well away from where we are.

Anyhow, today’s tour. We started our ascent and after around 200m we saw that an avalanche had occurred in ‘lavingata’ , I think a translation is like a avalanche outlet zone. Avalanches in the area end up coming down there due to the terrain, like a funnel. It was significant. We turned around as :

A) it was hard to see how to cross it.

B) the way round it would take us into steeper terrain than we were comfortable with due to avalanche forecasts.

What I want to know is how to judge the risk of another one occurring. Is it suddenly low risk there because we have seen one has happened? Is it higher risk because one has gone and it could happen again? We figured that because we didnt know how old the avalanche was, we couldn’t know if it was likely to happen again. Is there a way to tell when it occured?

Local knowledge is key, are you with a guide?
Not sure I fully understand, but, crossing where all or most, the unstable snow has slid off should be okay. (If you can hold an edge on it!) Crossing similar terrain or features (aspect, terain, snow layers etc,etc…) will be risky.
Large natural avalanche activity is a very big red flag though, be careful.
BTW I am not an expert, others here are more experienced than I am.

1st picture is the slide, 2nd is a nice day yesterday.

We would have been crossing the area where the avalanche had occurred. Yes we were careful, we went home 😄

In the absence of next year’s thread, I’ll just mention that I have purchased next Easter’s skipasses at 60% discount for Val Cenis. Gotta get in quick to get the discount…

Wow, 60% off is tempting, it’s fairly cheap anyway. Having said that, there’s no sign of a 60% discount today and I can;t even see the link to the season pass (if we’re doing 2 weeks then last year a season pass was cheaper than a 2 week pass)

howsyourdad1 –

If a slope has already slid, then it can’t slide again until “reloaded” by new snow fall. However, this asssumes that the whole slope has gone. Is there another section still hanging? Maybe on slightly less steep ground or on a slightly different aspect that won’t go until it gets a bit warmer? Is there another avalanche path running into the same exit that hasn’t slid yet? You won’t know unless you can see what you’re getting yourself into or you have good local knowledge.

When climbing up, you are very vulnerable. Aim to avoid climbing on or below steep slopes. Avoid avalanche paths and runouts. Look to climb up the gentlest terrain, sticking to ridgelines and high ground as much as possible. Climb on aspects which are least affected by current avalanche conditions.

In the conditions you describe, if there was heavy snow a week ago, followed by warm weather, significant avalanche activity and repeated daily spring freeze/thaw cycles, I’d probably consider it reasonable to travel in that area, again taking the precautions above. However, it’s impossible to say without being there and eyeballing it, feeling the snow conditions and reading the local forecast. If the heavy snow was more recent, or there hadn’t been a good series of overnight freezes / daytime thaws, I’d avoid.

(I’m a snowboard instructor & splitboard guide).

cheers @stevomcd your response was the one i was waiting for! i’ll read and process and report back!

If you don’t know an area use a mapping app that overlays 30/38/45 degree slopes and regard anything coloured with snow on it as having the potential to go. I use Windy Maps but instructor junior uses paid for apps that are more accurate. Then you have so many factors that a week long course gets you started. And even then you can guess wrong. The “safety expert” from a local club was killed by an avalanche in Norway a few weeks back. 🙁

Yep, the map steepness overlays are pretty helpful, especially when route-planning. Once on the hill, I tend to rely on eye-balling stuff. I have an internal inclinometer which categorises slopes into 3 classes – “meh”, “hmmm” and “£%?§!”.

In France I use the iPhiGéNie app, which gives you a whole load of overlay options (steepness, satellite photos, etc) and also covers a few other countries (Switzerland, Spain and, as I’ve just discovered, Norway….).

Hi yes we were using all manner of apps with gradient overlays and so on. The issue was that we couldn’t tell how long ago the avalanche had happened and if there was any ‘left’ to fall. We think we would have been ok, but it wasnt worth it without knowing when the latest avalanche occured