Where to Ski And Snowboard -

Packed powder predominates

28th March 2012, by Chris Gill

Umbrella bars need to be placed in obvious spots, with or without fab views

What a wonderful thing is altitude, at least in spring. Especially when combined with shady orientation, as it often is here in Les Deux-Alpes. Following multiple days of splashing about in soggy stuff, both at the end of my last tour and the start of this one, I’ve spent today largely carving lovely lines on a surface of packed powder snow.

There were exceptions. In these conditions, timing is everything, and my ever-helpful guide, L2A press person Héléna, was even more distressed than me by one stretch of red run at mid-mountain that we hit about 90 minutes too early. Both the groomed and the ungroomed bits were rock-hard. But mostly we managed to find the aforementioned packed powder.

Piste of the day, and probably piste of the week, was the red Fée 3 – I don’t know why, but the few occupants of the excellent Fée sector were leaving it well alone in the late morning, and we had it virtually to ourselves. Wide, pleasantly steep, smooth, perfect softening snow ... it was close to heaven.

If you know L2A well but haven’t been this year or last, you’ll be scratching your head at this. The red Fée 3? The sad fact is that L2A has renamed all its runs, adopting a system that is supremely logical and supremely rubbish (as well as supremely boring). All runs leading to the Fée chair are now called Fée X, where X goes from 1 to 7.

So it’s easy to find a run leading to the Fée lift. Not a bad thing, in itself. But will you be able to remember which runs you liked and which you didn’t? No. I don’t see this system being widely adopted elsewhere, unless the Compagnie des Alpes (owners of this and countless other lift companies) has a corporate fit.

The major development we were expecting here this year – replacement of the creaky old Diable gondola by a six-seat chairlift – has sadly not happened. Not that it matters a lot right now, with the resort far from full. I seem to have failed to write down Héléna’s current prediction of when it will materialise, but we’ll keep you posted.

L2A continues its attempt to jump on the French on-mountain après trend, gradually propagating from VDI via ValTho. The Pano bar at mid-mountain is reputedly now quite popular, and is certainly audible from glacial heights, but the new Coeur du Diable umbrella bar (shown in the header pic) wasn’t showing much sign of action in late afternoon, and my personal view would be that it is in a poor position for après purposes, despite its fab view. (Since when did a rendition of Alice, Alice require a scenic background?)

Tomorrow editor Watts is scheduled to turn up at Turin airport for a series of editorial conferences over two days in the Monterosa area in Italy’s Val d’Aosta. Expect a blog from him in about three days’ time, I’d say.

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