Back to skiing! At the very end of January the weather finally broke, with nearly a foot of fresh snow falling across the mountains. Our friend David was out, staying in the adjacent village of La Masure, and on Tuesday we joined them for a day in Ste Foy. Conditions were perfect: fresh snow and sunshine. We opted for a route from the top of the Aiguille lift in the resort, all the way to the old village of Le Monal (which we had previously only walked to in the Summer), then returning to the resort via the winding Summer road. there is nothing very taxing about the route (unless you count the poling to get back home!), but the scenery and sense of isolation in the mountains is wonderful.
I should also mention that David’s friends, Andrew and Heather, invited us to their lovely chalet in La Masure the evening before. Fantastic food, company, and copious quantities of wine that did nothing for our skiing technique the next day!
The following day we decided to continue with the theme of off-piste ski touring. This time we teamed up with Alpine Experience, with Chris as our guide. He took us on a variant of the classic Tour du Mont Roup, but with an added climb to take advantage of the powder that was still to be found in the upper reaches. Val d-Isère had experienced a lot more wind than the lower lying resorts during the storms, and we were grateful for Chris’s expert guiding to find the soft powder and avoid the windslab.
With the good weather holding, and inspired by two delightful ski touring days, we decided to make it a hat-trick, and joined Alpine Experience again on Friday. This time two guides – Wayne and Chris – joined forces to take us on the Tour de Barme de l’Ours. This is an extended version of the Mont Roup tour, with over 600 metres of vertical ascent, and the reward of more untouched snow. The Alpine Experience guides describe this route as a “once every five years” tour, but then confessed that this was the third time that had skied it in the past three weeks! We were not disappointed.
