Fraser had been warning us for awhile that Tuesday would be the first of several days with no overnight freeze, and that the Sahara dust might make a return appearance. Nonetheless we were willing to try one day, particularly since La Plagne would complete our survey of the Tarantaise mega resorts.
Unlike the prior day at Les Arcs, we knew we should avoid lower satellite base areas. However La Plagne has 5 base areas between 1930 and 2050 meters. We chose Plagne Central as it has 3 parking areas listed on the map and we were lucky to get a spot at 9:30 or so. It took awhile to find a place to buy tickets though.
We finally headed up the Grand Rochette Funitel a bit after 10AM, after observing that base area snow was indeed soft already. Sign at top of the Funitel:
We decided to check out La Plagne’s backside before its snow got too sloppy. View from the top of Geisha run:
The backside is the inset at upper right of the trail map, but it spans similar vertical and acreage to Vail’s back bowls.
We rode the Vallons Sud lift and skied Hara Kiri. View from Vallons Sud restaurant about ¾ of the way down:
It takes 3 lifts to get out of the backside going west, Carella being the top one of those.
We wanted to check out the Bellecote glacier area in case weather deteriorated. The gondola from Roche de Mio at 9,000 feet takes a long time going through a saddle at 8,300, then up to 10,000. From there the Traversee chair goes to the lift served high point at 10,500. From the gondola the close in mountains are clear but Mont Blanc in the background is noticeably hazy.
There were occasions the haze had a tan tinge, but we never got an obvious picture of that.
Mountain goat carving at the top of the gondola:
Only the Combe piste was open from the top, and I cut the top switchback to ski the last remnant of winter snow.
We skied past the gondola saddle.
Two pistes continue down to the Chalet de Bellecote lift at about 7,500 feet. There are two black skiroutes (both closed) and numerous off piste options coming down there from the top.
There’s a bit of a depression before the lift where that skier had to slog out in current conditions. It would be an easy runout if the bottom of the black piste were groomed.
We rode the gondola back to Roche de Mio, where we noticed this play area.
We next skied the Mio run to Carella.
Liz said the moguls reminded her of Killington’s at this time of year.
We next skied to the Inversens chair.
Sbooker asked about wide open intermediate powder terrain, and Inversens looks ideal in that regard.
Zoomed Mont Blanc view is not clear like yesterday from Les Arcs, but perhaps better than a couple of hours ago.
We next skied the Tunnel run to Belle Plagne.
You can see the skiers funneling toward the tunnel, close up view here.
We arrived at the Plagne Bellecote base.
You will never see this level of skier traffic midweek in North America in April. Both British and French have school holidays during Easter Week. This is no criticism on my part. On the contrary, the Euros are more sensible in appreciating the virtues of spring skiing. Over half of North American destination resorts were closed by last Sunday, and some like Telluride close first weekend of April, often with maximum snowpack and excellent conditions.
Once we were up on the Blanchets chair we had considerably more elbow room.
Skiing toward Plagne Central the overcast skies became thicker but we spotted the Rochette black run coming down NE from the Funitel. So we had to go up there and ski it.
Light was a little flat but as usual gravity is your friend in late spring conditions so Rochette skied quite well.
Liz called it a day at his point but I finished with the Verdons run on Lovatiere (starts at Plagne Central and replaced Verdons Nord).
I was done just before 4PM with 20,300 vertical. We needed to use the short Boulevard lift to get to our car, as we had in the morning to get tickets.
You can see why we chose not to ski any lower than this today.
We were pleased that the adverse weather did not include bad visibility, so we were able to get a good overview of La Plagne.
For late season skiing the Paradiski areas do not offer as much skiing over 2,500 meters (8,200 feet) as Val Thorens and Val d’Isere/Tignes. Terrain wise the Bellecote glacier area has similar scale and vertical as Tignes’ Grand Motte but is 1,000 feet lower. Aiguille Rouge at Les Arcs offers some technical off piste comparable to the Gaislachkogl at Sölden, and in both cases I did not quite have the time to explore that. I agreed with Liz that conditions on this trip were not such that you wanted to concentrate on repeat runs in particularly great snow. Therefore it made more sense to cover as much ground as possible exploring new places.
The connection between Les Arcs and La Plagne is at fairly low altitude, and given the scale of both areas it made sense to us to ski them one at a time, especially since you also get about a 10% break on lift tickets. I think Sbooker mentioned skiing La Plagne while at Les Arcs, and I’d be interested to hear what he thought about that. At any rate the areas are not seamlessly integrated the way they are at Trois Valles or Val d’Isere/Tignes.
It was a disappointment to get the weather warmup after all the recent new snow. Jimmy Petterson is in Val d’Isere this week and we could have met up with him again had weather been more favorable. But that’s why we have a car. We spent a couple of hours in Chambery Wednesday before leaving France, and Thursday afternoon in Trieste. We are in Slovenia today, staying at the Postojna Cave. We return to Italy tomorrow, as we fly out of Venice early Sunday morning for our group tour of the Adriatic countries.
I had hoped to get my ski day count up to 50 before leaving Europe, but 49 is close enough. We skied 16 days at 14 areas, all of them new to us except Verbier.
Unlike the prior day at Les Arcs, we knew we should avoid lower satellite base areas. However La Plagne has 5 base areas between 1930 and 2050 meters. We chose Plagne Central as it has 3 parking areas listed on the map and we were lucky to get a spot at 9:30 or so. It took awhile to find a place to buy tickets though.
We finally headed up the Grand Rochette Funitel a bit after 10AM, after observing that base area snow was indeed soft already. Sign at top of the Funitel:
We decided to check out La Plagne’s backside before its snow got too sloppy. View from the top of Geisha run:
The backside is the inset at upper right of the trail map, but it spans similar vertical and acreage to Vail’s back bowls.
We rode the Vallons Sud lift and skied Hara Kiri. View from Vallons Sud restaurant about ¾ of the way down:
It takes 3 lifts to get out of the backside going west, Carella being the top one of those.
We wanted to check out the Bellecote glacier area in case weather deteriorated. The gondola from Roche de Mio at 9,000 feet takes a long time going through a saddle at 8,300, then up to 10,000. From there the Traversee chair goes to the lift served high point at 10,500. From the gondola the close in mountains are clear but Mont Blanc in the background is noticeably hazy.
There were occasions the haze had a tan tinge, but we never got an obvious picture of that.
Mountain goat carving at the top of the gondola:
Only the Combe piste was open from the top, and I cut the top switchback to ski the last remnant of winter snow.
We skied past the gondola saddle.
Two pistes continue down to the Chalet de Bellecote lift at about 7,500 feet. There are two black skiroutes (both closed) and numerous off piste options coming down there from the top.
There’s a bit of a depression before the lift where that skier had to slog out in current conditions. It would be an easy runout if the bottom of the black piste were groomed.
We rode the gondola back to Roche de Mio, where we noticed this play area.
We next skied the Mio run to Carella.
Liz said the moguls reminded her of Killington’s at this time of year.
We next skied to the Inversens chair.
Sbooker asked about wide open intermediate powder terrain, and Inversens looks ideal in that regard.
Zoomed Mont Blanc view is not clear like yesterday from Les Arcs, but perhaps better than a couple of hours ago.
We next skied the Tunnel run to Belle Plagne.
You can see the skiers funneling toward the tunnel, close up view here.
We arrived at the Plagne Bellecote base.
You will never see this level of skier traffic midweek in North America in April. Both British and French have school holidays during Easter Week. This is no criticism on my part. On the contrary, the Euros are more sensible in appreciating the virtues of spring skiing. Over half of North American destination resorts were closed by last Sunday, and some like Telluride close first weekend of April, often with maximum snowpack and excellent conditions.
Once we were up on the Blanchets chair we had considerably more elbow room.
Skiing toward Plagne Central the overcast skies became thicker but we spotted the Rochette black run coming down NE from the Funitel. So we had to go up there and ski it.
Light was a little flat but as usual gravity is your friend in late spring conditions so Rochette skied quite well.
Liz called it a day at his point but I finished with the Verdons run on Lovatiere (starts at Plagne Central and replaced Verdons Nord).
I was done just before 4PM with 20,300 vertical. We needed to use the short Boulevard lift to get to our car, as we had in the morning to get tickets.
You can see why we chose not to ski any lower than this today.
We were pleased that the adverse weather did not include bad visibility, so we were able to get a good overview of La Plagne.
For late season skiing the Paradiski areas do not offer as much skiing over 2,500 meters (8,200 feet) as Val Thorens and Val d’Isere/Tignes. Terrain wise the Bellecote glacier area has similar scale and vertical as Tignes’ Grand Motte but is 1,000 feet lower. Aiguille Rouge at Les Arcs offers some technical off piste comparable to the Gaislachkogl at Sölden, and in both cases I did not quite have the time to explore that. I agreed with Liz that conditions on this trip were not such that you wanted to concentrate on repeat runs in particularly great snow. Therefore it made more sense to cover as much ground as possible exploring new places.
The connection between Les Arcs and La Plagne is at fairly low altitude, and given the scale of both areas it made sense to us to ski them one at a time, especially since you also get about a 10% break on lift tickets. I think Sbooker mentioned skiing La Plagne while at Les Arcs, and I’d be interested to hear what he thought about that. At any rate the areas are not seamlessly integrated the way they are at Trois Valles or Val d’Isere/Tignes.
It was a disappointment to get the weather warmup after all the recent new snow. Jimmy Petterson is in Val d’Isere this week and we could have met up with him again had weather been more favorable. But that’s why we have a car. We spent a couple of hours in Chambery Wednesday before leaving France, and Thursday afternoon in Trieste. We are in Slovenia today, staying at the Postojna Cave. We return to Italy tomorrow, as we fly out of Venice early Sunday morning for our group tour of the Adriatic countries.
I had hoped to get my ski day count up to 50 before leaving Europe, but 49 is close enough. We skied 16 days at 14 areas, all of them new to us except Verbier.
