Our hotel is Sierre was a bit over half an hour drive from Nendaz, so that’s where we started our second ski day in the Valais.
We bought the combined pass with Verbier because we went up to Mont Fort from Siviez after surveying the Thyon/Veysonnaz side. From Nendaz there is string of four lifts with one piste under each to connect to Siviez. On this day with full spring warmup it worked well that the two pistes going to Siviez faced south and east while the Plan-du-Fou to Prarion piste coming back faces west.
The chair rising east from Siviez to Combatseline yielded this view:
The Greppon poma lifts rise from lower left to upper right. Despite all of those rocks the piste just right of the poma skied very well on the way back.
The Greppon sector has one chair so we took a lap on it before crossing a long catwalk below tree line to the Drus T-bar.
The Cheminee poma above Drus has a couple of good north facing pistes.
We looked at the map and saw that Thyon has a couple of well placed chairs among the numerous surface lifts. This sector faces east and had good corn midday as it was relatively quiet. We first skied down to Thyon 1800, then took a lap off the Etherolla chair.
A catwalk behind Etherolla leads around to the top of Cheminee with this view along the way.
After another Cheminee lap and short break at Mont Rouge, we headed back toward Siviez. We saw this nice track someone probably made Sunday from the back of Etherolla.
From Mont Rouge we rode four consecutive surface lifts, Cheminee, Tsa, Les Chottes and Greppon Blanc 1 to get back to Siviez. From there a chair rises gradually to Tortin and the border of Verbier’s domain.
We rode two trams to Mont Fort at 10,900 feet. Riding the first tram to Col de Gentianes here is the view of the 2,800 vertical off piste area we need to ski to get back to Siviez and Nendaz.
Here’s the comparably long off piste area coming from Mont Gele.
I managed to ski both of these on the NASJA daytrip excursion from Chamonix in February 2004.
Mont Fort is a high point in its local mountain range and thus has panoramic view of the higher mountains to the south and east. Here we are on the viewing platform with the 14,154 foot Grand Combin in background.
The Matterhorn is unfortunately behind a cloud here.
View to Mont Blanc and Grandes Jorasses.
In the left foreground you can see the narrow trail descending to where it turns a sharp corner onto a mogul field. In 2004 the descent from Mont Fort was a wide groomed piste, with glacial ice visible to skier’s right of it. This year not only did I see no glacier, but the top of the run did not have enough snow to be groomed.
The entry to those moguls took Liz a long time, so once we skied the piste below it was getting close to 4PM. With the lift out of Seviez closing at 4:30 Liz decided it was best to descend to Verbier and ride the gondola down to Le Chable, where I could pick her up.
View up Mont Fort tram of piste and moguls:
My view about a quarter of the way down the off piste moguls to Tortin:
I made it to Seviez at 4:20 and to my last required chair at Prarion at 4:35, also 10 minutes before closing. I did not notice in the morning the surroundings of the south facing piste from Tracouet to Prarion.
I was fairly beat from skiing the Tortin off piste with a time deadline. I also noticed how slushy the snow at 1,700 meters was at Siviez and Prarion and thus decided to ride the gondola down to Nendaz at 1,400.
Even with that “weak sauce” finale I skied 24,900 vertical.
The drive to Le Chable took an hour so I picked up Liz at 6:30. Jimmy Petterson was over there but busy and they did not connect. We had dinner in Bruson, then went to visit him and Bob Mazerei, who lives in Le Chable. I had met Bob over a decade ago on a late spring ski day at Mammoth, and I occasionally read on Facebook of his exploits in the Alps. Due to the late hour and the bottle of wine with our dinner, we crashed there for the night, then drove back to Sierre the next morning to check out of our hotel.
We bought the combined pass with Verbier because we went up to Mont Fort from Siviez after surveying the Thyon/Veysonnaz side. From Nendaz there is string of four lifts with one piste under each to connect to Siviez. On this day with full spring warmup it worked well that the two pistes going to Siviez faced south and east while the Plan-du-Fou to Prarion piste coming back faces west.
The chair rising east from Siviez to Combatseline yielded this view:
The Greppon poma lifts rise from lower left to upper right. Despite all of those rocks the piste just right of the poma skied very well on the way back.
The Greppon sector has one chair so we took a lap on it before crossing a long catwalk below tree line to the Drus T-bar.
The Cheminee poma above Drus has a couple of good north facing pistes.
We looked at the map and saw that Thyon has a couple of well placed chairs among the numerous surface lifts. This sector faces east and had good corn midday as it was relatively quiet. We first skied down to Thyon 1800, then took a lap off the Etherolla chair.
A catwalk behind Etherolla leads around to the top of Cheminee with this view along the way.
After another Cheminee lap and short break at Mont Rouge, we headed back toward Siviez. We saw this nice track someone probably made Sunday from the back of Etherolla.
From Mont Rouge we rode four consecutive surface lifts, Cheminee, Tsa, Les Chottes and Greppon Blanc 1 to get back to Siviez. From there a chair rises gradually to Tortin and the border of Verbier’s domain.
We rode two trams to Mont Fort at 10,900 feet. Riding the first tram to Col de Gentianes here is the view of the 2,800 vertical off piste area we need to ski to get back to Siviez and Nendaz.
Here’s the comparably long off piste area coming from Mont Gele.
I managed to ski both of these on the NASJA daytrip excursion from Chamonix in February 2004.
Mont Fort is a high point in its local mountain range and thus has panoramic view of the higher mountains to the south and east. Here we are on the viewing platform with the 14,154 foot Grand Combin in background.
The Matterhorn is unfortunately behind a cloud here.
View to Mont Blanc and Grandes Jorasses.
In the left foreground you can see the narrow trail descending to where it turns a sharp corner onto a mogul field. In 2004 the descent from Mont Fort was a wide groomed piste, with glacial ice visible to skier’s right of it. This year not only did I see no glacier, but the top of the run did not have enough snow to be groomed.
The entry to those moguls took Liz a long time, so once we skied the piste below it was getting close to 4PM. With the lift out of Seviez closing at 4:30 Liz decided it was best to descend to Verbier and ride the gondola down to Le Chable, where I could pick her up.
View up Mont Fort tram of piste and moguls:
My view about a quarter of the way down the off piste moguls to Tortin:
I made it to Seviez at 4:20 and to my last required chair at Prarion at 4:35, also 10 minutes before closing. I did not notice in the morning the surroundings of the south facing piste from Tracouet to Prarion.
I was fairly beat from skiing the Tortin off piste with a time deadline. I also noticed how slushy the snow at 1,700 meters was at Siviez and Prarion and thus decided to ride the gondola down to Nendaz at 1,400.
Even with that “weak sauce” finale I skied 24,900 vertical.
The drive to Le Chable took an hour so I picked up Liz at 6:30. Jimmy Petterson was over there but busy and they did not connect. We had dinner in Bruson, then went to visit him and Bob Mazerei, who lives in Le Chable. I had met Bob over a decade ago on a late spring ski day at Mammoth, and I occasionally read on Facebook of his exploits in the Alps. Due to the late hour and the bottle of wine with our dinner, we crashed there for the night, then drove back to Sierre the next morning to check out of our hotel.
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