Puy St. Vincent, France, Jan. 31, 2023

Tony Crocker

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January 31 was a one day general strike protest in France against raising of Social Security normal retirement age from 62 to 64. In 1983 the US Social Security normal retirement was raised from 65 to 66 for the core of the baby boomers and to 67 for those born after 1960.

The first general strike day was Jan. 19, and the Grand Aigle Hotel said Serre Chevalier had been split into 3 sectors due to closed lifts. On Jan. 31 six Serre Chevalier lifts were closed, including Yret, though no sector split.
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We thought it was an easy call to ski a day with James at Puy St. Vincent half an hour south of Briancon, then ski our final day at Serre Chevalier in full operation. Puy St. Vincent was on James’ way south to the Queyras areas. All of us thought a “mom and pop” place would be less impacted by the general strike than a big complex like Serre Chevalier.
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Liz and I arrived about 10:15 at Station 1,400.

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The top of the mountain is 4,500 feet higher and a long distance behind Liz.

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Yes this is “mom and pop” as far as lift tickets are concerned. Liz and I combined were 74 Euros, comparable to Turner and Maverick in Montana.

But after we ascended the Les Pres and La Bergerie lifts, we saw that the strike impact was more severe than at Serre Chevalier. The top La Pendine lift was closed.

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That lift goes to 9,000 feet and only Les Lauzes to 8,000 was open higher when we arrived at the top of Bergerie. With no lifts to the upper north facing ridgeline we debated asking for a refund. But while skiing our first lap on Lauzes, Rocher Noir (also 8,000 at the top) started spinning. View from Lauzes of Rocher Noir lift and terrain:

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We skied the 2,700 vertical Bois Des Coqs from Lauzes to Station 1,600, Liz and James below me on that.

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Snow was machine groomed hardpack, similar to comparable elevations at Serre Chevalier. Puy St. Vincent was not crowded, but it was far from being empty like the Queyras places James visited later in the week. Lauzes and Rocher Noir had lift lines but less than 5 minutes, and James gave up on getting lunch at the restaurant at 2,100 as that line looked to be half an hour. I’m guessing the F&B operations were also missing people due to the strike.

The Rocher Noir lift had good chalky off piste skiing.

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The Lauzes groomers were in direct sun and skied nicely in early afternoon.

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We returned to Rocher Noir. Here’s Liz about to drop in to some off piste skier’s right.

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I explored farther skier’s left of the lift.

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The last time up we skied Cretes along the skier’s right boundary. We passed this snowmaking reservoir with a group of hikers on the other side.

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Puy St. Vincent has a typical French 70’s/80’s lodging complex at Station 1600.

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We covered fairly well what was open with 15,100 vertical. We needed an easy day with 3 more coming without a break plus considerable driving.
 
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See? I was right! You were the appropriate one to write this report (not me) and you took nice pix. All three of us agreed that PSV had a nice mix of terrain and would've been much better with recent snow to soften up more of the offpiste and no Black Tuesday strike to hamper ops. Ambiance-wise, I liked the 1400 base area but bristled at the big ugly hotel at 1600, which definitely didn't fall into Mom & Pop territory.

It was at Puy St. Vincent that Tony and I complimented each other, I believe. Tony said that I wasn't a typical east-coast skier (I wasn't enjoying the scratchy lower-mountain groomers and bitched about them) and I said that Tony and Liz weren't typical western skiers (they *didn't* bitch about the scratchy lower-mountain groomers!).
 
Liz was an eastern skier for ~25 years. In my formative ski years in the late 1970's I put in a lot of time at Big Bear and Mt. High where the manmade subsurface is routine, though not often as firm as it can get in colder climates.

The scratchy lower mountain groomers (heavy snowmaking dependence, intense skier traffic) are a fact of life in the Alps if it hasn't snowed for a week or two. It's now going on three weeks in the western and NW Alps. I suspect those who schedule a week far in advance see a lot of this. Kingslug bitched about it a lot after the Diamond Dogs trip to Solden the year after the stellar trip to Zermatt.

Our flexible schedule mitigates this exposure to some extent. We have seen more of it this time than any other of our extended trips. In January 2018 and January 2019 we had almost none. Grooming helps some. Freshly groomed pistes are not any worse this week than last week. The ideal scenario is low skier density like James had in the Queyras areas. Of the places we skied where it had not snowed recently the pistes were probably best at Auron.
 
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The scratchy lower mountain groomers (heavy snowmaking dependence, intense skier traffic) are a fact of life in the Alps if it hasn't snowed for a week or two. (...) I suspect those who schedule a week far in advance see a lot of this.
Conditions everywhere, including the western U.S., suffer when there's intense skier traffic, which is more of a likelihood with the Ikon/Epic Pass situation magnifying crowds. My December trip to Solitude underscored that to me with nasty skied-off boilerplate on steeper/heavily pounded trails only four-ish days after a major dump. I've experienced the same thing at idealised Snowbird/Alta during January dry spells.

The ideal scenario is low skier density like James had in the Queyras areas.
No question. The Queyras region got the same 60 to 70cm Retour d'Est dump as the rest of the Southern Alps; however, a small fraction of the skier density made all the difference.
 
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