On Sunday we checked out of Club Med and drove through Megeve and Chamonix to Switzerland. We stayed in Sierre, which is in the upper Rhone Valley at the bottom of Val d’Anniviers. James visited multiple ski areas here in March 2017. St. Luc Chandolin was the largest and has sufficient altitude in spring so looked like a good bet.
It did not escape my notice that St. Luc Chandolin has primary west exposure. However the recent storm surely resurfaced the pistes, and if Monday was the powder day that Fraser and WePowder were touting, the west exposure would be an advantage with sun effect minimal until well after noon.
We made our way first to the Col Des Ombritzes T-bar. View from the top:
We headed down that piste and I dropped off to skier’s left. All of that west exposure had breakable crust from being in the sun all day Sunday contrary to weather forecasts.
I told Liz not to follow, and fortunately I was able to traverse back onto the piste. As I expected all of the groomed runs had packed powder through the morning.
There’s a meandering piste off the backside of Col Des Ombritzes and the view down to it was well shaded.
So next time up I dropped in there.
I stayed in chopped up snow for the steep upper part to avoid any hidden rocks.
But once it opened up there was plenty of powder below.
View back to the powder after I reached the piste.
We later got an overview of this area (ski route marked) from the top of the Chandolin lifts.
We skied all the way to the Chandolin base, rode Tsape and moved to the Illhorn poma at the far north boundary.
We skied the Illhorn piste before crossing back to the Rotse lift. Illhorn has some off piste bowls on the opposite side of the lift from the piste.
Rotse is the one lift that’s directly north facing.
So I had to try one lap in there. Again I skied chewed up snow in the choke points to avoid rocks. Most turns below were in powder but if the slope flattened there would be some degree of sun crust.
After a Rotse piste we returned to Col Des Ombritzes and skied its skier’s left piste to the far south poma, oddly named Pas de Boeuf. We both were reminded of those “Where’s the Beef?” commercials from the 1980’s. This lift also had an interesting warning to off piste skiers.
The lengthy Pas de Boeuf poma has three dogleg turns, and Liz was good for only one ride on it. But we continued up the Bella Tola poma to St. Luc’s high point about 9,900 feet. View down:
The skiers at center are skinning up, not skiing down.
Near the top of the piste are two skiers, with another two approaching on skins after skiing in the backcountry behind the ski area.
Liz skied to the La Caba restaurant directly while I skied both Pas de Boeuf pistes and met her. View up Val d’Anniviers, probably to Grimentz:
We skied the backside of Col Des Ombritzes again, this time with some lower angle powder skier’s left of the piste. We rode Rotse and skied to La Foret. The red run from the top of those two lifts was used by GS racers all day but they were finally done by 3PM. The upper half of that run was south facing, bending to west as it paralleled Tignousa and all of it was perfect corn after being roped off most of the day.
The descent to the St. Luc base at 3:30 was also about half smooth corn, further testimony to the low skier density here. I skied 26,400 vertical including about 2K of powder.
St. Luc/Chandolin was oddly similar to Hochgurgl/Obergurgl in overall intermediate topography, scale, elevation range and primary west exposure. The most obvious difference was level of development. St. Luc/Chandolin is about half surface lifts vs. the ubiquitous high speed 6 and 8 pack chairs and gondolas I see nearly everywhere in Austria. St. Luc/Chandolin has about half as many pistes though lift accessible acreage is more due to the canyons between Hochgurgl and Obergurgl being off limits. Yet skier density even on piste is also far lower at St. Luc/Chandolin. Most of the reason this was a much better day was due to the recent snow refresh, but some of it was due to lesser skier traffic.
It did not escape my notice that St. Luc Chandolin has primary west exposure. However the recent storm surely resurfaced the pistes, and if Monday was the powder day that Fraser and WePowder were touting, the west exposure would be an advantage with sun effect minimal until well after noon.
We made our way first to the Col Des Ombritzes T-bar. View from the top:
We headed down that piste and I dropped off to skier’s left. All of that west exposure had breakable crust from being in the sun all day Sunday contrary to weather forecasts.
I told Liz not to follow, and fortunately I was able to traverse back onto the piste. As I expected all of the groomed runs had packed powder through the morning.There’s a meandering piste off the backside of Col Des Ombritzes and the view down to it was well shaded.
So next time up I dropped in there.
I stayed in chopped up snow for the steep upper part to avoid any hidden rocks.
But once it opened up there was plenty of powder below.
View back to the powder after I reached the piste.
We later got an overview of this area (ski route marked) from the top of the Chandolin lifts.
We skied all the way to the Chandolin base, rode Tsape and moved to the Illhorn poma at the far north boundary.
We skied the Illhorn piste before crossing back to the Rotse lift. Illhorn has some off piste bowls on the opposite side of the lift from the piste.
Rotse is the one lift that’s directly north facing.
So I had to try one lap in there. Again I skied chewed up snow in the choke points to avoid rocks. Most turns below were in powder but if the slope flattened there would be some degree of sun crust.
After a Rotse piste we returned to Col Des Ombritzes and skied its skier’s left piste to the far south poma, oddly named Pas de Boeuf. We both were reminded of those “Where’s the Beef?” commercials from the 1980’s. This lift also had an interesting warning to off piste skiers.
The lengthy Pas de Boeuf poma has three dogleg turns, and Liz was good for only one ride on it. But we continued up the Bella Tola poma to St. Luc’s high point about 9,900 feet. View down:
The skiers at center are skinning up, not skiing down.
Near the top of the piste are two skiers, with another two approaching on skins after skiing in the backcountry behind the ski area.
Liz skied to the La Caba restaurant directly while I skied both Pas de Boeuf pistes and met her. View up Val d’Anniviers, probably to Grimentz:
We skied the backside of Col Des Ombritzes again, this time with some lower angle powder skier’s left of the piste. We rode Rotse and skied to La Foret. The red run from the top of those two lifts was used by GS racers all day but they were finally done by 3PM. The upper half of that run was south facing, bending to west as it paralleled Tignousa and all of it was perfect corn after being roped off most of the day.
The descent to the St. Luc base at 3:30 was also about half smooth corn, further testimony to the low skier density here. I skied 26,400 vertical including about 2K of powder.
St. Luc/Chandolin was oddly similar to Hochgurgl/Obergurgl in overall intermediate topography, scale, elevation range and primary west exposure. The most obvious difference was level of development. St. Luc/Chandolin is about half surface lifts vs. the ubiquitous high speed 6 and 8 pack chairs and gondolas I see nearly everywhere in Austria. St. Luc/Chandolin has about half as many pistes though lift accessible acreage is more due to the canyons between Hochgurgl and Obergurgl being off limits. Yet skier density even on piste is also far lower at St. Luc/Chandolin. Most of the reason this was a much better day was due to the recent snow refresh, but some of it was due to lesser skier traffic.
Last edited:
