From our two night B&B in Agettes in the foothills south of Sion, we skied Ovrannaz Saturday, then upon departing Sunday drove an hour to Champery, the largest lodging base on the Swiss side of Portes du Soleil. There is a large parking lot, and a tram rising 2,000+ vertical to the skiing. For those who want ski-in ski out, Les Crosets sits at 1,600 meters, similar to the much larger Avoriaz lodging base on the French side.
We knew Mar. 29-31 would be weather challenged, and here’s a view a few minutes after we got off that tram.
Our first couple of runs had some follow the trail markers in the fog sections, but generally the clouds sat on top of the ridgelines. The made piste skiing reasonable but light was too flat to venture off piste. Top of Mossettes-Suisse lift which reaches the border at Portes du Soleil’s high point of 2,227 meters:
Monument at Col de Portes du Soleil:
In order to survey the area south to North, we rode the short Gueilly poma and the Pointe de l’Au chair t this view of the residential area of Champoussin.
There did not appear to much in the way of commercial establishments here.
We ventured as far as piste #48 to the Bochasses chair, where snow conditions deteriorated towards frozen granular near its base. Thus we were not tempted to venture farther and lower to Morgins.
We were aware that the Swiss side of Portes du Soleil has a lot of bad exposure. But overall we were pleased with surfaces, important considering the flat light. The recent storm had buried most of the manmade snow. There was certainly some melt freeze on south facing pistes, but almost none of the slick snowmaking subsurface.
On our way back we took a lap on the Aiguille de Champeys chair.
We had a bit of a break in clouds here, with a view down to the Rhone Valley.
Here we are coming back down from the Col towards Les Crosets.
In our survey skiing we could see lots of intermediate to advanced off piste potential. It would rarely be any good in late season, but in our usual late January time frame worth keeping in mind. The Swiss side has a much quieter reputation than the French side, I’d suspect very little powder competition here. We rode the Grand-Conche lift just after 3PM and with adequate piste visibility took our first Avoriaz alpine run 1,500 vertical to the Cases chair. Here we noticed the 100% winter snow that we would experience most of the next three days.
Returning to the Champery tram for downloading takes careful planning. You must ride the Crosets lift out of Les Crosets, then a piste down to the Planachaux chair to get up to the tram. No surprise at 3:45PM the bottom of Planachaux was the one place we had to ski scraped down boilerplate.
We skied 18,200 vertical, then had just a half hour drive over the pass at Morgins to our hotel the next three nights in Chatel.
We knew Mar. 29-31 would be weather challenged, and here’s a view a few minutes after we got off that tram.
Our first couple of runs had some follow the trail markers in the fog sections, but generally the clouds sat on top of the ridgelines. The made piste skiing reasonable but light was too flat to venture off piste. Top of Mossettes-Suisse lift which reaches the border at Portes du Soleil’s high point of 2,227 meters:
Monument at Col de Portes du Soleil:
In order to survey the area south to North, we rode the short Gueilly poma and the Pointe de l’Au chair t this view of the residential area of Champoussin.
There did not appear to much in the way of commercial establishments here.
We ventured as far as piste #48 to the Bochasses chair, where snow conditions deteriorated towards frozen granular near its base. Thus we were not tempted to venture farther and lower to Morgins.
We were aware that the Swiss side of Portes du Soleil has a lot of bad exposure. But overall we were pleased with surfaces, important considering the flat light. The recent storm had buried most of the manmade snow. There was certainly some melt freeze on south facing pistes, but almost none of the slick snowmaking subsurface.
On our way back we took a lap on the Aiguille de Champeys chair.
We had a bit of a break in clouds here, with a view down to the Rhone Valley.
Here we are coming back down from the Col towards Les Crosets.
In our survey skiing we could see lots of intermediate to advanced off piste potential. It would rarely be any good in late season, but in our usual late January time frame worth keeping in mind. The Swiss side has a much quieter reputation than the French side, I’d suspect very little powder competition here. We rode the Grand-Conche lift just after 3PM and with adequate piste visibility took our first Avoriaz alpine run 1,500 vertical to the Cases chair. Here we noticed the 100% winter snow that we would experience most of the next three days.
Returning to the Champery tram for downloading takes careful planning. You must ride the Crosets lift out of Les Crosets, then a piste down to the Planachaux chair to get up to the tram. No surprise at 3:45PM the bottom of Planachaux was the one place we had to ski scraped down boilerplate.
We skied 18,200 vertical, then had just a half hour drive over the pass at Morgins to our hotel the next three nights in Chatel.
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