Val d'Isère, FR: 01/27/24

[jamesdeluxe]

After landing early yesterday morning, I skied with Tony and Liz at Courchevel then drove on to Val d'Isère, where we're spending four days. People have been asking me for years why I hadn't been there given its sterling reputation so I decided that it was time to put up or shut up and committed.

I knew going in that Val d'Isère is big but seeing was believing. The Piste Map site posted a number of bullets about it.

• Number of Pistes: 154
• MIles of Ski Pistes: 186 (300km)
• Skiable Area: 9,100 acres out of a 25,000-acre mountainous area.
• Number of Ski Lifts: 76
• Highest Altitude: 11,338 feet
• Glacier Skiing: Two, the Grande Motte being one of the steepest you’ll encounter

Google says it's approx. ten miles wide and up to six miles deep:

Given the prevailing hard-and-fast conditions, Tony reserved an excellent French guide for Day 1, Philippe, who took our mixed-level offpiste group on two long runs in the Pays Désert (Desert Country) sector on the looker's left:

After bootpacking a couple minutes above the Montet t-bar, we traversed a half mile across a mixture of sastrugi and coral:

... to find a lot of windblasted cover; however, Philippe expertly directed us to wherever snow had blown in. Due to its mostly gentle pitch, Pays Désert is reportedly a popular offpiste sector:

... but we saw no tracks anywhere.

Liz following Philippe across some snow that skied better than it looked:

Five inches of untouched, compressed snow from Monday:

Philippe, Liz, and Tony finding a big untracked field further down:

Late in the day, 15,000-foot Mont Blanc in the distance:

 

[Sbooker]

Was Phillipe with ESF? A guy in his 60s?

 

[jamesdeluxe]

Was Phillipe with ESF? A guy in his 60s?

No, with iSki. He was in his 50s.

 

[Sbooker]

No, with iSki. He was in his 50s.

I guess there’s plenty of Frenchmen by the name of Phillipe.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Phillipe was 65. His 5 children range from ages 12-21.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

Phillipe was 65.

I stand corrected.

 

[Tony Crocker]

First some of my pics. Here we are at Col d'Iseran with Cascade chair at left and Pays Desert where we will be skiing in the background.

First run:

Looking back up where we skied before traversing back to the poma lift:

On the second run we traversed farther out and had several short sections of windbuff.

On the way back to the main Val d'Isere base we traversed across the upper Manchet face and saw these speed flyers.

James was relieved to reach Piste M.

The view overlooks the town, valley and dam.

Our guiding ended at 1PM, so we rode the Olympique gondola to Bellevarde and had lunch at Maison Louly.

After lunch I thought we should give James a brief overview of the Tignes side. We skied to Val Claret, We rode the Tichot and Grattalu lifts to view of Aiguille Percée.

We skied le mur, lac and anemone to Tignes 2100. We left Tignes via the Toviere gondola, noted for its Mont Blanc view (between Liz and James) at the top.

Given the prevailing hard-and-fast conditions

One of the reasons to be in Val d'Isere is its sterling reputation for snow conditions. Part of this is altitude. The warm storms of the previous week rained upon only the lower 1,000 vertical of Val d'Isere. Above that the vast terrain usually spreads people around upon a higher proportion of winter snow conditions than at many places. The issue with much of the off piste is not rain or melt/freeze conditions but wind hammering, particularly on unsheltered exposures.

The caveat is that there are relatively few descent trails into town, and most of them are fairly steep, a sure recipe for high skier density and scraped snow especially at the end of the day. I recalled from our 2018 visit that the descent into La Daille was very intermediate. Of course that trip was in April and the base areas were more likely to be slush than ice.

The descent from Toviere on Creux was a wide open blue with excellent snow. View from there of the famed Folie Douce apres ski spot:

The blue Verte run continued pleasant down to a tunnel. Then Liz and I ended up on ok Coupe de Monde, which we nicknamed "Not OK" due to extremely slick manmade boilerplate. I had a barely controlled sideslip for much of the run until lower down there was loose snow on the right side to make turns. Liz traversed across Coupe de Mode through some trees onto the Raye run which was only marginally better. James was behind us so I told him to stay on the blue Diebold run. Diebold was less steep but he said the snow was just as bad and there were way more flying bodies.

As good as most of the skiing is here, we will be downloading at the end of the day for the rest of our stay.

 

[jimk]

One of those Alpine resorts I've always dreamed of visiting, but Utah keeps getting in the way

Do they still call the area Espace Killy or have the moved away from that term?

 

[jamesdeluxe]

One of those Alpine resorts I've always dreamed of visiting, but Utah keeps getting in the way

We've had a few discussions about current-day Utah. Not to be one of those "it was better 15-20 years ago" types, but it was.

Do they still call the area Espace Killy or have the moved away from that term?

You see it occasionally on printed materials but absolutely no one calls it Espace Killy.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Not to be one of those "it was better 15-20 years ago" types, but it was.

I've been skiing Utah with some regularity for 40 years. It's still a great destination for our Iron Blosam week based at Snowbird. The experience based in Salt Lake has degraded considerably. Not only the oft discussed traffic situation, but the days of bargain ski shop lift tickets are also no more.

Despite lack of new snow on this trip, I will reiterate that retirees on the Warren Miller plan need to set aside some time to ski in the Alps.

 

[ChrisC]

One of the reasons to be in Val d'Isere is its sterling reputation for snow conditions. Part of this is altitude. The warm storms of the previous week rained upon only the lower 1,000 vertical of Val d'Isere

I have to clear up this weather misconception for storms preceding your arrival.

One of the reasons to be in Val d’Isere is that it does not rain.

Rain storm? The January 22/23rd storm resulted in 25cm of snow in the village of Val d'Isere to 50cm on Grand Motte/Tignes. We woke up to snow-clearing equipment at 6 am.

Out on Monday night:

 

[jamesdeluxe]

One of the reasons to be in Val d’Isere is that it does not rain. Rain storm? January 22 and 23 which resulted in 25cm of snow in town to 50cm on Grand Motte/Tignes.

I believe you but the lower valley runs certainly felt like they'd been rained upon.

 

[ChrisC]

Here we are at Col d'Iseran with Cascade chair at left and Pays Desert where we will be skiing in the background.

That's a nice off-piste area! Shows that Val d'Isere/Tignes has off-piste for all levels.

 

[ChrisC]

I believe you but the lower valley runs certainly felt like they'd been rained upon.

There was a southern foehn that started late Wednesday into Thursday. Valley temps hit the mid-40s in sunshine. Very warm. Saw a temp reading when we were at the base of either La Daille or Olympique. Conditions turned a bit mushy down low, so we stayed up high.

However, about 1000-1500 ft above the village, temps remained cool/cold and the snow stayed packed powder. Big temp differentials those days.

It was a freeze/thaw cycle that you experienced at lower elevations.

And the freezing line was likely about 2200m or so.