Site Designed, Produced and Maintained by
Pixelwave Design.
|
|
| ||||||
| Member Details | Session Description |
Toys Used |
| Owner:
squiz Member Member#: 6644 Location: Registered: 27-05-2007 Diary Entries: 3688 |
26th March 2014 Skiing: Les 7 Laux Wind Direction: Wind Stength: Surf / Sea State: Air Temperature: Sea Temperature: Weather: Sunny to start then cloudy and snow. Max Speed: Distance Covered: Tuesday 25th March - Travelling We had breakfast watching the skiers and snowboarders walk up the piste to the next lift as the one out of 1750 stopped working about 5 minutes after it first opened and after standing still for 10 minutes with people still on it it started to move very very slowly to enable them to get off then it stopped altogether. It was a real muddle because there had been a bigger queue than normal as the opening time has moved from 9 till 9.15 and people had been turning up from 8.45 so the backlog hadn’t yet caught up. The exodus up the hill was very colourful with all the bright ski clothing! The ski bus had never been so full either! We walked to the shop to get some of their nice bread to take with us then returned to the van, packed up and drove to 1650 to fill up with water at the camper aire. Drove down the windy road to below the snow line and to Uriage to find a shop and a garage as we are getting low on diesel and don’t think the diesel heater will work if we get too low. Very small, expensive petite casino and no garage:( Got a few essentials and continued on our journey to some small ski areas in the Belledonne range of mountains which run along the other side of the valley to the Chartreuse mountains where we were last week – Grenoble and a string of other big towns sit in the valley itself. The scenery was lovely, very alpine and green. Pink blossom and Magnolia trees are in full flower down there. The road was very windy and eventually wound its way up to the Les 7 Laux ski area which consists of three smaller places – Prapoutel, Pipay and Le Pleynet. We arrived at Prapoutel first and were a bit horrified at the high rise accommodation:( but after eating our lunch in the car park overlooking the view we walked to the bottom of the lifts and were amazed at how lovely the pistes looked and the lack of people on them:) We visited the tourist information and the lift pass office and collected all the maps and information including asking the lady where the nearest garage was – unfortunately right down in the valley but we didn’t have a choice so we set off back down the windy roads to Froges to the Carrefour supermarket where we filled up with cheapish diesel and visited the supermarket – our third of the day!!! Still we are now full of food, diesel and water so will be sorted for a good few days:) Back up the windy road and this time we headed up to Pipay which is part of the same area so you can access all the pistes and lifts from there. The road up was absolutely stunning – we have never seen sooooo many snow covered trees! There is nobody up here and it is a tiny place with no accommodation and only one lift – perfect for us:) We had a cuppa and read all the information about the place and now only need the weather to play ball tomorrow to ski here. It has been a mixed bag today, cloud, sun and then this evening more sleet/snow. Wednesday 26th March – skiing ***** Sunny to start then cloudy and snow. We woke to blue sky!! Cloud low down but up here it was lovely:) We got our lift passes (2, with insurance for 67 euros) and were on the lift out of Pipay by 9.30! it is an unusual lift, there is a telecabin then 5 chairs then another telecabin. WOW what a place, it is spectacular going up on the lift with huge mountains and bowls all thick with snow and soooo many snow covered trees – it is absolutely stunning! Then we got off the lift and the red down was possibly the best ever – hardly anyone had been down it and although we were expecting it to be icy it wasn’t at all – it was perfect all the way down whether you were in the sun or shade:) We just had to do that again! After a few runs down there we went over to the other side of the area on a nice blue and I went off on the un-pisted noisette run and ended up sliding down a steep bank and having to crawl back up 5 metres to get my pole in 2’ of snow which took ages so I lost Mag again for a bit. There is a huge area of off-piste to explore when the visibility is good. Met up at the bottom of the run at the lift which takes you further over onto Prapoutel’s pistes. All very good condition and a joy to ski except the main red back into the town which was unpisted, rutted and evil! The cloud had started to come in and the visibility was getting worse:( It was a real shame because there was a fantastic red path along a ridge (Clapierre) but you couldn’t even see the piste poles let alone the view so we were hoping that the cloud would clear out so we could do it again later. Decided to head back to the van for lunch and the visibility was so bad at the top that we both went different ways back! Mag went over to Le Pleynet which she enjoyed because the pistes were great and the visibility was better over there. She had to come out on a chair, a drag lift and a long green path to get back. I went straight down the red we did this morning and as Mag didn’t appear had another go:) While we were eating lunch coaches of school children of varying ages began arriving for their afternoon’s ski lessons. You have never seen so many children, teachers, helpers, boots skis and bags! How they managed to organise all that and make sure they ended up with their own things we don’t know – it looked like chaos! We decided to go to Le Pleynet for the afternoon hoping that the visibility would still be better and it looked like all those classes thought the same! You could only see at the bottom and everywhere up high was white out! It is also snowing quite hard again. Heartbreaking because the pistes are amazing still! We had a go on nearly every run including the border cross which was a bit scary as you couldn’t see the bends or drops and the speed merchants just careered down whether they could see or not! Back to Pipay where we went up and down the drag lift a couple of times to take us up until the lifts closed. What a fantastic place – we would definitely ski here again and would so love to see more of it in the conditions we had first thing this morning. AND do that red ridge again!! Still with the forecast for this week I think we were actually lucky to have the perfect weather for the two hours that we did! |
Toys Used:
Statsbar:
| |||||||
  |
|
|
|||||||
|
Web Design in Wales, UK by 
Pixelwave Design.
© Alan R Cole 2000...