2 Alpes Snow Report: 1st March 2013

Not so much a snow report as a queue report today, and a demonstration (if any were needed) of why you should steer clear of Cretes at peak season.

Thursday is split shift day (Rubbish. Rubbish!!), so while I escape the ticket hutch at lunchtime I have to go back and sell pool tickets later in the afternoon. In theory this still gives plenty of time to go boarding, but in practice it’s a bit of a stressy experience involving a lot of anxiously checking the time and having a panic every time a lift slows down.

This being the case, I thought I might as well eschew the altitude and spend a couple of hours nancying about on the Cretes in a bid to link some turns while riding switch rather than just spinning round on the spot.

The first couple of runs weren’t bad, and I discovered what the other day’s industrial igloo building activities were all about – they were constructing a tunnel which now provides a second entrance to the chair, presumably to reduce carnage on the ice patch.

In addition to this they have festooned the lower part of the run with all kinds of netting and associated piste furniture, the purpose of which seems to be to slow the traffic down and separate the main part of the piste from Petit Cretes and the carpet-in-a-tube thingy on the left hand side. Whatever the aim of the game it makes things very confusing if you’re used to cruising through there on autopilot.

I also discover that they have left a handy little mogul field on the far right of the main Cretes piste, vaguely indicated by a line of piste markers down the middle of the run. This is great for anyone wanting to get involved with bump skiing (or indeed boarding – go on, stop being such a wuss), since most of your other opportunities for doing so involve the sort of gradient you find down the side of the Valentin, which is a bit intimidating for a novice.

By the third run down, the chair was beginning to silt up with people, and once the snakes came out again it was so mobbed that you could spend a good 15 minutes in the queue plus however long on the chairlift for the sake of a run which doesn’t take more than five minutes even if you are making a pig’s ear of riding switch down most of it. This being the case, I packed it in after two more goes and went in search of a big sandwich at the Creperie du Centre back in resort (recommended, huge baguette stuffed with ham and healthy rabbit food stuff).

Next week stands to be equally crowded, with two French zones on holiday at once, but the week after will be quieter as we’re back to one zone at a time. Said zone is Paris, unfortunately, so we expect rude and grumpy people at the ticket windows. We’re looking forward to the Parisians’ Easter break though, as it falls entirely in May, just after we shup up shop for the summer. Perfect!