2 Alpes Snow Report: 7th December 2011

Pre-season training is getting in the way of important activities like legging it up the hill and trying out the new board boots (Ride Contours, for the gear geeks amongst you), but it was a pleasant surprise to find that yesterday’s session consisted of a tour round the glacier followed by lunch in the lift company’s rather nice restaurant at 3200m. Well, I don’t mind if I do.

I was almost late into resort thanks to three coaches full of Crystal reps piling up the hill for some kind of ski training day. At least I hope they were reps and not ski guides, judging by the standard of some of the skiing we witnessed. Although, to be fair, the conditions were a long way from ideal, with fog so thick in places that you’d be lucky to see the next piste marker. Not so bad in your home resort, but a bit of a mare when you don’t know the pistes. Still, that’ll teach the reps to gloat over the fact that they get to ski whilst training when everyone else has to wait until they’ve scrubbed their chalets with a toothbrush.

Also cluttering up the pistes were ESF instructors from all over the Alps, who are doing their annual ‘recyclage’ or refresher training this week. All of which resulted in a humungous queue for first lifts at the Jandri Express, still pretty much the only main route out of resort and up the hill.

But, as pedestrians we hit the priority line and scooted past the lot of them, to a certain amount of muttering. This is worth remembering if you have non-skiers with you over the festive season – pedestrian passes are available by the week or the day, or as one-shot return tickets for certain lifts, allowing your whole group to meet for lunch or coffees. Pedestrians have priority on all the lifts open to them, so there’s never any need to queue with the hoi polloi and their nasty, pointy ski poles.

At midstation the fog had closed in and there was not a lot to see except the lift station and the queue, which had transferred itself from 1650m to 2600m. This is often a bit of a problem early in the season when the lift system is only partially open, but it eases off when they start running the Diable and White Eggs in resort and the Telesiege des Glaciers from 2600m up to the glacier.

Up at glacier level there was more fog, but the T-bars were running and so was the Funiculaire, so we were able to go to the top on foot, in theory to look at the view and have a trip on the Croisiere Blanche, a tour of the glacier in what is basically a minibus with caterpillar tracks. This is why it’s called a chenillette, or little caterpillar - interesting linguistic fact of the day there.

Unfortunately the fog was such that we couldn’t actually see the orientation table from the door and the bus driver had very sensibly stayed in bed, so we went back down to 3200m to have a look at the Grotte de Glace, a cave system full of ice sculptures hacked out of the glacier itself. Skiers often don’t bother to visit the cave but it’s well worth a look, both for the sculptures themselves and the perfect ice crystals which encrust the roofs of the passages. Pedestrians need to be careful on the way across to the cave though, as they’re obliged to walk across the top of the Signal piste, where skiers on the Puy Salie frequently come belting round the corner, without looking where they’re going. Proper boots are a must as well, especially on a day like yesterday when the piste was strewn with a good 15 to 20 centimetres of powder. (Hear that, national news websites? We have fresh powder at altitude. Now stop it with the ‘we’re all doomed’ stuff.)

After all that hanging about in the fog we were more than happy to adjourn to the comfy sofas in the lounge area of the Restaurant des Glaciers. I’d never actually eaten in there before, what with being on a working seasonnaire’s modest wages and rationed ski time, and I was pleasantly surprised by both the quality of the food and the reasonable price. Eating on the hill is never going to be the cheapest option in resort, but at 21€ for two courses or 25€ for three it’s an affordable treat.

Diners looking for a cheaper or less leisurely eating experience can go for the self-service or snack bar rather than the restaurant and, on a nice day (ie definitely not one like yesterday), the views from the terrace are splendid.

Today’s scheduled trip to La Grave to have a look at the glacier has been cancelled due to bad weather, which is actually good news because it means it is still snowing up there. The bad news is that we’re due blue skies and fresh powder tomorrow, when I have to sit in dull training sessions all day. Nooooooooo!!