We took the road up from Modane, and parked in the car park below the lift station. There was still a good amount of snow on the lower pasture.
Our original idea was to follow the line of the lifts up, but we quickly re-evaluated when we saw the forest line, and chose to follow the main descent route in a big zigzag.
There was a little short cut we took that cut the corner off, and was an obvious route used by the downhillers.
After the brief excursion we were back on the piste, or summer road. As we passed under the first lift we cut up the slope.
We cut across the slopes - off piste, to get up to the mid station buildings. We were making our own route at this point so it was a little heavy going.
With relief we reached the buildings and picked up the line of a really long drag lift, that followed the line of the shallow ridge from here to the top station, before turning sharply and going straight up to the top.
This section was a long shallow slope as we followed the line of the lift.
Then we cut left and straight up the final slope, until sweating hard we emerged on the flat area by the top of the lift.
We were now close to our cut off time for the day, so we walked up the slope a little and found a good spot to stop and have lunch.The clouds were hovering around us, coming and going, but we got a good view.
After the rest we prepared for the descent. Ski on we dropped back down the way we had come up ... the top section was powdery, even the shallower part, but as we got past the mid-station the snow became very wet and slushy, and by the bottom this was quite hard to turn on.