Digging around the pamphlets and brochures in the apartment, I had come across one for an area I had not heard of before ... Marecotes. Another small resort but this time the other side of Martigny, up in the hills over looking the Trient glacier.The day promised to be good, however there was only Chris, Myself, KT and Steph, going out. The others were resting (I believe they really wanted to go tobogganing as we found out later).
We drove down to Martigny, and tried t find the road up to Marecotes, which took a few false starts before we were on our way. The resort was obviously popular as we were shown to a car park on the side of the road well before the village, and told to wait for the bus ... in reality I suspect we would have been better off catching the train from Martigny or even Orcieres, but that is hindsight.
After all this we eventually got our day passes and headed up the first tranche of the lift systems, and got our first view of this big bowl and various opportunities.
We dropped down and took the next chair lift to the top. Taking the first option to the left and going down over the ridge into the "hidden" bowl, gave us an opportunity to try out the piste edges.
After which we went back up to try the bowl side... and cut a few corners off.
Following this we went up again and came straight down under the chair...
Taking in some enormous bump fields. but good fun and certainly stretched the muscles.Time for a rest and some food ... up at the top was a buvette with great views, but no electric .. no chips but hot drinks.
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| Up the Rhone Valley |
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| Across to the Trient Glacier and valley |
We made several more runs .. one each side as we had done before and a final take in of the whole bowl.My lasting impression was of all the people skinning up to the col behind the top lift. This is one to come back and explore with Bryon one day ...
Then it was back down and wait for a bus to take us back to the van.
Back at the apartment we discovered the others had spent the day sledging and wanted to go out and do some night time instances .. so who were we to put them off - after all it was new Years eve!Trip tracks