31 December 2010

Marecotes, Switzerland

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.


Up the Rhone Valley
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


30 December 2010

La Fouly, Switzerland

With good weather set to stay for a while we planned another day out ...  KT and Sue stayed in the apartment, but the rest of us headed out to another of the small "local" resorts ..  this time at La Fouly ... Bryon and I had checked this out on our first spring visit to the valley, but the lifts were closed.
We drove down to Orcieres and up the road to La Fouley, but before long we were on  packed snow, so stopped to put the "new" chains on, and then continued to the area. Once there we were not aloe and had to park on the side of the road, however the resort was not overwhelmed with people and we were soon riding the first lift.

From the top of the lift we dropped down and picked up the next one to get to the top of the area, before coming down the direct red route, taking in some variations through the gulleys in the trees, with a short connecting section of blue in the middle.

Down at the bottom we repeated the lifts but this time cut over to the blacks on the other side of the lifts, and involved dropping through some nice gullies.

The going was a little "smooth" in places but we were able to keep the speed up and ride the worst of it until it improved. The end of this run ran through the trees deep to the back of the La Fouly village to give us another perspective.

Time for a rest and some food as the nervous energy consumption had got to some of the party.

Back at the top time for a panorama of the frontier ridge

 Before dropping down the top section of the black, and then cutting over to the red with the "excursions". The warmth(?) of the day - it was not that warm, but did allow some softening - had made the little gulley runs very enjoyable.

Ending up at the collection of all the pistes .. the sun was now starting to drop so we headed back to the van and the drive down the valley.

Trip tracks

29 December 2010

Vicheres, Switzerland

The back of the apartment looked out over the valley, and one of several ski areas ..  close to Liddes on the other side of the valley was a small village called Vicheres.  We (Chris, M-J and I together with Bryon had been there last spring, but it had been too late in the season and the lifts were closed.)

So today was an opportunity to go and have a look at what was there.


We managed to work our way up the zigzags on the approach road without the need for chains, but things were really slippy, and parked in the carpark. Making our way to the small chair lift and ticket office, it was soon apparent that this was a small commune run area..  just what the doctor ordered.

We took the chair to the ridge and then followed the obvious trail down to the next lift for the highest point. This turned out to be a T-bar ..  not everyones' favourite, but by splitting up we got everyone to the top.

This gave us some good views of the tour de Bavon ...  a target for touring that Bryon and I would return to another year. We saw parties heading over there all day, my guess is they were after the off-piste on the other side.

We first set off down the ridge line working our way back to the top of the chair and continued onwards to the descent route, down a long track that disappeared into the woods.

This was in the shade and cold, but a gentle "stroll" so everyone could enjoy it. Then it was back up to the ridge and heading for a little "buvette" we had seen on the lowest point. Which gave us some great views, whilst we snacked.
Towards the Trient group

The tour de Bavon and the route up
After lunch we split, with Sue and Dom heading back down the track, and the rest heading over tt he T-bar to explore the bowls beyond. We had so much fun we just had to repeat it with slight variations.

We caught the last of the sun before it dropped behind the ridge line and everything got very cold

Then charged directly down the front slope to the bottom and the car park, meeting up with the others as they returned from a visit to the cafe.


Trip tracks

28 December 2010

Champex, Switzerland

 The clouds were still around today and the portent was for it to stay fair, but cloudy .. so no sun.

We headed through the village and up to the lift system there, before heading up to the top station.


Here it was bitter, and the wind blew across the ridge. The trails were very hard and icy, so it did not take much discussion before we chose to head down the long route to the valley. First we would just drop down the blue route and up the small lift there.

this was a wide track that would take vehicles in the summer, and all the way down we kept our speed low to prevent the wind chill effect.

At the junction we took the lower route as from my earlier visit with Bryon in the summer we had noticed the chalet, and the understanding that it would be open and serving warm drinks.

Looking back up to the ridge we could not see any improvement, and with almost unanimous agreement we headed back to the van and warmth in the apartment.

See this day for the spring view  Mountain Days: Champex. Switzerland

27 December 2010

Champex, Switzerland

The clouds are down and after yesterday the motivation to get up early was sadly lacking...

A lazy start, followed by a check on the van and a visit to the garage for an expensive set of chains ...  now the van is operational again I moved it up to the apartment parking.

After lunch we wandered the small village, and checked out what was where etc., as well as walking around (and over) the lake.

then back to the apartment for a quiet end to the day.

26 December 2010

2010 Ski Trip, Switzerland

 Another year another destination ... so far we had stuck to France, but after the sections of the haute route that Bryon and I had done, it was not by chance that I started looking at Switzerland and in particular the St Bernard valley, and Verbier.

We came upon an apartment in Champex that was very reasonable, and temptation was too great.

This year was also different as Christmas day was a Saturday, so the rental period went Sunday to Sunday. That also meant we would trying to do the journey in one day - ambitious, but technically feasible. Chris and M-J together with Dom would come from Alsace, so we would use (and require) this as a fall back in case of delays.

We set off from home early (4am get up) on Sunday 26th to catch the 7am ferry. things went OK to Dover, except that the ferry was delayed leaving, setting the tone for the day.

We were fine through Reims, but then we picked up more and more traffic and had some big jams until we turned off for Pontarlier, but by now we were looking to be arriving after 6pm, and tight for the apartment hand over. Driving through Switzerland was better, but we still lost time.

Luckily mobile phone technology helped us and we got M-J to do the apartment hand over (including the cash deposit ...  which I had forgotten to let them know about as we had it covered).

It was dusk as we arrived at Orciere, and started up the road to Champex ... there was snow on the road, so at the first lay-by I pulled in and got out the chains ..  after half an hour and very cold fingers I gave up trying to put them on ...  at home they were tight, but in the cold and dark, impossible.

So pushing on I drove up the road trying to keep to the clear parts, all was OK (but hairy) until the last hairpin, where we had a four wheel drift which had all four of us in the van sucking hard.

We slid into a lucky parking slot at the garage at the entrance to the village, determining this was as far as we could go tonight. Calling Chris he came down in his car (all 300m) to help us unload .. we had not realised how close it was. We struggled to get all the kit up to the apartment, before collapsing in the ample sofas.

Relieved to have got there in one piece I slept the deep sleep of the just and woke up the next morning to sort out the mess.

view into Switzerland and Verbier from the apartment door



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