Val Cenis ski area tour, France

A web search had turned up a "trial" tour at the Val Cenis ski resort down the valley ..   a Dynafit sponsored route called L'escapade.
This would be the next step to learning touring for Lloyd...  skinning up and "safe" down hill on the pistes.

Although there was a map on the web, this was not marked on any piste map as yet ...  so we parked up at the central lift car park and walked down to the start of the Pre Novel lift where it indicated a start point.

At the lift station there was a very temporary sign on one of the lamp posts giving the same information as on the web, and a quick chat with the pisteur manning the lift, we found out we needed to follow the red flashes along the footpath then the orange posts.

the path was just visible in the distance, and we had a quick lesson on fitting skins and walking for Lloyd and then set off in line for the marker on the edge of the tree line.

The track moved through the gap and along a footpath. After a while this then turned uphill and over a meadow before it narrowed into the scrub.

As the track narrowed, then got steeper, as it zigzagged up the break in the trees ...  it could have been an old lift line. There was a steep exit onto the crossing piste, then up through some scrub on the other side. then back out onto the descent piste to one side.

Another steep narrow section in the trees before back out to the side of the piste again.

Keeping to the side of the piste and up ... this is an alternative descent track to the blue piste ... but hard to discriminate.

Last section was back in the trees again, before ending at an innocuous plaque in a small bowl ...  directly above I think was a transverse track, but we followed the well worn route to the right and out on to the red piste.

Sitting in the sun on the side of the alternative piste in the sun - still cold, but no wind.

Then we dropped down the alternative run before following the red to the blue across tot he right leading to the green.
Following the green to the kindergarten area, and worked the easy tracks t get back to the van parked by the bottom of the vieux moulin chair.

from here back to the chalet via the supermarket.  Once back at the village we discovered the plough had been out on the road with the parking ..  this  had cleared the main carriageway, but deposited a big mound across all the parking slots ...  no real trouble after some judicious shovelling to break down the edge to a ramp, and a run up with the van.