jamesdeluxe
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2020
You may have heard the conventional wisdom that the Alps tend to get fewer snow events over the ski season compared to the U.S. (especially the U.S. west); however, these storms tend to be large. While that hasn't squared at all with my personal experience over the past 20 years, this winter has definitely followed that pattern with what's being reported as the range's driest season since 1964!
My visit at the end of January/early February was a sun-splashed affair where I came back to the U.S. with a handsome raccoon tan but hadn't seen one flake of new snow over the entire week. Since the previous visit, an additional four weeks had gone by without any measurable fresh precip so I was seriously considering pulling the plug because I didn't want to spend a week skiing rock-hard groomers. Luckily, I started seeing heads-ups about a market correction a few days before departing on my trip during the second week of March:
Over the next several days, the forecast went back and forth between either a) several feet of snow, b) a deluge of rain to a preposterously high altitude, or c) a mixture of the two.
With that level of uncertainty, I wasn't sure what to do; in fact, I almost cancelled literally while bringing my bags to the car for the drive to the airport, but in the spirit of adventure decided to carry on with it. Following numerous drinks at Newark Airport and some helpful medication, I had a successful overnight flight, sleeping six out of 7.5 hours sitting upright in a completely full plane (rather than laying across three seats, which is usually what happens). After getting my bags in GVA, I walked in front of our son's namesake on the way to the rental car counter:
It's always shocking to me how close Geneva is to world-class skiing. Within less than an hour from the airport, you're driving past exits for all sorts of well-known resorts. Since I still hadn't booked any lodging for the night, I drove to Les Contamines, a ski area I'd always been curious about, arriving at 10:30.
The village proper is very pleasant and human-scaled with no building over three stories tall and everything in old-school wood style, similar to what you see in many Austrian ski villages.
Top to bottom is approx. 4,000 verts:
Arriving at the main bowl under sunny skies, I could see that cover on some south-facing aspects had already burned off. In the distance, a high cloud layer was drifting in: the first wave of precipitation for the upcoming week:
With the ongoing snow drought, I wasn't expecting much and my two warm-up runs, with me trying to figure out the lay of the land, were a bit stiff:
However, many south-facing slopes were, as Harv would say, surprisingly "carvy."
Another piece of not-necessarily-accurate conventional wisdom about the Alps is that there are no dedicated mogul runs. I picked my way down this 800-vert south-facing line starting at the summit of the ski area, where the sun had softened it just enough for an enjoyable run. The bumps to the looker's left of the chair were like cement -- you could hear people scratching down them from the lift -- so I stayed on the right like this guy.
Here I'm looking toward the 2,800-vert descent down the backside of the mountain:
This is the bottom of the gondola in the village of Hauteluce, where the likely connection to both high-end Megève and underrated Espace Diamant would be constructed, resulting in Europe's largest ski area. It's been under discussion for years and a local newspaper brought it up again last March, so we'll see if/when it actually happens.
I stopped at this mid-mountain restaurant for lunch, where it wasn't quite warm enough to sit outside. That's the flag for the region of Savoie. Once again, the exposed ground along the ridge is what you'd normally see in early/mid-April rather than the beginning of March.
Interestingly, my best runs of the day were the two trails that go down to the valley on the opposite ends of the ski area. They'd both corned up beautifully below mid-mountain and didn't turn heavy until the very bottom.
I reached the valley at 3:30 pm and called it quits with more than four hours of turns. The obvious takeaway was that getting a decent amount of sleep on arrival day makes all the difference. Several times in the past, I'd crashed on the chair and the liftie at the top had to yell to wake me up!
My visit at the end of January/early February was a sun-splashed affair where I came back to the U.S. with a handsome raccoon tan but hadn't seen one flake of new snow over the entire week. Since the previous visit, an additional four weeks had gone by without any measurable fresh precip so I was seriously considering pulling the plug because I didn't want to spend a week skiing rock-hard groomers. Luckily, I started seeing heads-ups about a market correction a few days before departing on my trip during the second week of March:
Over the next several days, the forecast went back and forth between either a) several feet of snow, b) a deluge of rain to a preposterously high altitude, or c) a mixture of the two.
With that level of uncertainty, I wasn't sure what to do; in fact, I almost cancelled literally while bringing my bags to the car for the drive to the airport, but in the spirit of adventure decided to carry on with it. Following numerous drinks at Newark Airport and some helpful medication, I had a successful overnight flight, sleeping six out of 7.5 hours sitting upright in a completely full plane (rather than laying across three seats, which is usually what happens). After getting my bags in GVA, I walked in front of our son's namesake on the way to the rental car counter:
It's always shocking to me how close Geneva is to world-class skiing. Within less than an hour from the airport, you're driving past exits for all sorts of well-known resorts. Since I still hadn't booked any lodging for the night, I drove to Les Contamines, a ski area I'd always been curious about, arriving at 10:30.
The village proper is very pleasant and human-scaled with no building over three stories tall and everything in old-school wood style, similar to what you see in many Austrian ski villages.
Top to bottom is approx. 4,000 verts:
Arriving at the main bowl under sunny skies, I could see that cover on some south-facing aspects had already burned off. In the distance, a high cloud layer was drifting in: the first wave of precipitation for the upcoming week:
With the ongoing snow drought, I wasn't expecting much and my two warm-up runs, with me trying to figure out the lay of the land, were a bit stiff:
However, many south-facing slopes were, as Harv would say, surprisingly "carvy."
Another piece of not-necessarily-accurate conventional wisdom about the Alps is that there are no dedicated mogul runs. I picked my way down this 800-vert south-facing line starting at the summit of the ski area, where the sun had softened it just enough for an enjoyable run. The bumps to the looker's left of the chair were like cement -- you could hear people scratching down them from the lift -- so I stayed on the right like this guy.
Here I'm looking toward the 2,800-vert descent down the backside of the mountain:
This is the bottom of the gondola in the village of Hauteluce, where the likely connection to both high-end Megève and underrated Espace Diamant would be constructed, resulting in Europe's largest ski area. It's been under discussion for years and a local newspaper brought it up again last March, so we'll see if/when it actually happens.
I stopped at this mid-mountain restaurant for lunch, where it wasn't quite warm enough to sit outside. That's the flag for the region of Savoie. Once again, the exposed ground along the ridge is what you'd normally see in early/mid-April rather than the beginning of March.
Interestingly, my best runs of the day were the two trails that go down to the valley on the opposite ends of the ski area. They'd both corned up beautifully below mid-mountain and didn't turn heavy until the very bottom.
I reached the valley at 3:30 pm and called it quits with more than four hours of turns. The obvious takeaway was that getting a decent amount of sleep on arrival day makes all the difference. Several times in the past, I'd crashed on the chair and the liftie at the top had to yell to wake me up!
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