jamesdeluxe
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2020
As mentioned in my report for Les Contamines, a storm front was moving in Tuesday night that would finally put an end to more than a month of high-pressure hell in most of the Alps. Fraser, my London-based version of @jasonwx, warned me that there would be a mixture of snow, rain at lower elevations, fog, and other unpleasantness. Since skiing above treeline was not advised, I decided to spend a half day at somewhere with a lot of trees and Megève, only a few minutes from my hotel in St. Gervais, seemed as good a choice as any. My wife and I had skied there seven years ago during a more typical winter season with plenty of snow. Terrain-wise, it felt like a much larger version of Deer Valley.
Megève tends to attract a lot of well-heeled older visitors who enjoy the extensive cruising and the atmospheric towns in the valley with high-end shopping and restaurants. As you can see from the map, it has five distinct sectors and the lift ticket also allows access to Les Contamines on the left side, which is not physically connected to Megève even though it's just on the other side of the ridgeline -- see the blue arrow I added to the map:
After buying a four-hour ticket for $46, I took a gondola, then a high-speed quad, and arrived at the top of Mont Joux by 9:30. It was snowing lightly and shrouded in fog. The four inches of heavy snow that had fallen overnight skied well and did a nice job covering the boilerplate from the long drought lurking underneath. The retired British group in the gondola joked "this is what it's like to ski in Scotland!" True, not the picturesque canvas that you expect in the Alps but I didn't fly 7+ hours to take an off day:
Luckily, over the next half hour the precipitation moved out and despite the gray day, the skiing was enjoyable as long as you weren't hoping to go offpiste, which was completely out of the question with the low natural snow:
It must have been snow scooter day as I saw a fair number of them:
The best strategy was to stay in the trees, where visibility was fine:
Seeing this chain of on-mountain restaurants is a guaranteed sign that you're at a major French resort. I bet they didn't do a large amount of business on the outdoor patio that day.
It'll be interesting to follow Megève in the coming years as it's going to be a perfect test case for how hugely popular ski resorts at modest elevation adjust to climate change.
Not much else to tell you about this day but the forecast was looking good for a nice dump overnight. I downloaded back to St. Gervais at 1:15 and drove south for two hours in driving rain to the Haute Maurienne region, where my luck changed, momentarily at least!
Megève tends to attract a lot of well-heeled older visitors who enjoy the extensive cruising and the atmospheric towns in the valley with high-end shopping and restaurants. As you can see from the map, it has five distinct sectors and the lift ticket also allows access to Les Contamines on the left side, which is not physically connected to Megève even though it's just on the other side of the ridgeline -- see the blue arrow I added to the map:
After buying a four-hour ticket for $46, I took a gondola, then a high-speed quad, and arrived at the top of Mont Joux by 9:30. It was snowing lightly and shrouded in fog. The four inches of heavy snow that had fallen overnight skied well and did a nice job covering the boilerplate from the long drought lurking underneath. The retired British group in the gondola joked "this is what it's like to ski in Scotland!" True, not the picturesque canvas that you expect in the Alps but I didn't fly 7+ hours to take an off day:
Luckily, over the next half hour the precipitation moved out and despite the gray day, the skiing was enjoyable as long as you weren't hoping to go offpiste, which was completely out of the question with the low natural snow:
It must have been snow scooter day as I saw a fair number of them:
The best strategy was to stay in the trees, where visibility was fine:
Seeing this chain of on-mountain restaurants is a guaranteed sign that you're at a major French resort. I bet they didn't do a large amount of business on the outdoor patio that day.
It'll be interesting to follow Megève in the coming years as it's going to be a perfect test case for how hugely popular ski resorts at modest elevation adjust to climate change.
Not much else to tell you about this day but the forecast was looking good for a nice dump overnight. I downloaded back to St. Gervais at 1:15 and drove south for two hours in driving rain to the Haute Maurienne region, where my luck changed, momentarily at least!
