jamesdeluxe
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2020
People have been asking me for years why I hadn't been to Val d'Isère given its sterling reputation so I decided that it was time to put up or shut up and committed to spending four days there. I knew going in that it's big but seeing was believing. The Piste Map site posted these bullets about it.
Given the prevailing hard-and-fast conditions, we reserved a guide for Day 1, Philippe, who took our group on two long runs in the offpiste Pays Désert (Desert Country) sector on the far looker's left of the map above. After bootpacking a couple minutes above the Montet t-bar, we traversed a half mile across a mixture of sastrugi and coral:
... to find a lot of windblasted cover; however, Philippe expertly directed us to wherever snow had blown in. Due to its mostly gentle pitch, Pays Désert is reportedly a popular offpiste sector:
... but we saw no ski tracks on either of our two runs.
Liz following Philippe across some snow that skied better than it looked:
Untracked snow from four days earlier:
Look at that expanse:
Philippe, Liz, and Tony finding a big untracked field further down:
Late in the day, 15,000-foot Mont Blanc in the distance:
- Number of Pistes: 154
- MIles of Ski Pistes: 186 (300 km)
- Skiable Area: 9,100 acres out of a 25,000-acre mountainous area.
- Number of Ski Lifts: 76
- Highest Altitude: 11,338 feet
- Glacier Skiing: Two, the Grande Motte being one of the steepest you’ll encounter
Given the prevailing hard-and-fast conditions, we reserved a guide for Day 1, Philippe, who took our group on two long runs in the offpiste Pays Désert (Desert Country) sector on the far looker's left of the map above. After bootpacking a couple minutes above the Montet t-bar, we traversed a half mile across a mixture of sastrugi and coral:
... to find a lot of windblasted cover; however, Philippe expertly directed us to wherever snow had blown in. Due to its mostly gentle pitch, Pays Désert is reportedly a popular offpiste sector:
... but we saw no ski tracks on either of our two runs.
Liz following Philippe across some snow that skied better than it looked:
Untracked snow from four days earlier:
Look at that expanse:
Philippe, Liz, and Tony finding a big untracked field further down:
Late in the day, 15,000-foot Mont Blanc in the distance:
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