Zermatt

This is Matterhorn country. The big cheese, the real Swiss experience. But unfortunately one that we had to limit to a day’s side trip from Saas Grund. Staying there would have crippled our finances, that’s for sure! But it was definitely worth the investment.

Zermatt is car free, which means you have to make the 8km trip from the next village by train, a narrow gauge alpine cog driven train to be precise (narrow gauge eh? why can’t we get some of these in NZ?!). Now the price of this alone was worth a day’s skiing at a French resort straight off, and after being relieved of another 152 Swiss Frankensteins (that’s £60/$NZ175) we were ready to take on the “Matterhorn Ski Safari”, that being a 10,000m vertical descent across all the three ski sectors plus a cruise down into the Italian resort of Cervinia – without having to use the same cable car/lift or piste more than once! And just to make it even more special, included a cruise along Europe’s highest piste (approx 3800m)! Now that’s what I call a safari.

Essential Matterhorn shot

Zermatt itself is amazingly beautiful – the views of the Matterhorn and the many other 4000m+ peaks that surround it would be a beautiful sight…but only if we could see them! Luckily we snapped a quick Kodak moment at the top of our first summit, as it would be the only chance of seeing this famous sight for the rest of the day. Low (relatively speaking) cloud hung about all day, but alas didn’t bring the snow that the resort so badly needs.

Amazing glacier scenery all around Zermat

There was an amazing diversity of means of transport on and off the piste, grand gondolas, more alpine railways, a connecting piste via a tunnel (will the Swiss ever stop digging holes?) and another which was slapped on the side of a cliff with a 200m drop at its side. Very inventive but does really also show how spread out the resort is and a lot of the runs were narrow pathways rather than what we’d call a piste.

Europe's highest mountain lift, where to next?!

The absolute exhilaration that comes with completing a 10,000m descent in one day took it out of us. Fantastic! That aside though, we’d rate Zermatt on its beauty, on having the Matterhorn, on having access down to Italy (adds a new dimension to boarder crossing!), but we wouldn’t rate it for snowboarding. But that’s probably a good thing as otherwise we’d have had to chuck in the adventure and go get jobs!

10,000m!!!

No new snow on the horizon so from the Saas valley we’re heading off towards Switzerland's Italian region for some sight seeing, more on that soon...

Saas Fee

It’s funny how we’re still in Switzerland, but by driving the two hours from Verbier, to the Saas valley it seemed like we’ve ventured into a totally different country. We’re at a bit of a loss out here now that we’re in German speaking territory, but Eric seems to be getting by real sweet with a little Dutch and his charming ways.

A bit of a mix up with the insurance on our first day meant we didn’t get up to Saas Fee as intended, but we managed an afternoon at Saas Grund, which is a smaller field with the access gondola directly over the road from our campsite. Like 200m! Not a lot going on up there, but one amazingly wicked glacier, with one main traverse cut directly into it, so that you can see all the layers of blue and green ice marble as you ski by. Not something you get to see everyday!

Piste carved out of the glacier, Saas Grund

View of Saas Fee from Saas Grund

Warnings about no off piste when on the glacier : (

Saas Fee has been written up as quite the place for snowboarding, and together with its high altitude glacial skiing, keeps quite snow sure for sometime - which is a good thing now that we’re officially in spring!! The only downside of glacial skiing is the distinct lack of off piste action – venture too far from the marked path and you could end up down a crevasse. Which is exactly what happened to the friend of a Saas Fee-seasoning Kiwi we met. Apparently he was only about 5m away from the piste and fell down a 15ft crevasse. Somehow he managed to climb back out of it, but was in deep shock for the next day or so. Not really something you want to experience eh.

Sharon riding the Saas Fee glacier

Great view of the glacier and piste top right

But there was enough fun to be had without venturing too far off piste. Saas Fee has a fabulous snow park with a world class halfpipe, which our guidebook touts as being the largest in the world. And how well manicured it is too. Suffice to say we had lots of fun dropping in and practising our stuff. The photos don’t really do us justice I promise!

Eric walling the half pipe

Made it in one piece!

Verbier

Well, Verbier we were looking forward to as it has been well hyped up. And no, it didn’t disappoint! We arrived midweek, and as it turns out, in the week that no one was on school holiday, which means – no kids and very quiet on the slopes. Woohoo!

And what slopes they turned out to be! Fresh powder for the first few days – falling in our faces. In fact our first day we weathered blizzard conditions – and it was fantastic!

Even though the visibility was limited at times, at others the place brightened up and with so much fresh snow about off piste was just the place to be. We found a fabulous powdery playground up by La Chaux, with dips and bowls to muck about in. And as even more of a treat, the sound system in the nearby boardercross zone was blaring Fat Freddy’s Drop – perfect!

Beautiful fresh powder everywhere!

deep in off piste

oh dear where are my legs!

It’s funny how people don’t like to hang about in heavy snow conditions – maybe they’d rather go sit in a pub, but for us it was heaven and such a shame when the lifts finally closed.

Riders on the storm

Next day we headed up to the Savoleyres sector, and yet again, it seemed the weather was keeping the punters back in the village. Which meant all the more powder for us! How greedy are we becoming??! Magical runs through open fields of powder, dipping and diving and ducking into natural bowls and drop offs. Savoleyres really does have some great free riding terrain. including some great forested sections to weave about in too. We pretty much spent the whole day off piste. A real shame when the lifts closed at 4.45, we could have stayed all night.

Last run of the day with a well deserved gluh wine

Now Verbier is a cute little village, and I guess can get well boisterous in busier times. But there was a great vibe around with the O’Neill Xtreme Freeride competition in town. 24 of the world’s best skiers and snowboarders, with one aim – to descent the 3222m (rocky) north face of the Bec des Rosses with the trickiest moves in the fastest time. The sponsors were well out in force with giant inflatable Powerade bottles, brand new 4x4 Nissans littering the streets, and a giant screen set up to relay the action. These guys were well crazy, and it was just awesome to watch. Fortunately, there was only one casualty – a Canadian skier who tumbled down half the mountain and only suffered a broken leg – and all in good humour, or so she seemed as she relayed her experience to the crowd later that night.

Spectating at the Bec des Rosses

View from Mont Fort looking back at Mont Blanc, Chamonix is out there somewhere too!

By our fourth day on the slopes the sun was out in full and so were all the punters. A real shame after you know how it can be! All the off piste powder had been tracked out, not much fun that day especially as Eric managed to get some food poisoning from the ‘world class’ on piste cuisine. Definitely sticking to the packed lunch next time!

Time to move on ;)

Chamonix

And so here we are at another of our very much anticipated European resorts!

Chamonix sits nestled on the valley floor either side of some pretty amazing mountains. On one side you have a ridge reaching 2525m, but then on the other you have the Needles, reaching up to 3824m, and if that’s not enough, then you have the one and only Mt Blanc, soaring to a truly mind blowing 4810m. Wow. And isn’t it just beautiful. Not some jagged rocky peak for France and Europe’s highest mountain, but a perfectly smooth and snowy dome, glistening in the sun, flanked on either side by a pair of totally amazing glaciers flowing down the valley almost as if in a freezed frame hanging in suspense, all green and fearsome looking. As if at any moment, they could resume their rapid descent and totally wipe out anything in their path. You wouldn’t want to mess with them!

One of the glaciers hanging above Chamonix

One of the most amazing things to do here is take the stupefying cable car up to the top of the Aiguille du Midi, from Chamonix central at an altitude of 1035m, to 3842m in all of 15 mins. You get out of the car at the very top, and your breathing becomes laboured and your head may almost start to reel. You are VERY HIGH UP! And if you fail to realise that, take a walk outside onto one of the viewing decks. Totally (and literally) breathtaking!.

The summit here is also the starting point for the famous Valleé Blanche. This is an offpiste (obviously!) 24km run over the top of a glacier which takes about 1.5 hours. This would truly be one amazing experience, but not one naturally suited to snowboarders due to the very flat nature of part of the run. We met a very game couple who we rode up the car with who were all set to do it on their own on boards, who’d hired a guide the day before who’d taken them down a steeper route, and were coming back to do it again on their own. But given the sunny conditions and the nature of glaciers, it’s not the kind of thing you’d want to do on your own with no prior experience. Something we’ll look into!

Us at 3842m!

View back down to Chamonix

Awesome views down the Glace de Mer

And so once you get over the scenery it’s time to think about the snow.

Well, the thing with Chamonix, is that after you’ve been hanging out at places like Arcs and other large fields, it’s a bit of a let down to discover that all the (on piste) ski areas are well spread out across the valley and totally unconnected. The first area we checked out, Grands Montets, well it wasn’t for us. Ultra slow lifts, limited runs, and at times it seemed as if the ski populations of France and the UK combined where there. The final descent come 5pm resembled on of those Brughel paintings, with hundreds of people of all abilities labouring to get down several kilometres of giant mogul pits. Not the nicest experience really.

Just add moguls and another hundred people

But it was well worth suffering for our couple of days up at Le Tour. Sunny skies, soft snow and a manageable population on the slopes on the first, coupled by snow, snow and lots of fresh powder on the second! It is the ultimate playground, with natural dips and bowls and halfpipes so much fun to be had. We met up with some friends we’d made the day before, who we mucked about with, and who taught us some switching techniques (where you flick the board around and ride back to front), in exchange for teaching some jump turns in the fabulous natural bowl we found.

About to drop into a great natural bowl at le Tour

Coming to a rapid stop

Virgin tracks in the powder

Even Wickse got to enjoy the powder fun

But we also had one of the most sobering days ever. On day one, on our way up the first gondola, it slowed to a stop to allow a helicopter attend to a very serious accident on the descent. As we passed over, we saw blood all over the slopes, and numerous paramedics in attendance. On our next ascent, we witnessed the helicopter once again, this time to come retrieve the bodybag. A real reality check. It makes you fully realise just how vulnerable we really are out here in the face of nature.

CERN

In Geneva, we went to find CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research) which was only a few k's from the motor show. In Sharon’s mind CERN was something that was made up by Dan Brown in his book ‘Angels and Demons’. After convincing her otherwise we rocked up to the visitors centre.

The European Centre for Nuclear Research - stand back!

Unfortunately there was no tour on that day but they had a great exhibition explaining what they are all about with special focus on what we’d especially come to see - the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This is one collossus of a particle accelerator - a 27 km ring buried 100m below Geneva and into France, which is going to be used to smash protons together to simulate what they think happened when the Big Bang occurred at the creation of our universe, pretty heavy stuff, but well explained and we had a great time wandering around the displays.

The LHC - a 27km ring 100m under the earth

Isn't it pretty?!

Inside the ring (it's actually a mock-up)

This is also where they "invented" the internet, so it was great to get a bit of a history lesson too.

Our heads came away more than a little mashed from that heavy dose of quantum physics and the like. We urgently had to go chill out at Evian, and head back to the snow...

My brain hurts - get me out of here!

You can read more about the the LHC at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider and pay special attention to the bit when they discuss the safety concerns, such as the impact on our planet of create a black hole... it's just like in Dan Brown's book!!

The Geneva Motor Show

The sun was really getting to the snow a bit and snow-forecast.com was predicting some fresh stuff in a week so thought that it would be a good time to drop out of the Alps for a bit and see some sights in the area. We’d seen that the motor show - "Salon International de l’Auto Genève" - was on so thought Geneva would make a nice break.

Very summer like weather when we left La Rosière and it was a strange driving down from the Alps. Slopes that were covered in snow on the way up were now barren and the thermostat was rising all the time. When we got to Annecy it was nearing 20 degrees! We decided to park up there for the night and wandered into town. Beautiful city and glad we’d dropped buy. We stayed the night there and had a lovely evening in the sunshine by the lake.

This was our second time in Geneva as we passed through on the way to the Alps, we didn’t quite know what to make of it as it looked really grubby, the return trip didn’t really change the impression but the motor show was well organised. I’d expected Sharon to have had enough of it after a couple hours but we ended up spending from 2-8pm - that’s 6 hrs ogling the amazing cars on display. In the end Sharon’s fave was the new Volvo C30 hatch and I couldn’t be kept away from the Audi R8. In this case, pictures speak louder than words...

One very excited young lad- entering the Motor Salon, Geneva

This place was massive - this is Hall 1 - of 7!

Sharon and her favourite - the Volvo C30

The one and only Audi R8

Isn't it sexy?!

Midmounted engine

Another gratutious yellow thing

You've come a long way, baby. Saab then (back left) and now

The new Alfa concept

La Rosière

Time for a change from Bourg Saint Maurice so we’d heard of a little resort called La Rosière which sits directly on the opposite side of the valley to Arc 1950/2000. Great as we’d be up at 1850m, and made all the more interesting by some more snow that was forecast. The main attraction for us was the chance to snowboard across to Italy as the field is connected to the La Thuile ski area, excellent now that’s what I call border crossing!! (sorry, that’s one for Reg).

Waking up to fresh powder at 1850m

Nice small resort village and usually this road carries on over to Italy but in winter it’s closed and the road actually becomes a piste on the Italian side. We camped up on the edge of town where in a specially designated camper zone, with the most amazing view ever. The temperature dropped to a low of -6 that night and brought with it a few inches of snow.

The boarding was great on day one as the snow that fell meant that the off piste was great especially when I made a foray over to the Italian side. It really was a long trip to get there, with a long drag lift and some nasty traverses on the way back, not very snowboard friendly. Sharon stayed on the French side and we caught up to watch some of the 6 Nations action later in the afternoon. The next night we went down to the campground, how magical it was to wake up in the forest surrounded by snow!!

How about waking up to this view?

View over to Les Arcs 1950/2000 from our campsite

The next day we plotted some more pub mayhem to catch the France - England game. The day was bitterly cold, -7 when we got up and even though it was sunny the wind was howling over from Italy so managed to turn everything to sheet ice by the afternoon! Not a particularly nice sound snowboards make when scraping over ice so we opted out of that and headed to the pub. Ah alas France didn’t quite get that win!

The next day Sharon took off and I decided the icy conditions might just suit skis better….. so after about a 12 year hiatus I actually went and hired some carving skis! Ok so no photographic evidence (you can’t be too careful) but it was actually quite fun. The carving skis were quite different to use than my previous very straight edged Atomic ARC’s but that great feeling that you get when making turns on a snowboard was missing. I managed to get back into it quite quickly and could go faster than on my snowboard, but it really wasn’t as much fun. Being way more stable makes bombing down runs at pace just too easy. Great for trekking and making long journeys to far off pistes though, so I did some of the back runs into Italy including the one that’s usually a road, a bit slow but really scenic. By the end of the day I was having a lot of fun on the skis but couldn’t wait to get back on my snowboard, the snow softened up and looked like the boarders were having fun again ;)

More Alps shimmering in the distance

Val n' Tignes (get it?)

After a few days hanging out at Les Arcs we felt it was necessary to go and see what all the fuss is about Val D’Isere.

Val D’Isere is a ritzy resort tucked way up along a remote valley. In the summer it becomes a mountain pass into Italy, but at this time of the year it is a complete dead end. We’d heard a lot of people raving about it, but I guess they all must be skiers! Once again the guide book was extremely accurate – the runs are totally undergraded (blues and greens that should be red, reds that should be blacks etc) and they don’t seem to have even heard about piste grooming. I guess it hasn’t reached this remote valley yet.

To be fair it was a cold, windy day and the snow turned rather icy. Attracted by Val’s famous dizzying heights we decided to head straight up to the glacier and try out the snow up there (we’re talking 3300m here!), but the really important access gondola was non operational for some unknown reason and the queues starting building up at the “tres difficile” drag lifts – on this day the only way up. And then one of them broke. Great. Suffice to say, neither of us made it up the entire lift and we were left licking our wounds on the hard packed piste. Never mind, there’s always another day – and hopefully one when that damn gondola is working!

Eric on his ass, near the glacier, ValD'Isere

So we headed out to another area of the vast resort, Bellevarde. 1785m to 2705m via an almost vertical funicular, which bores straight into the mountain, to deliver you to what feels like the top of the world. Very James Bond indeed! Much nicer up here, and large tracts of piste to explore, but would still like to complain about the lack of grooming, giving rise to the most frustrating of flat traverses and heaving moguls. Not very snowboard friendly, but I was beginning to believe this was all part of the plan at Val.

So the next day we headed out to Tignes (pronounced Teen), which was lauded as a snowboarder’s delight – vast tracts of runs both on and off piste suitable for all levels. Unfortunately though, it seems that Tignes has suffered from a bit too much snow this year, and the valleys have filled themselves out to such an extent that there were many annoyingly flat traverses ruining otherwise fabulous runs. Eric had a great day, but I was suffering from one-day-in-a-row-too-many syndrome and needed a break. But definitely somewhere to come back to later in the season…

Beautiful view of Lac du Chevril, with Tignes in the distance

View of the resort from the Merles chairlift, Tignes

Another empty piste, Tignes

Les Arcs

So after our first afternoon at Sainte Foy getting to know our muscles again, we embarked on a journey up from Bourg to our first real resort, Les Arcs.

Les Arcs is a formed by a series of alpine villages, the main ones designated by their altitude (1600, 1800, 1950, 2000), which stretch across the face of a mountain range. Most people (sic. package tourists) stay up on the mountain in a chalet in one of the villages, but for those staying in Bourg there is a funicular railway which links up with Arc 1600 in a matter of minutes. We did it one day and decided it wasn’t worth the faff – better to take the 20-30 min drive, arrive a little later, score a park beside a lift and cruise through lunchtime when everyone’s gone in for fondue and the lifts are empty. Plus we get to enjoy a well deserved cup of hot chocolate in the warmth of our van when we need to refuel – without paying Alpine prices!

Arc 1800 was our main base. 1800 because that’s where the village is, but riding up a gondola took us to 2600m in a very short space of time. The first day was complete whiteout conditions with snow falling all about. And the best thing about that was not only that it brought powder, but that it sent everyone else back down to the their chalets. Heaven! By the time we got back to the van there was a pile of snow on the roof, and chains were necessarily almost all the way back to Bourg.

Lucky we brought the chains eh?

Vallandry was next up, quite low at 1600m but it made for a great place to hide out while it continued to snow, the tree lined red pistes soon became a favourite for Sharon and we ended up having the best day yet. With it also being a Saturday - change over day for most chalets – it meant that no one was there but us! We had entire pistes to ourselves and often no queues at the lifts. We had such a great day, and covered so much mileage, that I managed to break my previous record of 5400m vertical decent to 5800m.

Eric in action

The next day we took the funicular railway up from Bourg at 850m to Arc 1600 in 7 minutes, not bad. Being a really sunny day, the first it a while, meant everyone was doing the same thing. And with it being the first day for a lot of the weekly trips meant that it was madness on the slopes. The funicular was packed and the slopes so crowded that it was difficult to enjoy any of the runs, we headed over to Arc 1950 and then 2000 but the crowds seemed to get worse. Give us the bad weather with great snow over this kind of a day any day! At least it did mean we could get some great postcard perfect pictures anyway.

Just the two of us. Empty pistes and a Les Arcs sunset

Sharon and her favourite tree run, Myrtilles, Vallandry

Our 4 day non consecutive pass meant we could pick and choose the days we wanted to go up. We had a rest day in Bourg, checked out Val D’Isere and Tignes over the next few days, and returned for another blissful and near empty day on the slopes before heading out of the valley. It was Thursday, and I guess that’s the day when the weekly crowd decide to take a day off. Again there were times when it was almost only the two of us on the slopes, and when the sun decided to peak out from behind the clouds it was utterly gorgeous. We headed back over to Vallandry from 1800 so Sharon could get her fill of her favourite tree run – Myrtilles – and once again it was only us, the softening snow and the birds twittering high in the trees. As if the day could get any better, by sunset we ended up off-piste, rolling around in powder, before being treated to a of dose vin chaud (mulled wine) and a round of night skiing. How cool indeed.

Night boarding, Arc 1800