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