MegèveSki

Views from Les Mandarines

These pictures were taken from the terrace at Les Mandarines at 13.30, looks like everyone is at lunch as the pistes are empty... They're shown in order moving from left to right across the skyline.

The peak in the foreground is Mt Joux, with its two chairs. The chairs give access to lots of varied terrain so this area tends to be busy at weekends as it's ideal for mixed ability groups as they can take their pick of the runs and meet up at the top at the restaurant or at the bottom at the lifts. The bumps under the lifts are starting to become real moguls rather than just the fluffy bumps that they were a couple of days ago.

The larger peak is Mt Joly. The piste map for Mt Joly is a bit disapointing, but that's the point. There's a red and a black and the red's a bit of a road really but who cares, the rest of the mountain is nice steep off piste with a lift at the bottom. Ideal... This is where we were with Jonathan on our second ski day when the we misjudged the time and ended up traversing all the way across from the shadow of the gulley on the right to behind the Mt Joux lifts of the left because the lifts had closed... You can hike up a bit and ski off of the back of Mt Joly down into Les Contamines.

This is the Etudiants drag lift (in the middle) with two red runs, Rare (to the left) and Etudiants (to the right, between the trees). Rare is a bit steeper at the top, but both are excellent runs that tend to stay pretty quiet as they're a little bit out of the way (Rare more so as you can't really see it from the drag).

This is looking towards Cote 2000 over on the Rochebrune side. Just right of centre, below the end of the dark part of the ridge line you can just see the cote 2000 chair. If you were to drill straight through the mountain you'd be in Les Contamines.

This shows the Fontaine lift (centre) and the Jardin lift (hard to see, running left to right diagonally half way up the picture). These give access to several runs, the best of which is Fontaine, the run that can be seen in the centre of the picture. This runs from the shadowy bowl at the top all the way down, has a good mix of gradients and trees for when the visibility isn't that good. We've skied this bit quite a lot...

This picture looks towards the tops of Caboche and the Rochebrune telepherique. The building in the centre of the picture on the ridge is Super Megève (great barbeque on the terrace on sunny days). As you can see there are lots of runs available from the top and most are in the trees making them ideal for days of poor visibility.

And finally...

Les Mandarines is in such a great location that even the view from the gents toilet is pretty stunning. We're looking down the line of the Mont d'Arbois bubble lift, towards Megève and the Jaillet area.