MegèveSki

Real spring snow in Les Saisies

We drove 25mins to Les Saisies this morning; rumour had it that they still had good snow there. Apparantly the snow there always stays good longer, they have some wierd little micro-climate going on that keeps it nice when the rest of the neigbourhood is going to pot. We arrived at 9.30 and the snow was hard, lightly frozen, just like it should be. The snow coverage looked good and as the day went on and the snow softened we started to remember what it's usually like skiing at this time of year.

We were both a little worse for wear this morning. I blame the randonnée the other day. Miche had a blister on her left heel that hurt when she pressured the ski and a right knee that was tired and achy. I had a tight left hamstring and aching ankles. We started slowly, the hard surface and frozen corderoy effect of the piste grooming caused vibrations that were far from good.

We skied the slopes around Mont Bisanne first thing and they softened slowly but by 11 they were creamy and smooth and fast, rather than the usual washed out and soggy with slush; most of the snow we were skiing was natural rather than man made and natural snow makes for better, smoother, slush... We skied the Les Saisies side of Mont Bisanne on the rolling blues and easy reds and then went down the slightly steeper red, Les Chevreuils, which would have been nicer if it didn't finish 10m below the drag lift and require a walk up hill (with no skins) to get back to the lift; I expect that if we'd noticed this before we got to the bottom then we'd have been able to do something about it...

After that we skied the L'Eteriou red which was very nice. It's marked as being a slalom course but wasn't set up, so we could use it. It had some very nice rolls and drops and was good fun if taken quickly. I almost came a cropper at the bottom when I was going a little too fast to absorb the last two rolls and took off on the first and then just about managed to land on the back of the next and absorb it. Lots of arm waving to keep myself forward and it all ended OK.

We had lunch at the top of Mont Bisanne in the restaurant which was very cheap, only 7€ for the plat du jour and then skied L'Eteriou again with slightly more control as the snow had softened that much more... After that I took a run down the Kamikaze black run that was to the right as I came off the drag lift. This looked quite nice but wasn't anywhere near as soft as it looked and was therefore a crunchy, bumpy, rutty black that was a bit of a bone shaker; Miche sensibly sat that one out.

We decided to do a couple of runs over the other side of Les Saisies so took the Chard du Beurre and skied over to the Les Girolles red. The snow on this was awesome, though we had, perhaps, left it a little late, so it was a little soft. The pitch was good and only the bottom section had man made slush so the top was a joy to ski. I took the run fast and carved my way down, blasting through the softer sections. Great fun. By this point Miche's legs had had enough so she rested at the top whilst I did the run again, with a straighter line and snappier turns.

We headed back to the car park by around 3.00 which made the day quite long for this time of year and the state of our legs at the start. The snow here is definitely worth returning for and, surprisingly, the resort is very quiet at present.