MegèveSki

Up around the ears on Mont d'Arbois

Today was the last day for the lifts at Mont d'Arbois and Rochebrune and the season went out with a bang as we had masses of snow over night and it snowed all day. Megève is very quiet at present with only a handful of other people on the slopes, so we were skiing untracked powder until last lifts. The nice thing about the way the skiing has ended here in Megève is that I got to ski a couple runs that I didn't expect to ski again this season and I did them with knee to thigh deep powder on them. Superb.

We got a text from Lucy this morning at 7.30 to say that there had been at least 30cms of snow up at her appartment and that she thought that there would be plenty to ski on Mont d'Arbois today. Pat had a lesson today and given the depth of snow and unknown level of grooming I advised her to take a book with her as she might get tired early and, well, chances were that we wouldn't be interested in stopping early ;)

Miche and I skied with Pat and Lucy for the first run and took La Finance down to the mid stage of the Betex bubble. The run was still officially closed at that point but Lucy spoke to a pisteur who said that it would open shortly as they were still grooming it. We skied down on perfect courdroy following the bashers and cutting in and out of the ungroomed powder. Pat did really well on the soft conditions except when she accidentally strayed from Lucy's path and ended up in knee deep powder; at which point she fell fairly spectacularly, like you do...

We took the Betex bubble up and then Miche and I left Pat and Lucy on the green heading down towards the Arbois chair whilst we skied the untracked powder on the Michel Dujon black a couple of times. Superb snow and only a couple of other people around. The snow was deep, over the boots all of the time and up around your knees most of the time. Today was a day for a powder mask but mine was at home; you don't expect to need it on 17th April even if you have had fresh snow... A good few times I hit a deeper section of snow and had snow shoot up around my face and over my head, refreshing...

We met up with Pat again at the top and Lucy pointed out that the Mt Joux chair had just opened up. Lucy took Pat off towards the Mt Joux chair via the green whilst Miche and I cut down the closed, unbashed, Fenils blue. This wasn't quite steep enough for the depth of powder as it had been melted back to grass and mud before today. We did a few turns and tried to keep a bit of speed to make it to the lift but it was hard going.

Pat skied the green down from the top of Mt Joux and was doing really well in the deeper snow on the groomed run until she hit a deeper bit and, well, see above. We skied down the Valamonts red which was ungroomed and steep enough that the knee deep powder didn't slow us down too much.

We met again at the bottom and Pat and Lucy did the red, unbashed, slalom run on Mt Joux (Pat didn't know it wasn't the same green she'd done earlier until some time later as the visibility had closed in and Lucy didn't tell her that she was upping the ante...). Miche and I skied down the closed, unbashed, brown until today, Chaillettes red which wasn't as steep as Valamonts and had slightly denser powder which made it a bit heavy going. By the time we got to the bottom people were tired and it was time for an early lunch. We skied down to L'Ideal chair and ate up at L'Igloo. I had hoped to eat at the full service restaurant at L'Igloo again today, last time we ate there was week 2, but that part had closed a week or so ago so we ate in the self service.

After lunch it was still snowing and Pat stayed at L'Igloo and read her book whilst Miche and I skied with Lucy; I love it when a plan comes together ;) We started off by dropping down the top section of the unbashed, red, Vardasses where I managed to get the last untracked line near to the trees at the top. The powder was deep enough that "keeping forward" didn't cut it and we were advised to lean back a tad to stop the ski tips from diving; fancy that, a ski lesson with the ESF where they tell you to lean back ;)

After the red we moved on to the completely untracked and unmarked black that sits between Michel Dujon and Vardasses. It's not marked on this year's piste map so I've no idea of the name and the pisteurs had already removed the poles in preparation of the lifts closing today so it wasn't that obvious where it was. Anyway, it was a fairly steep, fairly wide gap between the trees that is usually unbashed and covered with moguls but it had melted back to almost nothing before today so was just steep and deep. We both fell a couple of times on this one, my falls were both caused by letting my inside hand get behind which led to a little rotation of the upper body which was amplified by the powder and proved fatal. I'm pretty sure that in addition to the bad upper body management I had managed to ground a ski a couple of times as there was no base under the knee deep powder, the grounding started a little rotation and... Miche's falls looked similar. We skied this black twice and were both considerably better the second time down.

The picture above is of Miche on the unknown black about to take a tumble. She's turning towards us. Notice the inside hand is way back and how that has caused her to transfer weight onto the back of the inside (left as we look at her) ski and how that ski has whipped around in the soft snow and the tip is just poking out of the snow. That's all fairly bad news and the result can be seen below. The snow was a little deep though and she'd probably have got away with it in easier conditions.

After playing around on the unknown black we cut down towards the Mt Joux chair. We took the La Sources blue which was a little too flat for the depth of snow. Once at the chair Lucy and I parted company with Miche. Miche was tired and wanted to finish the day on a high from her turns on the unknown black. Lucy had suggested to me that we might ski along the ridge from Mt Joux towards Etudiants and come down there. The drag that serves Etudiants and La Rare had been closed for about a week now and the run was likely to be untouched. It seemed rude not to.

The route along the ridge was a hard slog. It's fairly flat at the best of times and has some slight up-hill sections that you can just about coast along when the snow is nice and packed but with it around your knees it meant we had to remove our skis and hike the last section. We finally got to the point where we could see the top of the drag lift and took a moment to recover - I've dropped to my knees in the picture below...

We skied down La Rare and I fell twice. As Lucy pointed out, as this was the last day of lifts on Mont d'Arbois our tracks and the craters I made with my falls would stay untouched until the snow melted... The snow was deep and although the run was steep it wasn't quite steep enough; there was no base as it had been green until today and that meant that we sank quite low in the powder and the drag slowed us down. The falls were variations on my touch-down and rotation problems from earlier. The second fall was a real face plant moment and I thought I was going to drown on the snow that was all around my head. Most amusing once I managed to flip myself onto my back and brush the snow away from my mouth ;) The lower, flatter, section was much too flat for the conditions and we did our best to sling shot each other forward to blaze the trail. The leader would bash a bit of a flat track that the follower would accelerate down and then overtake the leader and take over the bashing. It worked to a fashion. We did some more turns down the last face as we knew we'd never get enough speed for the run out and so we'd be walking anyway. It was another skis off hike to get from the bottom of the run to L'Ideal and then back to L'Igloo for a beer.

Miche and Pat took the Mont d'Arbois bubble down whilst Lucy and I wondered about which run to take down. Lucy spoke to Fabian, the pisteur that we'd done our avalanche training with back in Feb and he recommended the Voltigeur black. We had initially discarded this as there was a long run out at the bottom but Fabian told us that the pisteurs had been playing over there and they'd made a nice fast track to use on the run out.

I gave Lucy the camera at the top of Voltigeur as I expected to fall and it's a little unfair that I always get to take pictures of Miche's falls but she never gets to gloat about mine ;) I skied Voltigeur well, the snow was amazing and it was often up to our thighs and we had trouble breathing due to the snow that was flying around our heads. We got to the top of the second face and were both grinning from ear to ear and gasping for breath. I set off down the second face and spotted the track leading down the run out. I was pleased with myself as I hadn't had any falls on the slope and I'd skied it well. Unfortunately I took the run out a little too fast and was unable to stay in the tracks as they hung left at the bottom. There was a second track which took a slightly wider line and I took that but I think it was a snowboard track, used once, and it hadn't compressed the snow as much as the other track. My skis took a dive and, well, Lucy got the picture for Miche.

We followed the track all the way to the base and it was pleasing to see that one of the pisteurs who was following us had a similar accident at the same point that I did :)

Today was an amazing end to the skiing at Megève, some of the deepest powder of the season and hardly anyone else around to use it up. Miche and I skied the powder better than we had on previous occasions, even allowing for the abundance of falls today. We were both skiing faster, steeper and deeper and the falls were just part of it :) Pat did really well in what were very challenging conditions for a skiier with only a couple of week's lessons under her belt. It was great to be able to ski Voltigeur again, it's been pretty much unskiable since mid March, and good to be able to have our last day skiing the area as a good one.