Skiing conditions in Serre Chevalier

Friday 22nd December 2006

Had a lovely three hours skiing between 11am and 2pm, with my friend Lin Davidson, author of Our Life in France website. Mid station and above is open, but the Piste Luc Alphand black and the Briance green aren’t due to lack of snow. Skiid on a mixture of real snow and artificial: verdict, it’s ok up there if you are a beginner or intermediate, very good skiers may get bored from a lack of links open and lack of powder.

Took the bubble lift up from Chantemerle to Grand Alpe and practised on the well groomed green run first of all, because I was trying out my new but second hand K2 Burnin’ Love skis. We then tried the red on the other side of the drag and that was good too. Not too icy, we kept to the parts of the piste that were in the sun as far as poss. Coffee break and then we tried the Vallons, picking it up just round the corner from the cafe terrace. Soft artificial snow at the tricky top bit but harder lower down, nice condition for good quality skis and the Burnin’ Loves made light work of it and providing great edges on the slippier bits. Skied down to Serre Ratier and on to the Oree du bois chair lift and back up to Grand Alpe. Next run was up to the top (Serre Che 2491) on the six-man chair, along the ridge and then down the top of the Vallons, cutting on to a red run and back to the green drag lift. This is a lovely run with beautiful views of the whole valley and very few people using it. Second time round we kept on going all the way down to Serre Ratier and took the bubbles back down to Chantemerle.

All in all we had a great time skiing on pistes in pretty good condition and with sunshine and blue skies. Can’t imagine much will change in the next few days except it will all get more crowded. Let’s hope it snows for real again soon.

If you're new here, you may want to stay current with this Serre Chevalier RSS feed, click this link and your browser should tell you what to do. Thanks for visiting!