π
2018-01-06 01:01
in Nsnow, Snow
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Getting to Tignes and Val d'Isère from Bourg St Maurice is not that obvious. Many days have busses that leave at the wrong time, getting you late to the resort. This is why we went on a Saturday when the bus got us there early enough for opening time.
leaving before sunset
nice weather when we arrived, although it was quite windy
packed powder in places
but half of Tignes had pretty icy snow that was no fun to run.
We ended up crossing to Val d'Isère where the snow quality was much better:
you can see the fierce wind blowing off that mountain peak
Tignes however had another face pointing on the right direction, so we headed back for that, after trying their funicular that is dug inside the mountain (and nicely avoids all issues with wind):
direct to the top, no problems
Arturo found a friend
We then went on the other side of Tignes where the sun had been softening up the snow and the top snow hadn't melted. It was actually quite good with nice views:
still lots of wind, but the resort didn't shut off for it
It was then time to come down on the Val d'Isère side to catch a better bus than the Tignes side, and that got us home. This ended up being our best (and only) good ski day in that region:
On our last day before leaving for Switzerland, and after another day of no skiing due to conditions, I was hopeful that Tignes would open. It was a nice day but with extreme avalanche danger. Sadly the road was not well plowed, so trucks got stuck on the way up. Our bus never made it to the top, we had to finish on foot (actually, it did make it, maybe 1-2H later for what we walked in 10mn).
the road was not cleared or ready for cars or busses yet, it was a mess
the lift we were hoping for, that we waited hours for...
quite late, they started moving snow around to clear the roads
they were actually trucking the snow away
kind of fun to watch
Sadly, we watched the rest of the day waiting for them to open something. First, noon, then 13:00, then 14:00, and still nothing by 15:00, well actually by 15:00 they had opened a couple of lifts that we couldn't easily get to, just as we were boarding the bus to get home :(
by 14:00-ish, after refusing to sell us tickets when there was no line, a single person spent 1h+ dealing inefficiently with a long line
as we were leaving by 15:00 in the first (and maybe only) bus of the day that was going to take us home, we saw a lower lift that had just opened, Sigh...
Yeah, this was a frustrating day, even more so that ParadiSki had enough things opened that day and we had no way to get back to it until it was closing :( |
