Three Valleys, FR Mar 10-15, 2025

EMSC · 2025-03-19T23:17:04+0000

Much belated. I'm trying to figure out how fit all the stuff(s) into this thing some of which were common themes and some daily one-offs. Plus I have like 100 pics just from 3 Valleys not counting 360 video/stills to process.

This portion of my trip was my annual guys trip with 10 of us present. Of which 4 of us met up in WDC, flying in on the same plane to Geneva for the ~2 hr drive up to our chalet (first to arrive, the rest ~4p). A heavily renovated older chalet in Le Raffort, just down valley from Meribel. But the bones of the place were clearly old with lots of 5'6" doors to rooms and bathrooms, etc... No chalet girls/boys cooking for us, but fresh croissants dropped off each morning and a few shuttle van runs and the like. Very pricy place given it could fit 12 and if snow had been good we could have skied to within 75 yards of the house at the end of the day, but instead had a few hundred yard walk to/from the final Olympe gondola stage up the valley to Meribel. Still not a bad arrangement in that regard.

On arrival day we got stuck at GVA in the worst immigration line that I've seen in years - well over an hour - so logistically didn't get into the chalet till after noon. I thought about skiing but decided not to from that late start. We instead got our tickets for the week after a 1p lunch at Jacks (the obvious place at the base area) and were told about the views at top of Saulaire gondola. That is also the top of Courchevel (basically). So we did that and had a glass of wine at the restaurant up top. We could kinda tell conditions might be an issue, with little snow and very sloppy slush in the base of Meribel (which is almost 5K feet in altitude), and closed signs at the top of the gondola and tram steeps.

He's not a giant, he's only 6 feet tall...

Meribel side

Courchevel side with predicted storm the previous night actually equaling a whole 1-2cm up top and none at the bottom.

Scenic but pricy drink location at 2:45p

More days to come...

EMSC · 2025-03-20T00:16:11+0000

Ski day 1 - March 11

Started off as a big group ski day. All 10 of us. Oh man what a hassle trying to keep 10 varied ski abilities together for multiple runs at a place no one knows... Since we had been up it already we went up the same gondola - Saulire - to start. We skied a couple of very hard packed Both wintery and very refrozen as well as already getting skied off piste runs (Saulire to Vizelle gondola wintery, Creux very refrozen with big wet slides on S faces near parts of the run) making it down in significant crowds to Chanrossa lift. Classic Euro lift line experience (to the surprise of most of the crew). Skied the only piste down the backside, Roc Merlet to Montagnes Russes both fortunately winter snow still but very low angle and short. Taking the Pyramides poma and then Roc Merlet chair back up.

Many diverging skiers all over during the morning to that point meant is was time to split up a bit. With the 4 advanced skiers staying together and skiing 2 laps almost directly under Chanrossa. A mix of OK turns in winter snow in a couple just-barely correctly angled spots and also refrozen brick hard junk turns at times. Grabbing a sandwich for lunch at the base of Vizelle the only consisent winter snow with pitch so far. Eventually we stuck to variations underneath the Vizelle gondola for a few runs which was high enough and N enough to retain chalky snow and even the 1-2cm in a few spots. But it was clear that the combination of terrain, elevation and exposure that would interest us skiing wise was very limited to a couple of lifts/spots in scattered locations across the various valleys. With bad or even no snow across surprising parts of the expansive 156 lifts. In the making lemonade section of the report, I seem to be lucky the past few years too. Turns out for ease of access and terrain quality, Vizelle was probably one of the best spots I could have led the 4 of us to ski. Totally by accident, but that theme rings true further on this trip as well, as in luck for a few of last years timed terrain openings, etc... I can only hope that luck holds.

Eventually I tried to see if we could see some new terrain further down Courchevel by the Col de Loze area, but the snow was 'skunked' and had turned to soft, difficult to ski lines that no one else had/was skiing (off piste). Timing our way to meet up with the 3 next gen 'kids' (20's) who were already at.... the La Folie Douce Meribel party bar half way up the Soulire gondola.

Definitely not a cold day, even at the start

Top of Chanrossa/Roc Merlet

Pyramides (we would eventually ski the lines to the right with our guide several days later)

Always taking pics only for the handful of winter snow turns of course - Chanrossa

ABasin has an il rifugio too (base of Vizelle and Saulire tram)

short almost chute Under Vizelle

Hard to tell, but it's a softened sticky/grabby snow over by Col de la Loze. Got out of there as soon as we could.

No explanations needed I hope

Not a lot of snow in Meribel. What was there was slush and super slush with 'ponds' forming many afternoons, sometimes slush still in the AM every day too...

Most of Meribel is purpose built starting in the late 1930's, but this looked much older. A Scotsman bought up farmland/homes and started the ski area.

EMSC · 2025-03-20T02:10:28+0000

March 12, the combined super lucky AND shit-show day with a guide. It's worth a read.

I planned the guides on this trip Wed and Fri for 3 Valleys (trying to separate them in case of snow/weather impacted one or the other). My brother opted out leaving us with 3. We met our guide in Meribel and after a short beacon check and discussion of what we do in case of one we headed up and over the opposite direction and into Les Menuires via a ridiculously long run/cat track (miles long at least). Then came the shit show for a couple of hours. First our tele skier had 112mm wide boards that din't easily fit in the Pointe De La Masse gondola racks. some sort of juggle act involving both him and a liftie ensued whereby one of his skis went flying directly under the gondola cars. Definite way to impress a guide, lol. But then at the top he took us way OB to lookers right on the map to a run that may have been good a few days aerlier, but the warm Tuesday had skunked a lot of it. It was only roly-poly terrain anyway (the usual guide test piece I suspect, to learn how good your never seen before clients actually are). But lower down the snow just flat sucked with grabby sinking in, crusty, stuff. Eventually leading to a dodge the boulders fest in rapidly melting snow, linking a few just-barely-there sections together to barely make it to the Le Bettex lift.

That's when both the luck and the shit show both turned up to volume 11. Getting on the lift suddenly my left ski was being grabbed or held back, I could feel the ski flex like crazy and then suddenly popped off. Crazy, never done that in all my years. I can easily one ski so getting off was no problem and two chairs back they brought my ski up. My brain didn't quite understand what I was seeing. Both rear and front parts of the binding had 'released' upwards. Rear being easy to just reset, but I've never seen a toe piece point straight up into the air like that. I have Marker Touring bindings which are a bit different than normal alpine, but.... Several things quickly became clear: 1) 4 chairs behind us another person in my exact spot also lost a left ski - on a lift with very few riders (hmmm, common theme, maybe?), 2) I had been lucky as hell as I don't want to know what amount of force it took to rip my toe piece upwards like that (some light calf bruising, but not enough to even stop for the day), 3) my binding was broken, and likely somewhat rare to obtain. 4) Was I screwed skiing wise? Should I let the other two go ski with the guide?

I managed to get the binding to not point upward, but it was loose and moved up and down with tons of play. I managed to ski down into Les Menuires without issue keeping strong down pressure on the front of my boot but if leaned back at all the toe would come right out. Our guide was pretty flummoxed to say the least. He stopped and asked a 'local' instructor where we should try ski shop wise and skied to it. The shop was pretty befuddled about the damage but sent us over to the lift operations/ticket office (Silver Bell is the name of the operator in Les Menuires part of the valley at least). After way too long of a aback and forth (in French) and a long call to the 'big boss' I was told to go back to the same shop. Ridiculously, they removed my entire binding and replaced it with an identical one all paid for by the lift operator. Though I was warned to ski very carefully until the glue for the new binding dried. I was worried it would be a day, but nope dries in ~30 minutes per the shop. So lets have our picnic style lunch since it is already basically noon. Our guide repeatedly said he'd never seen anything like the whole episode. not the initial issue, not the lift op paying, not having a client get back onslope with a new binding, etc...

After some discussion about our preferred terrain (way steeper) and snow (way more wintery if possible) our guide got us out of that side, down and through the Meribel Mottaret area back to.... you guessed it Courchevel side where we had found the lift or so with winter snow and decent pitch. Although he took us to the tram and when we asked what chute we were going to do he said "All of them". Closed signs in Europe are not the same. We dodged the closed banner all afternoon for the chutes under and to the skiers left of the Saulire tram. I guess the closed sign is only closing the official Piste through there. For a guide going off-piste it is his choice to ignore (or something like that). With our ultimate run requiring a ~55degree short hike up and over a rock band to access. And shockingly no issues at all from my brand new left ski binding.

Unfortunately the beginning of the theme of every afternoon heavy cloud and fog (about 2pm) started with thank god our guide available to know every cross-crossing piste marker to get us down.

Photogenic part of our Chalet