On our last day at Val d'Isere Liz, James and I started out early on Solaise and cruised smooth groomers from the Madeleine and Glacier lifts before the crowds arrived. Cugnai is the highest lift in that sector and here's the view off the back of it:
That's some enticing off piste, which drains into the valley leading to Manchet.
A long list of forbidden activities:
A zoomed view shows the route of our backside Tour de Charvet run Sunday.
Purple line is the traverse in from the back of the Grand Pre chair. The circled red area is what would have been smooth corn if we had been there a couple of hours later. The black is the nearly all shaded and solidly frozen exit trail leading to Manchet.
We rode the Lessieres chair over the ridge to the Fornet sector.
The lift has a steep descent ~450 vertical feet on both sides.
We rode the Pyramides chair to the Signal poma as I wanted to show James the view of the vast Grands Vallons off piste even if we weren't going to ski it. But that did not go as planned. The piste next to the Signal poma had not been freshly groomed so James declined to go up there as his yet undiagnosed hip pain had been aggravated by a fall on that frozen Charvet exit trail Sunday. Liz did go with me and we had this view down.
Just before I took the pic we saw two skiers cruise down a broad line of smooth chalk. I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was not so much sastrugi to interfere with good skiing here. I told Liz I was definitely skiing that. Here's the profile view across the top of Grands Vallons.
On the big powder day with guides in 2018 we had traversed across that slope into the next drainage Vallonets, from which you must ski to the valley floor. I had skied Grands Vallons in 2018 by myself but to a catwalk groomer below the Vallons gondola which we needed to reach this time. Liz said she would do it guided by a local pro but not by yours truly.
The smooth chalk continued for 1,800 vertical. View from about halfway down that:
I kept my eye out for traverse tracks skiers left.
The town is coming into view here, but there is quite a bit farther to go on the traverse before the gondola is visible and you know you are high enough to make it.
Nonetheless the overall amount of traversing was similar to that on the two Saturday guided runs in Pays Desert. It is unfortunate James and Liz missed out on Grands Vallons, well within their comfort zone on similar snow to Saturday. It would have been a great choice for the guided skiing on Sunday.
Liz skied down next to the Signal poma and then made a questionable call to ski these SW facing moguls.
They were still bulletproof at 11am. Weird color is from gondola window.
We had lunch at Cascades at the base of Pisaillis, which was very busy with lots of people seeking the highest elevation pistes. We headed back via Lessieres. I skied down Solaise but recommended James ride the gondola down to avoid the likely scraped snow near the base. View from Solaise piste up the valley to Manchet and beyond:
View in same general direction from the Olympique gondola:
We rode Olympique so James could ski some pistes to and from Grand Pre and on Marmottes that he had not done before.
Grand Pre chair:
The restautant at the base is l'Empreinte Avoline, where we had the Sunday gourmet lunch. The snake-like line crossing under the lift is a skiercross course. After James downloded Olympique I intended to ski that. But ridng the lift I noticed that the shaded chalk looker's left of the skierctoss had good snow so I did that instead.
I'm still in the shaded off piste looking down here.
For my last run at Val d'Isere I skied past the Merles lift into the canyon run Santons. This was smooth corn when Liz and I skied it in 2018 but I knew it wouldn't be this time. It was well scraped but the traffic had built moguls close enough together that it was not difficult using them as islands to make turns. It's still a quite long run so I'm sure James was glad he passed on it.
I skied 18,800 vertical today and 76,100 for the 4 days combined in Val d'Isere/Tignes.
Every evening at 7pm we had a view from our room of the laser show on the opposing mountain face.
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) but the rest of it was a clear view.