Long treks in the forest

What an exhausting two days it has been.  Both days have been sunny and cold, though today started off a little grey.  Yesterday Gordon, John and I did a run through the trees which brought us out near the Fingers Restaurant.  It was about a 10-15 minute walk out, carrying skis.  Then we went up Christomet and walked up the knoll, probably about 15-20 minutes this time, and skied down to La Giettaz.  However, the path along the stream was slightly different, so there was more poling along it than usual.  The ski down was in perfect snow.

John on the way to Cordon

After that we thought we would ski to the bus at Praz Sur Arly, but as we were on the ridge, Gordon pointed out where he had reconnoitred in the summer, walking up from the village of La Giettas, about three miles from the ski area.  So we decided to give that a go.  However, we got a little lost in the forest so ended up walking along a track for a considerable distance, which was very hard work in the deep snow.  We also had to take our skis off about three times to cross streams.  Eventually we got down and caught the ski bus to the ski area and came home.

Gordon - the perils of tree skiing

Today was more skiing than walking, thank goodness.   We stayed on the Jaillet side and had three lovely runs down, twice to around Cordon where Carol picked us up, and the last time down to  Gordon and Carol's chalet.  We were skiing untracked perfect powder, with no-one in sight.

In the afternoon we parked our car at Magland and caught the bus back to Jaillet.  We then skied back to the car, through the trees and the meadows.   The snow was not as nice as this morning as the slopes are south facing, but we found some reasonable snow.  So in spite of it being the first week of the French holidays we managed to avoid the crowds.  When we did get on the pistes we were pleasantly surprised how uncrowded they were.