The best week of the season so far in La Plagne

The resort has been transformed all in one weekend, gone are the patches of mud and grass, gone are the green trees and high snow line, gone the icy runs and bare mountain faces. In their place we have fresh deep snow, white and fluffy as far as the eye can see and our resort once more looks like the winter wonderland it should be. The entire resort has been an epic powder playground all weekend and I was lucky enough to make the most of it.

I did what I told you all to do, cancelled all plans for Friday and was up snow suited and booted by 9am, trudging through the white out and thickly falling snow to take my place in the lift queue. This was where I got a hint of how much snow had fallen, the fresh snow lay knee deep through Plagne Centre and just walking to the lifts was an exercise in powder hiking. I struggled on however and made it to the Colorado chair in time to discover a black cloud lurking over my powder day, the lifts weren’t open! The Becoin wasn’t running, the Colorado was being energetically dug out from under a mountain of snow but it wasn’t running, and the Grande Rochette, although moving slowly, was not allowing people aboard.

My riding buddies and I stood indecisively in the middle, which lift to place our bets on? Which one would be the first to open? What if we trek all the way back to the Becoin and it’s the Grande Rocette that opens instead? What to do?! Luckily the nice liftie at the Colorado came to our rescue with inside info - the Bergerie would be the first to open in 10-15 minutes the rest wouldn’t be open for quite some time. Brilliant, off we rode to the Bergerie to join the masses of people whom the liftie grapevine had reached. We stood together in the snow until gone 9.30 when the lift gates finally opened causing a massive cheer and a surge to be the first ones up there.

From then on my day and the rest of my weekend was a blur of fresh lines down beautiful pistes covered in a foot of fresh powder. Every run I hit was stunning and I was constantly torn between racing back up the lift to do the same run again or moving on to somewhere new. Happily there was no bad option and we burnt around the mountain hitting as many runs as possible and constantly watching for new areas and chairlifts opening up. We rode mainly the Colorado, Collossess, Arpette and Bergerie on Friday since the snow fall, high winds and dodgy visibility kept a lot of the other lifts closed.

Saturday was a new day however and with better vis and more time to prepare more of the lifts opened and I made it up the Becoin and all the way over to Montalbert to play amongst the powder coated trees. Fresh snow lay thick on the ground all the way down to the village and it was the nicest those runs have been this season so far.

Sunday morning saw me playing off the back of the Arpette chairlift where again the pistes were well powder coated and not many people had been down there to carve it all up. There I was cruising happily through a streak of powder, loving life when all of a sudden I nosedived directly into a rock, performed a perfect mid-air cartwheel, tumbled several feet and emerged with snow in my pants and a binding snapped clean through the base plate. Let this be a warning to you all, I ignored my own warnings and was playing in the powder just slightly off piste and I did not see that rock coming even a little bit. Please be careful out there, the snow is awesome indeed but it is covering a multitude of sins beneath and you don’t want to nail your equipment or your selves in the first big snowfall of the season!

Also it’s worth mentioning that it is truly Baltic out there this week, temperatures have reached -28 degrees at the glacier and even at Centre level they’re hanging around the -20 mark. Wrap up warm, it’s all about extra layers, thick socks and carrying spare buffs and gloves so that you can switch them out when they get wet, and of course stopping for plenty of hot chocolate breaks. Also remember what I told you about the Champagny side of the mountain, skiing on the south facing slopes can gain you up to 5 degrees in warmth when the weathers this cold.

Other than that get out there and make the most of the sunshine, the bluebird days are back again all week until we get another snow hit on Sunday!