Friday 2 January 2009
Saturday 27 December 2008
2008 Skiing Holiday - Les Menuires, 3 Valleys, France
2008 saw my family's first skiing holiday in France, the resort that we had chosen was Les Menuires in the Three Valleys (Le Tois Vallees). This had been booked after the previous years skiing holiday to Kranska Gora in Slovenia (Please see my other blog at - http://kranskagoraski.blogspot.com/) had been a great success and the "skiing bug" had gripped us all. My wife, my two daughters aged 11 and 12 and myself had decided to join my brother-in-law and his family in renting a mountain chalet in the village Montagnettes, which has a great location for virtually ski-in ski-out access to the main piste running down to La Croisette.
We all bought 3-valley passes as they enable you to have access to 600km (375 miles) of pisted runs and are well worth every cent. Staying at the village Montagnettes gave us access to a small ski-hire shop where instead of the usual large queue for boot/ski-fitting etc. We were fully kitted-out and on the piste within 20 minutes,which for a group of 10 is super fast. I took the wife and kids to the nearest access-point for the main piste and readied myself for a shaky first run down to La Croisette (the ski-school meeting point). Looking down the slope I noticed that it was really quite steep especially nearer the bottom and immediately I heard grumblings from the wife and kids. It was 12 months since our first skiing holiday to Slovenia (Please see my other blog at - http://kranskagoraski.blogspot.com/) and we were all out of practice and had little or no confidence in our ability negotiate our way down. After some discussion it was decided that the wife and kids would walk down to the meeting point, even though it would take 20-30 Min's and make them late for lessons. Myself and others from the group would ski down with their skis and poles to save them carrying them. So with everybody moving off down the slope I turned my skis downhill and started to descent. I quickly started to pick up speed and was soon travelling quite fast but I knew that turning in towards the hill would slow me down and so shifted all of my weight to my right ski and started to traverse the slope, thus controlling my speed. My heart was pounding, I had been out of control for a moment there and now I had to turn back the other way. Here goes, I shifted the weight to my left ski and was now aiming directly down hill and picking up speed rapidly. Crash, I hit the floor. As I had started to pick up speed I lost confidence in my ability and had decided to bail-out. It went on like this for a couple more turns then towards the bottom of the slope I had remembered how to turn and had managed to regain some confidence. When I finally got to the bottom I found that the wife and kids had found their ski groups and got signed up, so off they went.
I was now in the hands of my wife's brother (Phil), his wife (Claire) and their two daughters (Sally and Megan). Phil is a Warrant Officer in the Royal Navy and had been out in the 3 vallees just a couple of weeks prior to our trip, so he'd been busy preparing some routes for us that would bring us back to meet the others around lunch time. As we made our assent via the Roc des 3 Marches gondola myself and Claire expressed reservations about Phil's plans and persuaded him that we should stick to blue and g
reen runs for the first couple of days. At the top of the lift we skied an almost flat green for about 0.5k and got on the chairlift Roc des 3 Marches 2. At the top we could see down into the next valley towards Meribel-Mottaret, back across our valley beyond Les Menuires and Reberty and even down towards St Martin de Belleville. We took the blue run of grande lac down to its intersection with gros tougne then joined the green run of la violette, which lead us back to La Croisette. This had taken about 75 minutes to complete and was a nice easy run to begin with. So off we went again to continue practicing on blues and greens until we met up with the others at lunch-time. We continued to explore and each day we would go further afield and take on more and more difficult runs, I could continue to describe each day like this but this was meant to be just an introduction and I think that I may have over-egged the pudding. The intention of this site is that myself and others can post good routes around the pistes, eating out tips, accommodation ratings and share experiences and ideas to make our trips to the area as good as can be. Please feel free to add posts to this blog as I will be adding more posts soon, thank you.
We all bought 3-valley passes as they enable you to have access to 600km (375 miles) of pisted runs and are well worth every cent. Staying at the village Montagnettes gave us access to a small ski-hire shop where instead of the usual large queue for boot/ski-fitting etc. We were fully kitted-out and on the piste within 20 minutes,which for a group of 10 is super fast. I took the wife and kids to the nearest access-point for the main piste and readied myself for a shaky first run down to La Croisette (the ski-school meeting point). Looking down the slope I noticed that it was really quite steep especially nearer the bottom and immediately I heard grumblings from the wife and kids. It was 12 months since our first skiing holiday to Slovenia (Please see my other blog at - http://kranskagoraski.blogspot.com/) and we were all out of practice and had little or no confidence in our ability negotiate our way down. After some discussion it was decided that the wife and kids would walk down to the meeting point, even though it would take 20-30 Min's and make them late for lessons. Myself and others from the group would ski down with their skis and poles to save them carrying them. So with everybody moving off down the slope I turned my skis downhill and started to descent. I quickly started to pick up speed and was soon travelling quite fast but I knew that turning in towards the hill would slow me down and so shifted all of my weight to my right ski and started to traverse the slope, thus controlling my speed. My heart was pounding, I had been out of control for a moment there and now I had to turn back the other way. Here goes, I shifted the weight to my left ski and was now aiming directly down hill and picking up speed rapidly. Crash, I hit the floor. As I had started to pick up speed I lost confidence in my ability and had decided to bail-out. It went on like this for a couple more turns then towards the bottom of the slope I had remembered how to turn and had managed to regain some confidence. When I finally got to the bottom I found that the wife and kids had found their ski groups and got signed up, so off they went.
I was now in the hands of my wife's brother (Phil), his wife (Claire) and their two daughters (Sally and Megan). Phil is a Warrant Officer in the Royal Navy and had been out in the 3 vallees just a couple of weeks prior to our trip, so he'd been busy preparing some routes for us that would bring us back to meet the others around lunch time. As we made our assent via the Roc des 3 Marches gondola myself and Claire expressed reservations about Phil's plans and persuaded him that we should stick to blue and g
reen runs for the first couple of days. At the top of the lift we skied an almost flat green for about 0.5k and got on the chairlift Roc des 3 Marches 2. At the top we could see down into the next valley towards Meribel-Mottaret, back across our valley beyond Les Menuires and Reberty and even down towards St Martin de Belleville. We took the blue run of grande lac down to its intersection with gros tougne then joined the green run of la violette, which lead us back to La Croisette. This had taken about 75 minutes to complete and was a nice easy run to begin with. So off we went again to continue practicing on blues and greens until we met up with the others at lunch-time. We continued to explore and each day we would go further afield and take on more and more difficult runs, I could continue to describe each day like this but this was meant to be just an introduction and I think that I may have over-egged the pudding. The intention of this site is that myself and others can post good routes around the pistes, eating out tips, accommodation ratings and share experiences and ideas to make our trips to the area as good as can be. Please feel free to add posts to this blog as I will be adding more posts soon, thank you.
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