Anybody been to Bardonecchia?

A snowHead

So, I've managed to make a late booking for half-term in Bardonecchia. We've never been there before, and other than TO infromation (from several sources) and the resorts rather limited website, I know very little about the place.

Are there any Snowheads who can offer any advice as to how to make the most of the trip - particularly any favourite runs/routes and recommedations for eating on the mountain? I'm hoping that there will be some English spoken, becuase my italian is virtually non-existant. (Good french and ok german, but thats not lilely to help much in Italy!)

Also, the lift pass includes a day in Montgenevre which is also new territory - any top tips for there equally welcome.

If it helps, we're two Inside-Out level 7 skiiers, who like to ski long days, have a drink or two early in the evening but aren't much bothered about "nightlife".

Awaiting loads of helpful replies, thanks in avance!

A snowHead

@skiinghamster, I've skied there twice, not recently, and several years apart. I do recall that - on both trips - the best snow and quieter pistes, were on the Jafferau side (very short bus ride from the main area of Campo Smith). I will hope, for your sake, that the ancient single-man chair lift from the bottom of Jafferua has been updated Shocked

- scary! Can't remember a great deal more about it really, but Montgenevre has some nice skiing and you can go over to Claviere from there too. The town is traditional, pretty quiet, no raucous apres (that we ever found, at any rate). Where are you staying?

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Thanks @Montana, we thought that the Jafferau side looked quite interesting. From looking at the piste map I think your scary chair is now a gondola. The town sounds quite "us" - really not into the whole Folie Douce thing, but do like to reward overselves with a beer (or two) at the end of the day. The pattern for our ski trips tends to be "up early, ski 'til the lifts stop, drink, shower, eat and collapse exhausted in to bed soon after" types.

Staying at the Betulla which is, I think, in the town rather than in the Campo Smith area. Mixed TripAdvisor reviews, but as long as the food is edible, the shower has hot water and we can get some sleep, thats all we're really after.

Oh, thought... What would you do wrt ski storage? Keep at the hotel or is there a "garage" somewhere?

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@skiinghamster, Hi, We had a week there last winter and really enjoyed. On a clear day it's well worth going to the high point at Vallon Cross. If you want to give your legs a blast you're pretty much ski all the way back to Campo Smith in one go. Les Arnauds was always very quiet (like private skiing at times) and great fun.

There are few long drag lifts about the resort but no problem if your fit. We had food several times in the place opposite the top of the first Smith lift.

The colomion is a drag that's a bit tough. However at the top is a lovely little bar with a fire for cold days, run by an English lady and her Italian husband, that I really enjoyed. They have a great big friendly dog as well!

If you're not confident be careful going on to piste 21 (Plana?). Whilst it's a blue, dropping to the right of the bar, should you go to the left of the bar it is nasty and will catch people out as it's not on the map as a black. Only a few hundred meters long, but I had to nurse a few down there who got caught out.

Generally we really enjoyed. Friendly locals, not busy and enjoyable skiing.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Went there last year - had a great time, though I think at least part of that was due to fantastic snow. We went at the tail end of January, and during the week the slopes were practically deserted (to the point that we were finding untouched powder on the pistes even in the afternoon). On the Saturday, though, it got very busy.

We found Jafferau was a bit exposed and all the snow had been blown off, so only spent one morning there. We spent most of our time skiing on the Melezet end of things, and generally stopped either at Chesal or at the bottom of the piste at Melezet for lunch, both of which were perfectly reasonable (though were rammed on the Saturday).

There's a nice little hut at the top of Colomion that does very good food, but it's a mile-long button lift to get there (though there's a nice long run all the way back down to Campo Smith). The hot chocolate was fantastic almost everywhere (with the exception of the place we stopped on Jafferau, just above the mid-station).

We went as a mixed-ability group (from roughly level 4 to 8 ), and there were slopes to challenge all of us, though I think that if the snow hadn't been so good then those of us at the top end of the group would have started getting a bit bored by the end of the week. Most of us ended up taking a short day on the Saturday because it was so much busier and we'd had such a good time the rest of the week!

We kept our kit in a storage room at Campo Smith, which worked for us as we spent most of our time over there. On the one day we went to Jafferau, we took our gear back to the hotel overnight - the buses were frequent enough that this was no great hardship.

None of us spoke much Italian, but you can get a long way with Grazie and Prego! wink

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@skiinghamster, A few years since we were there.

+1 for the Jafferau area. Not the greatest conditions when we went...... Lot of ice/not much fresh snow. Def worth an awayday in Montgenvre.

I have no idea if it's still there but we found a great wine bar which was in vaults up near the main church.

Skis...... IIRC we used to leave them at a hire shop up near the Campo Smith base area. Hope this helps

@Circusthing, I vaguely a piste that was used for slalom training which sounds like the hill you've described. Cool

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

I loved the Bardonecchia ski area.

Favourite run was the Ollimpica 23, a good long run from top back down to Melezet area.

Favourite place for lunch was the restaurant at Chesal.

There area a number of rental places at Campo Smith where lockers can be rented. Your hotel is on the main road about a 10/15 minute walk but the bus stop is outside and runs frequently.

Opposite the rental places is a bar called Cipo's which is great for an acres ski drink, there's a happy hour but can't remember the times. As it's a the foot of the main run you get to watch everyone finishing their last run of the day.

Emjoy Very Happy

After all it is free

Going there 2nd week March, so hopefully there will still be some snow! The website shows the lifts heights and lengths, a couple of drag lifts are listed as 1381 & 1672 long. If that's metres, then we're talking a mile (1500m)?

Went the week before the clocks go forward in March(17-24th iirc) 2007 - The whole Campo Smith mountain was closed bar one blue and a nursery slope - people were sunbathing as we arrived! Jafferau was open from the mid station up and was generally pretty good. Did the ski out day at Claviere/Montgenevre and it was amazing the difference.

No nightlife to speak of at all - a couple of nice restaurants but very little else. There was one pub adjacent to campo smith which did British beers and a pub quiz but again was pretty quiet. As a first ski holiday without supervision aged 18 it was a little disappointing, still we had a good time! The whole holiday was made worse as on the saturday we left it began to snow - by the time the snow report updated the next day over a metre had fallen Sad

still gutted about it now! haha

ps. I fell off the really long drag lift on Jafferau - I was stuck in the middle of nowhere until I found my way to the piste NehNeh

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We went last year for our first ski holiday and we loved it so much we are going back next weekend! We did have amazing snow and weather last year which may have helped?
The town/village is beautiful and very quiet. There are bars and restaurants but we didn't visit the town at night so can't help there. Campo Smith is the ski centre, very busy weekends with Italians coming from the cities but it has a nice buzz. Plenty of small buses to get you around including up to Jaffrau which was amazing and worth spending at least one day there. There are excellent facilities for eating etc on the mountain
Campo Smith is at the bottom of the main runs, it has ski shops etc with lockers and some hotels. \The bar there is very reasonable, it's literally at the end of the run, you ski to the door. Happy hour was 4pm, we found ourselves there at 4pm most days as that was great fun after a hard day! The locals were very welcoming and helpful. I am so surprised it's not spoken about more than it is, it's a lovely place. Can't wait!

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

Thanks all for the information. Sounds like we've made a good choice, and should have a great time. There's lots more snow in the forecast too.

And, @dantarian, welcome to Snowheads!

snow reports

Hi @skiinghamster, hope you all had a great time, I'm off to Bardonecchia the week after next and wondered how it went for you? I'm staying at Campo Smith but friends are staying at Hotel Betulla, how was it?

I've read that the local pass also covers 1 day in Montgenevre and 1 day in Via Lattea. Did you try that?

Had a great trip thanks @Jeraff. The pass does cover at least Montgenevre, although you need to actually collect a pass when you get to Montgenevere. We did an away-day with the TO (25 euro/head for coach transfer) and the pass we were given had a face value of 0.00. It wasn't valid for the whole via lattea though - only the montgenevre sector.

I'll try to post a full TR when time allows (hopefully before you go!).

You know it makes sense.

Ok, trip report as promised, although it is a bit longer than I'd planned - sorry!

Thanks again to all those who contributed above – we had a great time and I have put an attempt at a trip report below. (If there’s anything else you want to know, please ask – I’ve probably missed out loads, it’s the first one I’ve written).

Bardonecchia TR(Half term 2015)

Travellers: 2 skiers (Inside Out level 7 and 7-8 ), mid 30s and mid 40s, took own boots, rented skis
Booked via TO

Flights to TRN, modern efficient airport on arrivals side, limited catering on return journey with very long queues, not helped IMO by the Italian “queue twice” system. (This caught us out a few times – basically almost everywhere you have to order at a little cash desk, get a slip and them queue again to hand it in/get your order. Even had to do this for beer in one place!) On return flights passport control is immediately before the gate rather than with security.

Accommodation: Hotel la Bettula. Almost all guests were from UK TOs, as you’d expect for half term quite a lot of children, but not noisy or crowded.
Location: The ski bus to Campo Smith stops immediately outside (the return drops off about 100 yds away), and is free. It runs every 20 minutes from about 08:20 to 16:40. We left our skis in a depot at Campo Smith and walked carrying our boots most days. It’s a little over 1km and took about 15-20 minutes, depending on how many school groups we had to share the pavement with.
Ski room: Pretty horrid. A room just off the garage, unheated. Some shelves for boots and pegs around the wall to prop skis against. Several rickety/broken chairs. We kept our skis (hired) at Campo Smith except the night before we went to Montgenevre and took our boots up to the bathroom in our room.
Rooms: quite small compared to what we’re used to, but adequate with spacious en-suite with shower. Tiled floor throughout. Balcony and French windows with shutters in our room (2nd floor). Top floor apparently no balcony. Large wardrobe with hangers, not much useful shelf space. TV in room with loads of choice including Eurosport. No local “ski channel” or English language news though (I watched French TV on the rare occasion we turned it on)
Food/Drink: Booked on an “all inclusive” basis – never seen this on a ski trip before. Breakfast 07:30-09:00 Continental buffet with piles of crusty bread, croissants and pastry, cake, yoghurt, ham, cheese, boiled eggs etc.
Lunch – some people came back for lunch, we didn’t. We took the packed lunch that the hotel offered with us onto the mountain. Request at dinner the night before – large filled roll (some days 2), biscuit, fruit, water.
Dinner – salad/antipasto buffet, primi (usually choice of risotto/pasta/soup) and secondi (2 meats and a fish but v few carbs and veg included) chosen at breakfast that morning, with choice of pudding. There’s always ice cream available if you’re not keen on the puddings, but you have to ask.
They seemed well set up for special diets, there were several vegetarians (who must have had a special dish prepared for them) and coeliacs.
Drinks – in the all inclusive, drinks were included from 17:00-22:00. All soft drinks, hot drinks, wine (including Prosecco), beer, gin, vodka, whiskey, local aperitivos etc. Branded stuff was paid for. Seemed to work well.

The town: errr… Can’t comment, we didn’t venture in to town. Embarassed

The Skiing: We didn’t really ski Jafferau so can’t comment on the skiing there. We were going to go over on the last day, but it was snowing hard and the visibility was awful so didn’t. Those that did ski it said it was good, with good views when visibility allowed.
We did do the TO’s “away-day “to Montgenevre which we enjoyed hugely and are likely to use the Via Lattea again on another trip (never skied France before!).
We were up the mountain early and skied until about 3:30, clocking up 30-40km/day.

Some of the infrastructure is ageing. The chairs are old and slow and there aren’t many of them. The one from the bottom of Melezet has a strange “middle station” on it where you can get taken by surprise – no-one expect boarders wanting to go to the park seems to get off there but I saw a few people lose poles by not lifting them there.
The queues at the Smith 4 lift can be nasty especially just after ski-school drop off (10am) as are the queues at the Melezet-Chesal lift from about 11am (although this was a half term trip). The latter was particularly horrid at the weekend when there were several local youth ski-races going on. This is the only uplift to this sector.
If you want to ski the Chesal sector and are going over later in the day I suggest the following (this was only possible on our last day, but made life much easier…)
Find your way to the Clos drag lift in the Les Arnauds sector. At the top there is a “roadway” heading off to the right signposted “Melezet”. Follow this (its pretty flat) and it will spit you out about 1/3 of the way down the top section of the “Olympica” run.

Our favourite runs were mostly around Chesal – the top bit of #23 Olympica, #26 Seba (well worth the long drag), # 27 Vallon Cros (when open – closed in wind or poor visibility.) and #25Guilia Rosa. We also enjoyed Fisi 50 (never saw the supposedly amazing views due to low cloud) and #4 Rocette (marked as black – no idea why. The first time he skied it Mr Skiinghamster said he thought it was blue!! Puzzled

). The winter animals off the side of #1 Sole are worth a visit. (This piste is on the map as red but the piste markers are blue).
Some pistes on the map were either semi-permanently shut for race training (#1 Smith was shut all week as were #25 Mezzodi and #5 Dahu) or had a section of them roped off down the side. Others were closed for bad snow (#3 rapillon to where #4 rejoins it and #22 fortini. #’s 6 and 20 didn’t seem to exist at all!

The restaurants and bars on the mountain are few and far between. We didn’t eat on the mountain because we had out packed lunch but did stop for coffee and toilet breaks. The loos are not great at many of them. There is often just one loo in a bar. The ones at Chesal are good – several for each sex but there’s often a queue. The bar immediately right and downhill of the top of the Smith chair has a “Turkish” style loo. OK for the boys but…
The TO’s seem to like “Cipo’s” for their après get-togethers. This is not what its actually called which confused us on the first day. However, it’s the bar in front of you and skier’s right as you come down the blue home-run back to campo smith. Its OK. A good place to meet people, but the beer is E5/pint (price-list says 4.50!) and the chairs were either occupied, had a local’s feet up on them (no, they couldn’t move) or broken. We didn’t find it very welcoming or to have much of an atmosphere.

Verdict: We booked because I had last minute leave and it was the only place that we could get to that week for a sensible price. We would go again, but probably in similar circumstances, rather than in a season when we’d only get one trip in.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

@skiinghamster, an excellent report. I don't know the resort at all but drive down the road to the south and see the signs.....

You paint a lukewarm sort of picture. The bars/restaurant/loos situation is in stark contrast to the Dolomites where they are spiffing.

I wonder whether the crowds you encountered were unusual?

A snowHead

I suspect it was a lot busier than on a "normal" week due to the British half term (a lot of UK school groups), Parisian holidays (big groups) and the Itailian carnival holidays (lots of junior racers) all co-inciding.
The skiing itself is excellent, and they're very proud that they had some of the Olympics events in 2006, but I'm not sure they're spent any money on the lift system etc since...
Lack of loos was certainly a shock compared to our usual Austrian haunts.

A snowHead

@skiinghamster, Great detail, thanks for that.

Did your away day at Montgenevre cost you any extra? Our TO is Neilson and I don't know if they do that or charge for it. Any idea on how easy it might be to get there if not through the TO away day?

(I wonder if I can persuade my friends staying in Betulla to sneak us free lunch from the hotel in exchange for letting them store skis in our Campo Smith apartment).

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

@Jeraff, we were also with Neilson. The Mongenevre day (Friday) cost E25/ head which was stated as being for transport (they hired a coach). We left Bardonecchia about 8:20 and left MG at 16:00.
I didn't strike me as a difficult drive, a little over an hour and a quarter each way, but I have no idea whether its do-able by public transport. The rep (Matt) is actually very useful and clued up - he'd probably be able to advise once you're there.

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@skiinghamster, Thanks again.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Back from a mostly glorious sunny week with good snow coverage. Last day was cloudy with light snow all day, visibility on upper slopes was down to 20 yards or so.
Not as comprehensive as @skiinghamster's report and a slight difference of opinion on the Seba lift/run, just a summary, based on intermediates who only tend to ski reds & blues

Jafferau area:
We didn’t ski below the gondola, friends in our group who have been twice before said parts of the run can be narrow, slushy or patchy which obviously I can’t confirm.
Upper slopes were great, open and wide going into tree runs. Was so disappointed when we went back on the last day and the visibility was so poor due to thick cloud.

Campo Smith / Les Arnauds / Melezet:

The mile long Colomion drag lift isn’t as bad it sounds. It’s only a bit steepish towards the end and is fairly quick, seemed about 5 mins or less. Good runs back make it worth it.
Apart from the lower part of the final home run back to Campo Smith, which like most home runs gets a bit busy and churned towards the end of the day, I enjoyed all the runs we did. I didn’t think there was really a great difference between the Reds and Blues. They’re all fairly comfortable for intermediates to get down and for more advanced skiers you can get some good speed for long runs as there weren't many people around. I saw some great skiers really going for it without endangering anyone.
The drag lift at Seba is not good. Shorter but steeper than Colomion and seemed to take longer, with deep uneven tracks. The run down from there was fine but not worth doing the drag again. Our friends said that the Bosco drag further over was worse, so we didn’t try it.

Overall I enjoyed it a lot without being wowed but one couple in our group has been 3 times now and would happily go again. I think they mostly enjoyed the price of Prosecco, 2 or 3 euros a glass. Short transfer from Turin is also a bonus, about 1 hour 15 mins, with no steep hairpin bends around ravines, if you are of nervous disposition about that.

Accomodation:
My OH and I stayed in Campo Smith SC apartments.
We paid a supplement to have a 1 bedroom apartment as opposed to a studio and it was great. Very spacious split in 3 levels:
Entrance hall with space for skis and boots and a large wardrobe for clothing.
Middle floor had the kitchenette/dining area with 4 hot plates, decent amount of utensils, microwave, fridge/freezer, large sofa bed, extendable table, chairs and TV. Balcony with view over the complex centre and slopes in the background. Other apartments will have different views due to the design and shape of the complex. Only small issue was that the coffee maker and microwave had to be plugged into the same socket as the TV and the leads were not long enough to reach the height of the table so had to be used on a chair or the floor.
Upper floor had the bathroom and double bedroom. Both spacious with lots of storage. Shower cubicle was smallish but good temp/flow control.
Bear in mind that we were just 2 people in an apartment for 4 but I think it would be fine for a family or even 4 adults that get along wink

.
Main issue for SC is that there is no shop in the complex, you have to go into town. Not too bad in the morning or during the day with the free bus service but after that stops (17.30 ish) it’s a trudge if carrying shopping. Many shops including the supermarket close 12:30 – 15:30. My OH, a non-skier, liked the town in general, fair number of shops to browse around when they're open, including chocolate shop, toy shop, antique shop. And plenty of places to eat out. We only ate out once as OH likes SC. That was at the pizza restaurant at in Campo Smith complex. We wanted to eat at Cipos at the bottom of the slope as the menu looked good but it doesn't open late.

Campo Smith chair lift is next to the complex.
The free bus stop for Jafferau, Les Arnaud and Melezet is about the same distance as the chair lift. It seems that some of the buses don’t go all the way from Jafferau to Les Arnauds / Melezet, some turn around at Campo Smith and go back to Jafferau, so the service is less frequent to/from Melezet. We ended a few days at Melezet and got the bus back, didn't have to wait too long, maybe 15 mins or so at the most.

Our friends – 3 couples – stayed in all inclusive La Betulla hotel. It seems really good value. Drinks after 5 pm are included and they give you a packed lunch to take on the slopes if you want. The free bus to Jafferau/Campo Smith/ Melezet areas stops right outside. Food sounded fine and lots of it, none of our friends moaned about it. Certainly good enough for one couple to happily return.

Help!!

Anybody been to Bardonecchia?

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