 Poster: A snowHead
|
Just back from a fantastic week in Les Saisies and wanted to thank all the s]Snowheads who had given me suggestions for our trip over the past few months. We chose Les Saisies based on its altitude (1600 m), frenchness (husband is French), and relatively easy skiing (2 beginner kids aged 6 and 8, myself with 4 days skiing, and my husband keen but rusty), and we had been to Les Saisies on a day trip 5 years ago so knew what we were getting in to. We were hugely lucky with snow, with over a metre the week before we arrived and at least that if not more (cars totally disappeared into drifts) whilst we were there, and we had 1.5 days of sunny weather which was really spectacular. Best of all we mostly had the slopes to ourselves – extremely quiet, no lift queues. Some comments which may help other newbie families of skiers.
Gear: kids and I were in borrowed Aldi ski gear, with thermals and a fleece underneath. We were always warm, and on the really wet rainy day we were dry whereas my husband in his fancy new gear wasn’t. I’d made fleece neck gaiters for the boys and myself which were absolutely essential (for a total cost of 3 euros). We had 2 pairs of gloves/mittens for the kids, which we swapped at lunch time to keep them warm (and glove liners underneath). We ended up doing a lot of carrying of skis and destroyed our cheap gloves (which were not warm or waterproof proof enough), ended up having to buy new gloves at mountain prices. I certainly recommend that if you are skiing with small kids, have 2 pairs – a cheap pair for lugging gear, prepping kids, extracting them from snow drifts on the way to the piste, which are replaced with a decent pair for skiing only (with the rubbish pair in your pocket for immediate replacement before kid wrangling starts again). Good gloves, and good socks are in my view the key to beginner ski happiness – the rest can be dealt with by layering. Both kids got blisters (probably cheap sock related), and we were amazed how well the Compeed blister plasters dealt with both blister and whinging.
Ski passes: we held off buying passes until the week before we went, and were delighted to get an e-mail from the Les Saisies tourism office giving us an extremely good discount on Espace Diamant passes (considerably cheaper than the Les Saisies alone). Not sure why we got this – maybe because we were from Oz, or maybe because visitor numbers were so low…. We bought passes for the 2 adults and 8 year old, but put the 6 year old on a points pass (points are around a euro each. Hard to find how many points per lift – we couldn’t find it online but it is on the piste map (some prices: TSD Bisanne 8, TDD Chard de Beurre 7, TS Brichou 4, TS Carrets 5, TK Foret 2, Tapis Chardon and Boetet 1 each). In retrospect we should have bought him an ED pass at the super special price as we were staying near Carrets so rapidly got through the points. In general ESF take the Oursons out on the slopes from Wed (from 4 yrs and above), so we needed at least a 3 day Les Saisies pass to cover that, and we ran out of points early Tues afternoon, so ended up with a 4 day Les Saisies, which was more than the week ED pass on offer. My husband got out of the Les Saisies domain on one day, but as we were skiing from Belambra, and he had to be back for the end of ski school, he didn’t have enough time to really use the ED pass. Starting from the village would have given him another 20-30 min to escape. We skied with the kids every afternoon, but didn’t get anywhere near the non-Les Saisies slopes. For most of the week the inter-domain links were not open – rain as we arrived had closed the lower ski resorts, and the kids didn’t have the batteries to get to the non-ED slopes in the available post ski-school time. We tried having lunch in town, but the 6 year old in particular really needed a couple of hours out. The newish Bellasta lift according to my husband had some of the best skiing, still in the Les Saisies). I really enjoyed the blues coming down from Mount Bisanne.
Accommodation: we stayed in a small chalet in the forest area, which was absolutely gorgeous when we found it. The map provided by the Grand Mont accommodation agency was completely wrong with the chalet cross-referenced in the wrong grid square, and a hand drawn routing directing us to the ESF hut. We were given a name and a number for the chalet, neither of which corresponded to any chalet in the area. After a 10 h drive, with 2 tired kids, heavy snow fall, spending 2 hrs looking for a chalet was non-ideal. In retrospect we should have printed the map from the web (we had bought Les Saisies internet, but it didn’t work, and being Aussies didn’t have data -roaming), but we assumed that the accommodation agency would know where their chalets were. We did eventually find out from the accomm agency that the chalet had green windows, and the first green windowed chalet that I tried (the only one with it’s path dug out – a handy hint once you know) fitted our key…. We were around a 10 min walk up hill in ski boots to the slope/ESF. Better skiers than us were able to get down to the piste through the powder in front of our chalet (around 200 m to the piste). Lugging skis up and down twice a day did all sorts of bad things to my shins, and eventually we managed to extract our car from its private snow drift, and use it as a ski locker about 150 m from the piste.
Car: we hired a car online and supposedly had snow chains for pick up at Charles de Gaulle airport. Whatever the online booking says it is not possible to hire chains from CdG. We ended up being given an upgrade to a daft car (BMW 4 series) fine in northern France visiting family, but rear wheel drive without winter tyres is beyond terrifying in snow. We did get chains for the beast but we got forced into heavy snow to get rounds others without chains, and managed to break them. We were not alone, little huddles of misery lined the roads fixing chains with frozen hands. Ducrey sports have chain fixing supplies, and generously lent us a chain cutter. If we combine a family visit with skiing again, we’d change car rentals close to the Alps to get decent tires, and never again take a rear wheel drive to the snow. I would also take chain repair clips just in case, as my husband has yet to own up to exactly how expensive they were. Very few people were driving, the Navette bus was always full, and all day people were walking up and down the pedestrian route from the forest area to Les Saisies village.
Ski school: the kids and I both had 6 mornings of lessons. Lessons were in French with occasional English (which was fine for us as we understand a reasonable amount, but some of the non-french speakers were a bit baffled). By day 2 our 8 year old was stopping, linking snow plough turns and getting down runs without falling over. The 6 year old was less interested in learning to stop, or turn, preferring to crash into powder, but after 4 days was in control, turning and going down green and blue runs. We spent a lot of time watching youtube ski lesson videos (Elate media worked for us). This really helped because the lessons are divided into little steps, so once they had mastered one they knew what was coming next, even if they didn’t fully understand the instructor. Also little things like how to get on a chair lift, how to get up were helpful. My husband has no concept of not being able to ski, and he found the clips very useful so he could break down the learning process. I also had the kids walking round the garden with planks on their feet, so they had “got” the feeling of how long skis were – we didn’t have any crossing over, and they were straight into duck walking up the slopes.
Les Saisies was perfect for us – a lovely village, all traditional style, wonderful snow, staffed mostly by locals who were keen to help (and share bootleg genepi), amazing bread, and not a single queue for a lift – most of the time once out of sight of the village we didn’t see anyone else on the pistes. We were hugely sad to leave.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
|
@Kenyafrog, nice to read your enthusiastic report. I have an apartment in the area and know it well. Let me know if you come back and I could help with finding accommodation with less hard work attached!
Well done coping with rear wheel drive and summer tyres. You are obviously resourceful!
It's fantastic now, wall to wall sun and still not a sniff of a lift queue. 
|
|
|
|
|
|
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
|
@Kenyafrog, nice report!
I have less than fond memories of Les Saises having cycled through it in late May 2013 in a downpour, though the downpour had at least washed away the snow from earlier in the week. In Les Saises, my Good Lady reported that her brakes were playing up, so I swapped my brakes for hers getting very cold in the process and did a 20k descent to the valley slowing succumbing to hypothermia with minimal ability to slow down. I can laugh about it now. Glad you guys had a much better time. Skiing with the youngsters is great - enjoy any time you have faster than they are. It won't last!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
FAQ