 Poster: A snowHead
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Resort: Le Seignus (Val d’Allos 1500). Village height 1500m, top lifts at 2374m and 2426m. ¾ of the skiing (by number of pistes, more by length) is above 1900m
Country: France
Date: 26 March – 1 April 2016 (the last day was spent doing planned DIY). Week 1 of a 2 week ski trip (second week in Tignes).
Travellers: 2 adults, 2 kids (7 & 9) all skiers
Travel: Self-drive – 12 hours driving time from Calais so, with a few stops, a long haul.
Accommodation: Chalet Vallons (our place – formerly the best catered chalet in l‘Espace Lumiere ie the only catered chalet in…), self-catering – we stopped at a supermarket in Digne les Bains to stock up and replenished a few times in the, newly renovated and reasonably priced, Carrefour Contact in Allos.
Lift pass: EUR375.10 for 4 people for 5 days (equivalent to EUR18.75pp per day). Families of 4 or more all pay the child price which is what made it so cheap. The following week there was a “buy an adult pass, get a free child pass” promotion.
Lift system: Modern 6 man chair out of the village then either: (1) a slow 2 seater up one mountain (Gros Tapy); or (2) a 4 seater followed by button lift to the top of the other mountain (Autapie).
Pistes: I’m not sure how many pistes/km they now claim but, ignoring connecting pistes and small variations, there are 13 main pistes – 3 blue, 5 red and 5 black. All but one of the pistes (one of the black runs) were open during the time we were there – I don’t know why this one was always closed, it is high up and looked to have good coverage. The piste grading is a bit uneven – parts of some the red runs are very steep but I suppose they don’t want to have more than half the pistes being graded black! Most of the pistes were bashed each night although the black runs are usually left for a few days to make them more interesting.
Weather: Rubbish! Sunny and warm on arrival day then constant cloud (with very light snowfall on a couple of occasions) the rest of the time. Rain at village level on our last day (luckily we’d only bought a 5 day pass, we wouldn’t have bothered to ski that day).
Snow: Surprisingly good. It had been an awful season in the southern French Alps. We’d binned our Christmas and half-term trips as conditions looked very poor but there had been decent snowfall in February and March. Below 1650m there were quite a few, large, patches of what looked like ice on the piste but which were actually OK to ski on. Higher up, the snow was in good condition, no bare patches, no stones/grass etc. Below the top of the 6 man, the snow was hard some mornings and softened up by lunchtime. There was slush (not just churned up snow) at the bottom in the afternoon. The top runs didn’t seem to get very Spring-like although we finished by 4PM. Away from the piste, below 1650m the snow was awful – crusty, scabby, messy, thin. Above 1650, the near-piste/under the lifts snow was fine and nice to ski.
Crowds: There was no-one there most of the time. The Saturday and Sunday had a few people around but less than a normal weekend. No lift queue of more than 1 minute and usually no-one on the same piste. On our last day skiing, I waited for ten minutes at a point where I could see three main lifts and not a single person went up the lifts or skied down. Later that afternoon, I saw a group of four people which took the total for the day (excluding us) to seven. The downside was that the lift company closed the Gros Tapy lift that afternoon, presumably to save a bit of money.
Conclusion: Much better skiing than expected given the pitiful snowfall this season, very good value lift pass and empty pistes.
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