 Poster: A snowHead
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Resort: Tignes Le Lac, Espace Killy, France. Purpose built, mostly large apartment blocks. I didn't think it looked too bad and maybe it's better to ruin one valley with 10000 tourist beds (or whatever it is) than five valleys with smaller resorts.
When: 2-9 April 2016 - week 2 of a 2 week, 2 resort Easter trip.
Who: 2 adults, 2 children (age 7 and 9) - all skiers. Happy to ski any piste.
Travel: drove up from Alpes de Haute Provence. Took about 6 hours. No traffic issues until about the last 100km when it got pretty slow - the motorway traffic was stopped by traffic lights to regulate the amount of cars getting into the valley. Bumper to bumper from Moutiers. Following advice on this site, we unloaded the car at the apartment then left it in the free car park at Les Brevieres for the week. Regular shuttle buses which ran bang on the timetable made this easy - even when I had to go back to the car to collect the beer I'd left behind.
The return trip was very slow - 12 hours (plus a stop) to Calais. The amount of traffic coming out of the area was just too much for the local roads and the motorway to cope.
Accommodation: "Bec Rouge" self-catering apartment booked via Tignes tourist office. Due to a balls-up by the tourist office a month or so before we were due to go, the apartment we'd paid for wasn't available so we were moved to a larger one in a building slightly further from the front de neige.
We bought some food in Bourg St Maurice then restocked at the (reasonably priced) Carrefour Montagne near our building.
The apartment was a bit tired and, frankly, illegally dangerous in places - a broken plug socket (half the fascia missing) with exposed mains wiring above mattress level right next to a bed isn't ideal. Bathroom ceiling peeling etc.
However, it was a decent size with plenty of storage space, toilet separate from bathroom, dishwasher and had dual aspect balconies.
The building seemed to be less than 50% occupied - based on cars in the car park, stuff on balconies etc. From the lights in the big building opposite (Palafour) that was also less than half full.
Truly ski in/ski out - three paces from the ski locker to the door, do your boots up on the bench outside the door then another five paces and you were on the snow. An easy slide down (about 100m) to the main front de neige.
Lift pass: we just bought the local pass as we thought there would be enough mileage (we're used to a much smaller resort) and youngest might struggle to get around the whole area.
Everyone paid the child price (I've forgotten how much but it was a lot), without this offer it would have been very expensive.
Lifts: Excellent. If you go to Tignes and complain about the lifts then you're thoroughly spoiled! Fast, high capacity chairs from various parts of the village (gondolas, funicular elsewhere). A few fixed chairs on the mountain but the only issues we had were:
Getting back from 1550/1800 - gondolas out of each of these but you then have to switch to fixed chairs which were quite slow and one was very long.
Grande Motte cable car - closed due to weather a few days then developed an (unspecified) problem which meant only one cabin in use so waiting time doubled. Minimum wait was 20 mins and we binned it a couple of times when the queue was twice that long.
Tommeuses lift from Folie Douce - 10 minute queue here each time (after three separate experiences of this we didn't go there for the last couple of days).
Chair from below glacier to cable car (Vanoise) when the glacier was closed a lot of people seemed to be lapping this section waiting for the cable car to open resulting in 10 min queue.
Other than that it really was a case of no more than a minute to get onto a chair. Most of the time we were straight on with no wait.
Lift personnel - excellent, helping small children on, paying attention and slowing lifts if people fell when getting off etc.
Other than issues with the gondola, we had no problems getting from Le Lac to the glacier and back to Le Lac with plenty of skiing on the way in a morning.
Where there were queues, the queue discipline was good - minimal barging in etc.
Weather: Poor - one excellent day of clear skies but otherwise overcast at best and a couple of days totally in the cloud. At least one good day was better than our week down south where the weather was rubbish all week.
The last morning we belted around the area and the cloud went from 1550m up until above the bottom of the Leisse chair (around 3000m?). Visibility was less than 30m at times that day which didn't stop a group of ESF instructors doing their informal race training on an open blue piste!
Snow: Very deep at 2100m, a bit stony down towards 1550. Strangely, the quality wasn't great. No better at 2100m than we'd had at 1800m the week before in the southern French alps but the amount was way more. Some pistes rock solid in the morning and full of large soft moguls in the afternoon. All blue and red runs seemed to be bashed each night.
The only true corduroy of the week was on the glacier black run on Thursday. Just the right amount of bite in it to really get the skis on their edges.
Pistes: Well laid out although a few flat/uphill sections between Le Lac and Val Claret. Didn't seem to deter the boarders as there were more than I've seen for years. Lots of different aspects/views/little side valleys so you're not always skiing the same bit.
The grading seemed to be very flattering. Some of the black runs were red at best and the black on the glacier was, after the first "red" section, as flat as a nursery slope. Our favourite runs were Sache and Guerlain Chicheret. Aiguille Percee was also good but very short especially as it was skis off to get over some grass to get to the start of it.
The runs I would say were truly black were Silene, Campanules and one other (either Epilobes or Oeillet, I forget).
The worst run was Double M - always packed with skiers and a surface like a mirror - as if it was down to the base layer. A shame as it's fairly wide and long so in better conditions would be great.
There were useful sign posts around the area showing not only piste names but which lift and village they lead to. After a couple of days we hardly needed to look at the piste map to get around.
Skiing: The most important part of the holiday and, unfortunately, the worst. There were just far too many people on the slopes. I can't imagine how bad it must be in half-term/New Year. On the blue and red runs there just wasn't enough room to ski safely in anything other than a defensive manner. So, where possible, we stuck to the black runs which were very quiet and enjoyable but it did mean only about 10% of the runs were really skiable. The volume of people meant almost all the runs were mogulled by mid-afternoon which caused more congestion.
Off-piste: with two young children and no local knowledge this wasn't an option but it looked like there was a lot to be skied although there weren't that many ski tracks away from the pistes.
Conclusion: Great infrastructure and interesting terrain but just too many people. If there is a low season with everything open then it would be fantastic.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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@benwright, thanks for excellent, very detailed TR. Glad you all enjoyed it overall, apart from crowded pistes. To be expected to some extent at Easter.
If you thought black pistes like Sache and the Guerlain Chicherit itinerary only deserved red rating, you must all be good skiers, brave, or both. You would've enjoyed the Val D'Isere side I'm sure. Saved that for next time eh?
You're spot on about Tignes being better low season. I managed 6 days there, ending 2 May. Excellent snow conditions, with fresh snow down below 1800m. Pistes almost empty. Great for a long bank holiday weekend!
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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?
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Interesting and balanced report, @benwright - thanks. Flies in the face of one or two of the negative stereotypes about big French resorts (rude and uncaring lifties, hooligan barging in the queues, etc)
We had a family holiday in Les Saisies the previous week, first of the school hols round here. There were no traffic issues at all (I drove in and out of Geneva airport doing airport transfers for family members on both Saturdays) and the pistes weren't busy. No lift queues.
Judging by your judgement on the black pistes in Tignes the skiing in LS would have been too easy for you, but it just goes to show that when Easter is early, as it was this year, you don't need to go to high "snowsure", expensive and crowded resorts.
The weather before your visit had been extremely warm all over the area and that contributed to the poor snow quality. But the heavy crowds don't help, obviously. You would be much better off in mid January from that point of view but in my experience the Tarentaise resorts are never really quiet - it's all comparative. Being accustomed to skiing in a much quieter area I always feel I need eyes in the back of my head in, say, the 3 Valleys.
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I was quite pleased by how easy we found the black runs. Having skied the same area (where we lived) for more than a decade I thought we might get rumbled by going to a proper resort!
From what I'd read, I had serious doubts about taking our youngest on Sache but she had no problems with it. She wasn't too happy on Silene and Campanules though and probably "fell" (turned/stopped too hard and sat down) two or three times each time she went on them.
We would have rather spent most of our time belting down the blue/red runs but, with the crowds, that wasn't an option. One good result of skiing lots of black runs was that we actually got some exercise and had to work more than we usually would.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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To clarify, I'd say Guerlin Chicheret deserves to be rated black but was skiable by anyone that can control their speed on moguls. It wasn't particularly steep or narrow.
Sache seemed very tame compared to Campanules (my one "fall" of the week was on this run one day - turned too hard and had a strategic sit down) and parts of Silene .
Sache is probably a different story at 3pm on a Friday when everyone decides to tick it off their list for the week and it gets rammed.
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Just a quick note on Sache (if I may) - it can be exactly as Ben describes - but it can be horrific if it has not been pisted in the steep section. The top section always looks inviting - barely a red but after the escape route (Arcosses) it is very steep and the moguls can be as big as Volkswagen beetles. The worst experience I had were big moguls and overnight fog had drifted up the valley and frozen to them - it took a bunch of good skiers 50 minutes to do what they would normally do in 5-10. The best thing is to ask someone who has just come down before you commit unless you are a bon skieur!
IIRC the run had been closed due to a huge avalanche just before bens arrival - so little chance for the pesky moguls to build....
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| benwright wrote: |
| Skiing: The most important part of the holiday and, unfortunately, the worst. There were just far too many people on the slopes. I can't imagine how bad it must be in half-term/New Year. On the blue and red runs there just wasn't enough room to ski safely in anything other than a defensive manner. So, where possible, we stuck to the black runs which were very quiet and enjoyable but it did mean only about 10% of the runs were really skiable. The volume of people meant almost all the runs were mogulled by mid-afternoon which caused more congestion. |
That's a shame. We skied Tignes from a base in La Daille (Val d'Isere) the previous week, which was the first of our kids' school holidays, and crowded pistes weren't such an issue apart from a few occasions. Skiing black runs and moguls can indeed feel safer with kids sometimes.
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does tend to reinforce what was being discussed on another thread about the big high altitude resorts at Easter - they are so obvious a destination that they tend to get crowded whereas lower results with good snow records tend to be neglected. The lift system is pretty good at Tignes but it sounds like it still couldn't really cope - we didn't have queues or overly crowded pistes in Les Contamines that week.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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@jedster, The OP was not complaining about the lift queues (Cable Car to GM because of a technical issue and one or two rush hour hotspots excepted)
"Other than that it really was a case of no more than a minute to get onto a chair. Most of the time we were straight on with no wait"
One could easily argue the lift system is so good at shifting people up the mountain at high speed what we really need in Tignes (and Val) are extra pistes to spread the folk around.
The two lifts that he mentions from 1800 are both being replaced in the next four years as part of the grand plan to improve the whole Boisses/Brev sector
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| Quote: |
One could easily argue the lift system is so good at shifting people up the mountain at high speed what we really need in Tignes (and Val) are extra pistes to spread the folk around.
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fair point.
But he did talk about several 10 minute waits during the week. Those lifts in the Boisses/Brev area have been a bottleneck for years.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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| chocksaway wrote: |
| One could easily argue the lift system is so good at shifting people up the mountain at high speed what we really need in Tignes (and Val) are extra pistes to spread the folk around. |
Time to get that mythical link to Bonneval sur Arc built. 
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