TR Le Seignus, France Feb half-term 2017

A snowHead

Resort: Le Seignus, Val d'Allos (southern France). 1500-2400m. They claim 50km of piste, not sure if that's accurate. Ignoring variations/short runs, there are 2 blue runs, 5 red runs and 4 black runs. Larger resorts of La Foux/Pra Loup nearby but we stayed local.

When: Sun 19th - Sat 25th Feb 2017 (local half-term and Paris half-term)

Who: 2 adults, 2 kids (8 and 10) all skiers, ski any piste.

Accommodation: s/c - our chalet. Did our main shop off the mountain then topped up at local (reasonably priced) mini Carrefour.

Travel: ferry/drive. More than 12 hours driving time from Calais. I'm too old for that trip and won't do it in one hit again. Journey was just about tolerable but a bit longer than usual as diverted to avoid holiday traffic between Lyon/Grenoble. Even at 4AM the motorway services were rammed. No traffic issues on the route we took. Tolls/petrol? No idea.

Lift passes: EUR447.30 in total which I think has gone up nearly 20% since last year. Then add in rubbish exchange rate and it was a fair bit more expensive than in the past. Skinflints could have saved a whopping EUR3.30 by booking online (for families of 4 or more, everyone pays the child price online, 10% reduction if pay at kiosk). Ad-hoc upgrade to La Foux/Pra Loup available for EUR10 per day (you could also buy a whole area pass for the week).

Kit: 3 of us had our own gear, eldest child had outgrown his boots and skis so hired. Booked in advance with skiset but I'm told this was still about EUR70 (I didn't book it) which seems a bit strong for kids gear. There are 4 main hire shops in the village including a skimium one.

Weather: non-stop sun every day except Friday. Each day was cold early on but warmed up. Not the February heat-wave we had every year we lived there (almost always had a 3 day plus spell of 10C) but pleasantly warm until the sun went behind the hills.

Snow: it's been another poor winter (although the photos I've seen from Christmas look good higher up), the third in a row. Only three significant snowfalls. The snow in our garden (~1550m) was less than 30cm deep, it has been more than 1.30m at that time of year. The pistes had decent coverage but the run to the village was about half its normal width as snow had been scavenged from all around to maintain it.

As it was the local school holidays (Paris holidays don't have a noticeable impact) a lot of the runs were getting scraped down to the really solid stuff by lunchtime. They managed to sort this out overnight so everything was nice in the mornings. Higher up the snow was good and, when bashed, nice corduroy that you weren't worried about losing your edge on. Stones in places on the black run at the bottom. Bottom section of long red to village closed so diverted along forest track.

Black runs (and some reds) left unbashed for a couple of days to make them more challenging. Lumps of mashed potato (not slush) on busy spots by early-afternoon. Found one patch of unskied "fresh" snow off to the side of a piste and had two turns in it!

After hearing stories that they'd been told to stop using the snow cannons back in January, I was surprised to see that the reservoir was nearly full.

Queues: probably the busiest week of the season. 5 minute wait for chair out of the village wasn't unusual - probably longer just after lunch. Often similar wait for the buttons up one mountain but, strangely, shorter queue (30 secs) for chair up the other mountain.

Only the blue to the village was unpleasantly busy - had to limit our use of this (our kids like doing the tracks through the trees near it) as it was tedious for us on the piste dodging the ski schools/beginners. Probably annoying for the beginners having us on there as well.

Elsewhere (especially on the black runs) you mostly had the piste to yourself/shared with three or four other people. An advantage of the aged lift system is that it doesn't dump too many people at the top of the hill at the same time.

Queues not helped by lift attendants not encouraging people to fill up the spaces on the chairs, skiers getting to the gate then realising they couldn't bear to be parted from their pals for the five minute lift journey etc.

Entertainments: being half-term there were a few (half-arsed) entertainments on offer. The only one we went to was the flaming descent and fireworks. Boo! The flaming descent now uses electric torches.

You could pay to ride in a piste-basher (pah! When we lived there you could flag them down and blag a go in it), join the pisteurs opening up the runs etc.

Conclusion: I'm sure it was much quieter than the resorts in the northern French Alps (the slopes were far less busy than Tignes was last Easter) but there was too much queuing for my liking. The weather was great and the snow was ok but it wasn't one of those weeks where you think "I hope it's like that next time"

Help!!

TR Le Seignus, France Feb half-term 2017

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