 Poster: A snowHead
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| LaForet wrote: |
And again at the risk of annoying the regulars here, here is a plan view map to scale of the main areas in the 4 Vallées:
which might help orient you. I'd say that from Verbier and La Tzoumaz, an intermediate can traverse across zones 1 and 2 without range anxiety (in good weather). But as mentioned by @Langerzug we don't bother going any further than Combatzeline because the long drags to [4] Veysonnaz are, well, a real drag and don't normally bother to enter [3] the Nendaz zone either. From La Tzoumaz, we'd generally reckon to be sat down having coffee and a snack at the Plan du Fou café by 10:30-11:00 if we left LTZ fairly promptly.
The map is to scale and topographically correct, so you don't get the foreshortening effect you find with the official map. It illustrates a couple of things about the LTZ-Verbier link: that if the avalanche gate is shut you'll have to do two sides of a triangle (ski down/drag up) to get to Carrefour-Mayentzet. And that to return to LTZ, the easiest thing to do is to ski down to Carrefour and get the navette back to the bottom of the Savoleyres Sud lift. I personally find this a more pleasant and quicker route than skiing down into Médran, but opinions vary.
To get over to Bruson you take the public transport gondola down from Médran to Le Chable, then walk the 20m across to the Bruson gondola. It can be relatively quiet compared to the rest of the domaine.
(And yes, I know it doesn't really work as an alternative to the official perspective map: it's just that I feel that the perspective maps can be very misleading/hard to read if the pistes are sloping away from the viewer. I'm still looking for that London Underground Map inspiration. I'd add contours, but that would get me into all sorts of copyright problems, and I'm not going to draw my own, it's too hard.) |
Great map - if this was in France wouldn't they have but in a Gondola from Plan de Fou to Lac des Vaux?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Form the map it looks like an obvious link, but it would be along a ridgeline a lot of the way and I suspect that environmentally and in engineering terms, it's not worth the cost. The really big issue at the moment is the replacement for the ageing gondola from Verbier up to Savoleyres, which should have been replaced by now but is being blocked by a Genevoise 'old money' multi-millionaire because the new route would spoil her view. It's a losing battle but she's spending millions in legal challenges and political pressure to get it delayed. Most of the Savoleyres sector is north-facing, so it's not just La Tzoumaz that would benefit - fast access would offer Verbier skiers better snow when the south-facing Verbier slopes degrade. The new route would avoid having to catch the skibus from Carrefour to Savoleyres Sud as the planned route starts at Carrefour/Mayentzet.
Oh, and the map has one error - there's a piste missing: If you follow the two pistes up from Carrefour and Mayentzet, then where they meet there's another that goes off to the left (as you ski down, right on the map) and down to Médran in a series of zig-zags. So basically, to come back you can either take the (as you're skiing) right fork to Carrefour and catch the skibus there, or the far left (missing on the map) piste to Médran and catch the skibus there. Both buses go to the base of the old Savoleyres gondola.
There's also been a proposal for some time for a gondola up from the valley floor at Riddes to La Tzoumaz. FC Sion have sold their old training ground there to Ikea (it's reported) and of course that means a big car park just off the Autoroute. Which means there'd be parking for lots of cars if it was a joint venture, with a railway station nearby too. This would give Téléberbier a second, easily-accessible entry-point to the 4 Vallées. But I suspect that the cost would be so huge that it's never going to happen. And there's already a télépherique from Riddes to Isérables as a public transport route.
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