 Poster: A snowHead
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Participants - Myself (experienced) and the missus (3rd week)
Resort - La Foux D'allos (Domain L'Espace Lumière) - Located at 1800m in Haute provence the domain comprises of La Foux D'allos, Pra Loup and Le Seignus. The first two are lift linked and Le Seignus is 10mins by free navette. Total ski area is 230km and domain pass is 144 euros. The village itself is a reasonably pleasant mixture of traditional chalet type arcitecture and relatively sympathetically built apartment blocks and residences. There’s quite a quite a few restaurants, a couple of bars for après, a cinema, and a Sherpa.
Travel - Flew easyjet to Nice and travelled to resort via transfer operated by haute verdon voyages. 45 euro p/p return, journey time of 2-3hrs depending on conditions.
Accomodation - We had an apartment in the residence Belle montagne (central park). It was located very centrally and about 50m from the lifts and you could ski back to the door. The apartment was marketed as 2-6 people so was spacious for two, it was clean and was linen and flat screen tv were included in the price (£240). We had an issue during the week involving a leaking sink which was resolved without too much delay. Would go back no problems
Food – On the slopes a fairly limited choice of just a few restaurants and snack bars. Quality and price were good though with a Plat du jour and most other mains between 8-10 euros and excellent pizza for 10-12. Drinks were good value, I paid 5,60 euros for 2 vin chaud and a coffee on the mountain…a pleasant change from 3 valleys. In the village it was pretty much standard French alpine fare with a couple of nicer places. Cost generally 15-20 euros for a main course.
Weather/Snow - Conditions were excellent, it had been snowing the night and day before we arrived and snowed twice more whilst we were there probably 15 or 20cms each time. This and the combination of an empty resort meant powder every day with no more than a short traverse. Official stats were 140 cm and 240cm base and top respectively. Weather was generally excellent all week with mainly sun when it wasn't snowing.
Ski hire/Lessons - The missus had ESF group lessons for 5 days, in the event she was the only one in her class so had a week of private lessons for 120 euros and made really good progress. Ski/boot hire for her i did online and was 60 euros for the week.
Lifts – On the Val D’allos side one new quick six pack and the rest a fairly antiquated mixture of slow chairs, drags and an old telecabine. Can’t comment to much on Pra Loup as the links were closed much of the week, but from what I did see and the piste map it’s fairly similar throughout the domain. As some backround the whole area has struggled for visitor numbers and therefore financially for a number of years. This is mainly due to location and low local population density. It’s quite difficult to access from the north due to closed passes meaning it doesn’t attract people coming via Geneva, Chambery etc. Additionally Isola 2000 and Auron tend to pick up the weekend vistors from Nice and Marseille. What this adds up to is years of under investment. Things have picked up since 2008 with a commitment to spend 18mil over 5 years but in reality much more is needed.
Piste Skiing – In the Val D’allos side pistes were mainly quite long blues and reds with a green and a couple of decently steep and un pisted blacks. The reds I thought were genuinely red and with interesting cambers, not as motorway style as other resorts I’ve experienced and the blues were pretty easy but good progression runs. One negative aspect for beginners is that if you couldn’t get down a red run (steep) then the whole of one side of the domain was closed to you as that was the only route back to base. I can’t really comment on Pra Loup but according to an ESF guy the piste skiing is actually nicer over there. I also failed to make it to Le Seignus which is a shame as there looked to be some good runs there.
Off Piste – Lots! – A really good variety and some really steep lift accessible terrain and great touring potential. What is nice is that in terms of the actual geographical size of Val D’Allos there are very few lifts. Away from the main area on one side of the town there are basically 4 large valleys with only about seven lifts in total with any number of routes and lines to pick, there is also some nice tree skiing off some of the lifts closer to the village and some good stuff off the observatory/aguille telecabine. I didn’t make it to Le Seignus but was told that the off piste is as good or better there. The real bonus was that because the resort was so empty and conditions were so good, the Pisteurs were out in force making the most of it. They were happy to stop and have a chat about what was ok to ride and what to avoid and also for you to follow them if properly equipped meaning I skied a lot of places i wouldn’t normally have considered without a guide. Having said all that obvious caveats apply, some of the terrain is pretty avalanche prone and there were a couple of fatalities earlier in the season. This a link to a skipass.fr page which has some great pictures that give an idea of the scope of the valleys mentioned above…scroll to the bottom and voila.
http://www.skipass.com/forums/enmontagne/stations_ski_france/alpes_haute_provence/sujet-108049-300.html
Costs – Flights, transfers, accommodation, ski pass and lessons came in a shade under 1k euro in total for the pair of us.
Overall Pros - Pretty snow sure, great off piste, value for money, lack of crowds, more character, charm and more friendly than mainstream resorts.
Overall Cons - Slow and antiquated lifts, dodgy links to pra loup, limited amount of pistes and beginners area.
Summary - We had a fantastic week and will certainly be going back. Having said that we had pretty much perfect conditions and if that hadn’t been the case then I’d no doubt be writing something quite different because the reality is had the off piste not been so good then I’d have found the poor lift infrastructure, links and limited pistes pretty frustrating and would maybe have been bored before the end of the week. With that in mind I wouldn’t really recommend the place to those who are looking for high mileage and mainly on piste skiing, the same goes for beginners and also to anyone who’s looking for busy après. However for anyone who’s happy to take a small risk on conditions and want a shed load of off piste and touring potential and for those who want to escape the crowds and try something quite different to the ski factories it’s absolutely worth a trip. If you get good conditions then you’re guaranteed some memorable skiing.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Beakyshark, thanks, great report - glad you had such a good time. Nice to hear of another French resort where eating and drinking are a reasonable price. You were lucky with the weather - two weeks earlier would have been nothing like as good. 
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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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Beakyshark Nice report. We stayed at Le Seignus a few years ago and stayed at the Chalet Vallons with Ben and Catherine (fellow snowheads!) Had a great week and have very fond memories of the area - as Pam W says, another thumbs up for lesser known areas. Loatie
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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loatie, We, too, have enjoyed Ben and Catherine's fantastic hospitality. The skiing was great and the prices of just about everything were very reasonable. The only slight negative for us is the transfer from Nice - 3 hours with two kids isn't fun - everything else was though 
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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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Anniepen, I think we were lucky as Ben was still doing transfers when we went there! At the time our two were about 12 and 15 so I think we were thinking if we ever went back we would maybe do the train(Can't quite recall all the details but I seem to remember something about a train maybe being an option?) but then we got side tracked by the long saga of getting our place in Le Grand Bornand which at long last is living up to all expectations so it's LGB for us now for the foreseeable!
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