 Poster: A snowHead
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Risoul
10-17 February 2013
Balcon de Sirius Apartments, Crystal Ski
Group Family of four, mum and dad lower intermediates (loitering between ESF classe 2 and 3), 9 and 12 year olds (1 week and 2 weeks skiing respectively)
Preparations Very little. I had an hour on the dry slope in Ponty and bought myself some boots.
Transfer out Overnight stay at mediocre Ringwood Travel Lodge. At least it had a lard-toting Little Chef attached to it. Excellent flight from Bournemouth to Turin. Transfer from Turin to Risoul took about 2.5 hours. Would have taken longer had it not been for rather aggressive driving style of the bus driver. Never seen a 50 seater bus with a roll cage before or a coach driver with a full face crash helmet. Transfer took in Montgenevre. Transfer day was a Sunday which was excellent because the main resort swap-over day is Saturday.
Apartments Very well appointed, but small. We were in the smallest type of apartment (not a studio) with a bedroom with twin beds for the girls and a dining-living room with a comfortable pull out bed. Kitchen was a four-ring electric hob. Dishwasher was a god-send. We were on the ground floor facing the slopes which meant that we could ski to our balcony and only had to carry skis about 10-20 yards before skiing down to the resort centre. The swimming pool was a little cold/disappointing, as was the jacuzzi. One poor point was that the reception was hardly ever open (though reception opening hours were well flagged up). Receptionists were pleasant and helpful when on duty.
Co-denizens of apartments An odd mixture of families with small kids and groups of students/youngsters from all parts of Europe. Bit noisy on a couple of evenings, when the lovely little lambs rolled back from the clubs at about 2am. This wasn't a major issue though, and we got our revenge by stomping about at 7am. More of a problem was inappropriate use of words such as "sick", "like" and "so". According to a Belgian bloke in our ski school, noise from groups of youngsters was a real problem at some of the cheaper apartments (Melezes Apartments).
Boot room We had a good sized locker to store our stuff. Enough space to put on/take off your boots.
Hire kit We hired all our skis and boots apart from my boots from SkiSet. As usual with the economy stuff, it was a bit hit and miss. Originally supplied Mrs Dobby with boots that would not look out of place on CoCo the Clown. SkiSet were generally very helpful and pleasant, though.
Ski school We all took ESF ski school. The adults were in a Classe 2 class with Olivier who was excellent. Got us to really speed up on blues and reds during the week and took us onto some gentle off piste. Got us starting to carve. Daughters' classes were a bit of a mixed bag. Younger daughter had excellent teacher, and younger daughter got her 1st and 2nd stars in the same week. Older daughter had a guy who was a great teacher when she could understand him. Didn't hinder her progress too much as she got her 2nd star easily and has turned into a speed freak (time for a talk from mum and dad about kids not being immortal, methinks). Bit of confusion on the last day of ski school meant that we had a family lesson with Olivier which was great. First day of ski school was off piste. Fun but not so good when you are trying to remember how to ski. A few falls in the fluffy stuff took place.
The Pistes Lots of blues, greens and reds. Very good for our party of intermediates. Most runs we went on (blues and reds) seemed reasonably fairly graded. As usual, one or two of the blues were harder than one or two of the reds. The pistes were well groomed, although the resort doesn't groom a few of the pistes after a snowfall which is good to see. There are lots of chair lifts at the resort centre, with runs centred around a bowl. This meant that it was rare to queue for more than a couple of minutes, even at ski school time and it was always easy to get back to resort. Even I couldn't get lost. The pistes were very well signposted. It was rare for the pistes to be crowded, although the pistes back from Vars sometimes got a bit mad from about 3pm onwards. The runs at Homme de Pierre were great, and were empty. Must be something to do with the button lift from Hell to get there. Skiing on Saturday was fantastic - pistes were empty because it was transfer/swap-over day. One downside for those quicker/better than me is that there is not a big vertical at Risoul (1850-2600[ish]).
The lift system You could get to most places you wanted to go by chair lift, with suitable planning. However, one or two of those lifts could do with modernising. You had to use some a very long button lift to get to the Homme de Pierre sector and a chair would be nice. Speaks the man who fell off the very long button lift.
The resort The resort was very French in feel, with very few UK skiers. Large amounts of skiers from Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland and Denmark in the week that we went. It's quite a small resort with not much to do for non-skiers. The locals were very friendly and helpful and didn't laugh too much at my school boy French. Not many shops, but a couple of butchers and Spars; enough for a week of self catering. We didn't eat or drink out much, but prices were not bad. Mountain restaurant hot choc was about 2.8Euros. Large beer at piste front cafe was about 5-6Euros. Paninis at piste front cafe were about 5Euros.
Weather Snowed for the first day (20-30cm) and then sunshine for the rest of the week. Absolutely fabulous. Especially after our last trip which was at a wind-swept, flat light LDA.
Crystal Crystal were very good. We had to wait for a plane to arrive at Turin and Crystal told us to grab some breakfast and give them the bill, which we gladly did. The rep was very helpful in sorting things out before our arrival and when we arrived in resort; one of the family had to visit the health centre and the rep was very helpful in helping to translate (the doc spoke some English but rep's assistance was useful).
Transfer home Was at some unearthly hour, but at least the driver was not obsessed with breaking the bus world speed record. Flight was uneventful apart from broken luggage. Why do they manage to break the new bag and not the old one? Anyway, a new bag should be forthcoming from Servisair.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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dobby, interesting report of what sounds like a successful holiday. Nice to hear that your ski lessons were so good, given that there is quite a lot of moaning about the ESF (not necessarily from people who have ever skied with the ESF.  )
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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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The lift system You could get to most places you wanted to go by chair lift, with suitable planning. However, one or two of those lifts could do with modernising. You had to use some a very long button lift to get to the Homme de Pierre sector and a chair would be nice. Speaks the man who fell off the very long button lift.
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I think thats almost the point, keeps the riff raff out  That lift is a real ball tearer!
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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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kioksor, too true. Never really dangled off a button lift before.
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