Poster: A snowHead
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We were there from 10th March to 17th March 2012.
We flew to Grenoble with Easyjet (£75 inc luggage), then hired a car (£200 for a Focus estate) and drove up to Valloire which took about 2 hours. Lift pass was just under £150 for 6 days. Accommodation worked out at about £175 each (4 of us).
We self-catered at the 'Chalets du Galibier' which is just past Valloire center in Moulin Benjamin. The accommodation was ok, nothing special but was fine for us.
The snow conditions weren't great, no snow for 3 weeks and temperatures of 15c made for worsening conditions on a daily basis. That said, the piste people worked wonders moving snow about and we even managed to find some un-tracked areas of off-piste
The area itself was fantastic, lots of skiing to be done with minimal lift time. There's also a lot of investment planned in the near future, which it needs as a lot of the lifts are slow/dated and could do with modernising etc! I did go on a new-ish 6-man chair in Valmeinier, had huge leather backrests and the bar came down and went up automatically, nice.
This was usually our first run of the day, a green into Les Verneys:
Fairly well-tracked off piste:
Some deeper powder:
This was the 'Olympique' run, think it might have been used in the Grenoble winter olympics, was steeper than it looks but not as steep as the Albertville downhill or the Birds of Prey at Beaver Creek!
I wish I made these tracks, but would have involved too much hiking for me!
Now these were so much fun, skier/boarder cross tracks, there was one on the Valloire side and one over at Valmeinier. The pic doesn't really do it justice, was just like a roller-coaster:
This is NOT the current piste map, but a vision of the future by someone with more info and time than me:
http://www.ski-valloire.net/projets/valfutur2011.jpg
Gives an idea of a few small-ish changes to make it even bigger/better!
This is a great site, just need to translate with google etc:
http://www.ski-valloire.net/
You can click on all the lifts and/or pistes to get more info and pics of them in the 'pistes et remontees' menu (under 'domaine skiable')
The piste map:
http://flv.valloire.net/valloire/plans_interactifs/hiver/plan_pistes_valloire.pdf
If you look at the center-ish there is a chair called 'Moneul', and we were able to ski all the way back to our accommodation from the top of this lift, down the Selles then onto the Myosotis all the way down to Moulin Benjamin - a great run down the valley to end the day!
All in all was a fantastic resort, lots of charm and little influence of the big tour operators etc. Would definitely recommend and would return there again myself!
I could go into more detail but don't want to bore you, so if you have any questions just ask,
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