Minimum altitude: 1,418 meters
Distance: 15.8 km
Slope Aspect: Various
Vertical Climbed: 438 meters (1,437 feet)
Vertical Descended: 435 meters
It was the final day of my three-day trip, and I decided to return to the Col de la Ramaz. I had enjoyed the climb so much before that it seemed the right way to finish, even if this time I was only planning to ski the loop around the snowmaking reservoir at the top rather than going further afield. I set off early, 8:33am according to Strava and the resort felt completely empty. The pistes were still firm from the night, hard and fast in the morning cold, and there was a real sense of having the place to myself.
At the top of the Jode there is a brief interruption where you have to take off your skis to cross the road, and then immediately tackle a surprisingly rude little climb on the other side. In the cold air it felt sharper than it probably looks on paper, the sort of gradient that wakes the legs up properly. But once up there, the morning had that still, clear quality that makes an early start feel entirely worthwhile.
At the col I stopped to chat with a 74-year-old man who looked at least a decade younger. He was returning on foot from Praz de Lys, where he had gone to buy his daily newspaper, and was staying in Sommand, a 12 km round trip, which he seemed to regard as perfectly ordinary. He had fitted small crampons to his boots, which struck me as a very sensible idea given the hard surface early in the day and the risk of slipping.
After that I skied back down and headed out towards the Molly and Lys reds on the north-eastern side of the plateau. The snow was still in good shape at first, but by around 10:30 it had started to soften noticeably, and that felt like the right moment to stop. There was no need to force the day any further. By then I had covered about 16 km with roughly 450 metres of climbing. It was a modest final outing in terms of distance, but a very satisfying one: empty pistes, crisp early snow, a brief conversation at the col, and the sense of ending the trip at exactly the right moment, just as the day began to soften.
3C in the morning. Good refreeze. Pistes good to 10.30 but on the Praz de Lys side they catch the sun at first light.
