Minimum altitude: 1,604 meters
Distance: 19.7 km
Slope Aspect: Various
Vertical Climbed: 505 meters (1,657 feet)
Vertical Descended: 505 meters
Before heading out on my ski tour, I covered around 20 km on the plateau d'Arselle loipe, a bit of a return to Wednesday’s “scene of the crime”. Conditions were noticeably improved, although I can understand the complaints about the piste preparation. The grooming here uses a kind of “combe” with wide grooves, likely from an alpine piste machine. When the snow is hard, these can catch the skis like tramlines, which makes descending a bit tricky. By contrast, at la Feclaz the tracks tend to be finer and more forgiving. The trick here seems to be not to start too early and let a few skiers snowplough the descents first to smooth things out.
That said, conditions were much better than on Wednesday: cold snow at around –3°C and, importantly, no drifting. I began with an easy loop around the plateau to warm up before heading over to Les Brimbelles. Normally I prefer to ski randomly rather than stick to official runs, but this time I followed the same route as on Wednesday to get a comparison. A strong northerly wind swept across the plateau, which didn’t make things any easier. The Strava segments, however, don’t seem entirely reliable, either they’re wong, or the pistes have changed over time.
I was pleased to manage the entire Lièvre climb without stopping, all in V1. In terms of times: Lièvre in 25:22 today, compared to a 24:27 PR back in 2018. For Les Brimbelles, 18:28 today versus 15:25 in 2022, though that effort was a bit of an outlier, and I’m usually closer to the 18-minute mark. Just 9 seconds quicker compared to the 25 March on my old, unwaxed skis though !
There were also a few more people out enjoying the trails today, no doubt encouraged by the improved conditions.
Cold and nagging north wind making the climb up the plateau hard work. Snow stayed good to midday.
