Saturday at Valloire was one of those pleasingly quiet ski days that feel better than the forecast or the piste map might suggest.

Day trip to the 7 Laux with skimania from Lyon to show the mates my local ski area.

Plan A had been to spend a morning in les 7 Laux.

Where to go? Another avalanche alert, resorts and pistes shut. Clearly we'd need to stay below 2000m and given the claggy cloud somewhere with tree line skiing.

Due to the weather we had to reign in our ambitions. Finally a trip up to Allevard, 40 minutes from home. Road were clear to resort. We parked at the bottom at the Grand Paul lift.

We decided to head up to the Sept Laux despite the holiday crowds.

Trip to St Hilaire du Touvet for a bit of ski on a very cloudy day. The snow on piste was ok but off piste it really depended. The Gelinote had not been pisted and was heavy powder but skiable.

Return to the Plan des Hotonnes. It is a pretty flat ski area and you don't really have any long runs like some other small ski areas. Great for families. However no stones this time compared to 2023.

We set out from Lyon at 6am and arrived just after 8. We had expected more traffic, we were always with cars on the way up but things were moving. None of the snowmaggedon of the last weekend.

Last Sept Laux of the holidays and first of 2026. We skied fairly cool as the snow was pretty hard in places but if you ski from the top of the Oursiere to le Pleynet it is grand.