We wanted to take advantage of the great year-end weather and reasonably good skiing conditions, and booked a weekend in Alpe du Grande Serre, a small ski resort at the altitude of 1368 meters in Isère department. The daily newspaper’s ski report promised that all of their 20/20km of cross country skiing tracks were open.

As soon as we reached the village of La Morte, it was clear that no skiing will happen there. The tracks hadn’t even been made for days. The alpine skiing slopes were gunned each night, but no one cared about the Nordic skiing tracks. So, we were stuck in that small village for two nights without a possibility of skiing. What could we do but head out for a hike? The person in the Tourism Office advised us to rent snow shoes, because it was quite slippy (sic!) out there, but we disregarded her suggestion. And we were happy we did, since we would have been carrying them most of the time anyway. The only time we found the ground slippery was when crossing the so called Nordic skiing area.

The tourism office person also made a call for us to the nearby ski resort to inquire the conditions of their Nordic skiing tracks, and was told that the quality of snow was good. So, next morning we drove through a layer of dense fog down to Séchilienne and again through another layer of dense fog up to the gorgeous sunshine of Alpe d’Huez at the altitude of 1860 meters. Tracks indeed were in good condition, and not too crowded. We took a cable car up, but in order to reach the easier loops (green and blue) from there we had to take more difficult ones (red) down. In hindsight, we should have climbed up to the tracks from the resort, even it would have been a tedious uphill. The easy loops were nice though.

On the third day on our way home we stopped at Chamrousse for our last chance of skiing. The place was crowded and the snow soft, but it was a beautiful day for some easy loops on the plateau de l’Arselles.