Because of the lockdowns of 2020 we still had two weeks of vacation to spend in the last two week’s of the year. As soon as we learned that there was a de-confinement coming, we booked a week in Les Saisies in Savoie department, where we had already booked our Spring vacation before the first lockdown (but it got cancelled like everything else). This time we were lucky — no cancellations! However, we were not lucky with the weather; warm and sunny days made the skiing conditions not so good. So we mixed things with skiing, hiking, snowshoeing, and running. Overall it was a good vacation in a practically deserted ski resort — if one ignores the problems with our bank as we were amidst the house loan negotiations and our bank advisor mysteriously disappeared, so we had to redo all the paperwork remotely with another person without WiFi, but using our mobile data.
On our first day (16.12.) we climbed on snowshoes to Col de la Lézette (1785m). The season hadn’t officially started, so the tracks were not plowed yet, but there had been enough hikers so we did not have to walk in completely unbroken snow. This was probably the first time we saw mighty Mont Blanc this close without it being covered in clouds.
The next day we tried some skiing. We did not go to the plowed tracks but stayed on the free and relatively flat connecting tracks between the village and the official ski area. Still the beginning was hard — it seems skiing is not something that once learned stays with you rest of the life (like riding a bike), but balancing needs to be learned every season anew. Of course it is easier year after year, a lot easier than it was after a 30-year break!
Another sunny day of skiing, in the same place as the other day. Tomi made an attempt to climb the wall.
Next day we skipped snow sports completely and went for a morning run to another ski area Le Lachat. It was a comfortable up and downhill run on the road with 199m of ascent and descent.
On our last day in Les Saisies we skipped skiing again. In fact if was sunny with clear skies in the morning so we decided to go for a hike to the Mont Blanc direction. However, after spending ridiculous amount of time with dealing with our bank, clouds covered the sky. We went for the hike anyway, this time in our hiking boots, since the paths were plowed. It was a freezing but scenic hike, although Mont Blanc was in the clouds.
On our way driving back home to Grenoble we stopped at Hauteluce for another hike. We did a snowshoe loop ‘Plan des Loups’, but looking at the surrounding slopes we decided to leave the snowshoes behind. It was a good choice: only 5% of the trail was snow-covered but very walkable, rest was just a regular trail or a bit muddy. When descending to the valley of river Doron there was this strange mist again.
Les Saisies is a quiet family friendly ski resort, although touristy as all places in Savoie and thus quite expensive. I think we’ll be back for skiing sometime this season or next.
This was the most difficult post I’ve ever done; I got problems uploading practically every photo. WordPress told me that the photo cannot be uploaded because it was too big or there were some other problem (I had already downsized all the images). After the failed attempt, when I went to the media library, one of these four things happened:
- The image was not there so it did not upload.
- The image was there so it did upload just fine.
- I found that the image had uploaded just fine after I tried to upload it the second (or third, or fourth, …) time.
- The image was replaced by another image with the same name that I’ve uploaded earlier.