The past week ended our winter season, and it also ended the winter sports season — more on that at the end of the post. We returned to La Vallée de la Clarée in Hautes-Alpes for one week, since our year-end vacation there was a disaster (we both were sick so we could not do any skiing). When we booked this vacation early this year, we were almost certain that chances for skiing were quite weak, but hoped for some nice hiking. In theory the the skiing tracks in Névache in the bottom of the valley were still groomed every day, but the snow was quite wet, so we didn’t bother to take the skis with us. We did take the snowshoes, though, but did not use them once. So, a lot of hiking it was, snow or no snow!
We stayed at the same Airbnb apartment in Les Alberts as in December, not because the place was any special, but its location was optimal regarding potential skiing but also driving to Briançon for grocery shopping. We were also lucky with the weather; we had only one cloudy day, and towards the end of the week the wind grew strong and chilly, some days already in the morning but mostly only in the afternoons, but other than that days were sunny and warmish.
Our first hike took us on a mountain biking trail to the neighboring villages of Le Rosier and Val-des-Prés. Nothing spectacular about this hike: just an easy walk mostly in the forest to acclimatize to the altitude: the valley of the river Clarée lies one kilometer higher than the valley where we live. In the last picture, note the flow of mud that had blocked the trail.
The next hike was trickier, not only because it was longer but we found ourselves rambling through a rockfall as Ravin des Sables had wiped the trail away some years ago. The plan was to visit La Grotte des Cinquante Anes (the cave of fifty donkeys), but the trail to the cave was equally ravaged by a torrent making it difficult to climb, and the descent would have been somewhat hazardous. So we skipped it …
The third hike from Névache was not easy, but the most scenic of this vacation. First of all we were at higher altitude between 1500 and 1800 meters, instead of about 1300 meters where we stayed, and secondly, we didn’t have snowshoes with us, since we expected the pedestrian paths to be decently and recently groomed, but once again, we found ourselves in a snowy and rocky (or muddy, where the snow had melted) trail.
The next day we decided to stay closer to our apartment in Les Alberts. The initial plan was busted by the amount of snow on the trail, which would have been mostly in shade anyway. We turned back to look for another trail, and ended on something that reminded us of “levadas” , irrigation channels in Madeira that are popular hiking paths. However, we were not sure whether it was an irrigation channel or a trench, since soon we found a bunker dating back to the WWII. Someone had had a brilliant idea of turning the bunker into an exotic accommodation business, which as it seemed, had not been that successful after all. Or maybe it was COVID-19 that made the business go belly up? Their poster had logos of some social media and short-term homestay sites on it, so it must have been printed relatively recently, and not 30 year ago. After the bunker we followed a nice and smooth forest trail in the pine forest up and up … until we reached the rocky torrent bed of Ravine de l’Enrouye that was difficult to cross, so we turned back and returned the same way …
We returned to Névache for some more scenic hiking, but gave up after three kilometers because of the strong and chilly wind. Nothing much to say about the hike, but it was really a struggle, a really frustrating fight against the wind. This was the only day we did not see the sun at all.
Our last hike also left directly from our apartment. The plan was to hike the same “bunker trail” we did a couple of days earlier, but this time from the other end to the Ravine de l’Enrouye, but sooner than later the steep forest road had so deep patches of snow that they made the climb quite arduous. On the other hand, we did not have a very clear idea how high the trail would go, and expected there to be even more snow higher up, so once more we turned back. This was a bit of an anti-climax end to the vacation, but anyway we got to enjoy outdoors, fresh mountain air, and sunshine most of the week. And we were not sick!
This was not only our end-of-the-winter vacation, but the week also marked the end of the winter sports season 2024/2025. Both the cross-country skiing cup and the biathlon cup held their final races this past weekend, and of course we followed every single of them. Our teams did not have much success during the season with a few exceptions: Jasmi Joensuu won the Chrystal Globe in cross-country Sprint Cup being the second Finnish woman finishing the season as number one in sprint; Suvi Minkkinen won bronze in biathlon World Championship sprint; also in the World Championships both Suvi Minkkinen and Olli Hiidensalo were fourth in women’s and men’s individual races, respectively; Suvi Minkkinen won bronze also in sprint in Kontiolahti World Cup event; Suvi Minkkinen and Tero Seppälä won gold in the single-mixed relay in Oberhof World Cup event, and bronze in the same race in Pokljuka; and finally Suvi Minkkinen won bronze in sprint in the final World Cup event in Holmenkollen. On top of these Suvi Minkkinen had several top-10 finishes in both World Championship and World Cup races. I think her performance was exceptional: I am not sure if even Kaisa Mäkäräinen achieved the same in a single season.
And I almost forgot Ilkka Herola, our grand master in Nordic Combined; he got his first career World Cup win in Oslo in the compact race, and then silver in Gundersen at home soil in Lahti.
The next season will be the Olympic year, so we expect equally good or even better performance from our small teams.