While the 2021 ended with the worst weather ever, the 2022 started with the best possible; for he whole January it was mostly sunny with nice winter-like temperatures. We rushed to book our week-long winter/skiing vacation in Serre Chevalier valley in Hautes-Alpes before the school vacations started, and we were happy we did, since there was a constant flow of traffic coming up when we drove home this past Saturday. The resorts in Serre Chevalier valley must be packed now.
This time we stayed in a village of Chantemerle between Monetier-les-Bains (where we have stayed and skied several times before) and Briançon, the highest city in France at 1326 meters. Chantemerle is a very typical ski resort village with mostly apartment buildings on the opposite side of the valley to the ski slopes. It was one of those apartment building where we stayed this time. We should have been more careful when choosing the apartment from Airbnb; the owner had specifically mentioned that it was located on the first floor, apparently meaning that as a positive thing in the building without an elevator. She had also mentioned that the apartment was quiet, since it was located at the end of the corridor, which was true. However, it did not help much against the nightmarish noise from the up-stair neighbors, who started walking and dragging furniture early in the morning before leaving to the slopes, and returned to the same activities later in the afternoon.
Again, we were very lucky with the weather: the whole week was sunny with reasonable temperatures — if anything it was a bit too warm for skiing. However, the strong Northerly wind — with 45-70km/h gusts — made conditions quite challenging. Not only that it wasn’t much fun to ski in the wind, but it brought down so much debris to the tracks that it was impossible to ski, and clearing that stuff wasn’t a trivial task. As usual, we spent the first day walking to get used to the altitude.
The following day our first attempt to ski in Monetier-les-Bains was a catastrophe. The uphill section was to headwind, and the downhill to tailwind. While the former was almost impossible the latter was dangerous — the hill was quite gentle, but still the gusts were quite unpredictable and could throw us from the tracks anytime. So, we returned to Chantemerle and did a few easy laps on a nearby short loop that was better sheltered from the wind. Since the wind did not give up in the next two days, we spent them hiking. Hiking wasn’t equally susceptible to strong gusts since the mountain slope provided some windbreak.
Since the two hikes (above and below) were on the same slope, the views were not that different.
Once the wind calmed down we returned to skiing (below are pictures from the last two days of our vacation). The weather was very favorable, almost too warm for skiing. The unfavorable snow conditions — caused both by the wind and the high temperatures — were unfortunate, since we had bought ski passes for the whole week ahead of time. It was sunk cost for us, but maybe winter vacationers arriving after us could benefit from better snow conditions and proper track grooming.
