This was a winter vacation we both have looked forward to since last Spring: a lot of skiing in the sunny and flat valley of Vallée de la Clarée in Hautes-Alpes near Italian border, but it turned out to be another wasted vacation because we both were sick. We did not do any skiing but tried to manage short and easy hikes on most days. Except for the day of driving the weather was gorgeous, chilly -2 – 0°C in the mornings and sunny +8 – 10°C in the afternoons. I just wonder if I had been any happier or felt better if the weather had been as miserable as it was in Die a week earlier.
The vacation got an unfortunate beginning, again. Even before we started the trip, the car’s windshield wiper broke down, when Tomi was moving the vehicle closer to our house for packing. Given the heavy rain at the moment, and that it was Sunday (everything was closed!), we knew there was no way we could drive that day, and decided to postpone the start of our trip for one day, and buy a new wiper the first thing on Monday morning. The fact that I was still sick after two weeks, now with fever, (and Tomi had also gotten sick), did not make that decision too hard.
So, the next morning we found the world blanketed in white stuff, and expected the driving conditions not to be great, but still were determined to go. When we started driving the the Grésivaudan valley and Grenoble were under a heavy sleet storm, and our street/driveway was ankle-deep in watery slush. Overall it was very wet, and the temperature being well above zero the sleet did not stick but gathered as puddles in low-lying places, especially at entrances of roundabouts.
About an hour into driving, the sleet started to get icier and stick on the road, seriously stick. The visibility also deteriorated dramatically. After Monestier-de-Clermont there were bunch of cars stopped at the side of the road, drivers frantically putting on chains. We decided to do that too. The first one went on smoothly. The other one not so; there was clearly something wrong with it. Somehow it got stuck and we (Tomi) could not get it off to fix it. Another driver came to help him for a while, but he had his own vehicle to deal with. Eventually the chain came off and further inspection immediately revealed the problem: it was severely twisted. It took us a while to figure out the puzzle, after which the chain was easy to put on.
It probably took us an hour to get both chains on. Maneuvering that stuff with mostly bare hands in the freezing rain and horizontal wind was not fun. But it was nice to see so many fellow drivers helping each other out.
With the chains on driving felt much safer and smoother, and we could actually enjoy the wintry scenery a bit. Since the majority of vehicles did not have chains the traffic still crawled at about 30kph for 90 kilometers before reaching Gap. Overall, I was happy to find most drivers driving quite sensibly. Before Gap the roads cleared, and we removed the chains, which was another 30-minute ordeal. After Gap we still had almost 80 kilometers to Briançon, and it was getting dark. The trip that usually in normal conditions would take from 3 to 4 hours, took us more than 7.
Still being sick the next day, now with horrendous cough, we only made a short walk around Les Alberts, a little village at the mouth of the Vallée de la Clarée, where we were staying at an Airbnb apartment. The day was beautiful, sunny and warm. The left- and right-most pictures (above) are views from our apartment. The Nordic skiing tracks started literally from the front of the building; therefore it really was a shame that we were not in shape to ski.
The following day, still not feeling too well, we did a 2h30 “snow-shoe” walk to the neighboring village of Val-des-Prés and back following pedestrian and snow-shoe trails. There was no need for snow-shoes since the trail was pretty well groomed. We did take our hiking poles with us, though.
In the afternoon, like the day before, we found out that our apartment had no more hot (or even lukewarm) water to do dishes or take shower . The host promised to keep the water heater on also during the daytime — I wonder if we shared the single heater with her family.
Since there was not much improvement in our health in the following two days, we just did short walking trips in our village, Les Alberts, and the neighboring one, La Vachette. Nothing much to write about them, other than the weather stayed perfect. Rest of the time we spent watching Nordic skiing on TV.
For this trip we had an older model of Toyota Yaris, maybe from 2013. The doors were locked and unlocked by using a physical key that only applied to the driver side door. Every morning we spent minutes to make the key work in the frozen lock, and after that, pry the frozen doors open.
On our last vacation day we went for a longer hike in Névache, a Nordic skiing station deeper in the valley. That section of the valley runs from West to East (unlike the rest of the valley is from North to South), which meant that half of the valley stayed in shade for the whole day, also meaning that it also stayed very cold the whole day. When we started the hike it was -8°C in the shade, but once we climbed to the sunny slope the temperature rose to +8°C. This was a scenic hike, and a perfect way to end our vacation. We will certainly be back in the near future, depending on snow conditions, and hopefully in better physical health.
The next day when we drove home, it was still sunny and warm, but once we reached the valley we call our home, we were back in chilly haze and fog.
(* Writing this blog entry was somewhat challenging, since some of the keys on my laptop suddenly stopped working, like numbers five and six, question mark,slash and backslash, apostrophe, and upward arrow, and of course all other characters that share these keys.)