Again this winter we spent a one-week vacation in Serre Chevalier valley in Hautes-Alpes (Mar 17-24). This time we stayed in Le Monêtier-les-Bains at the altitude of 1500 meters.
According to the schedule, the bus ride from Grenoble to Serre Chevalier takes about two hours. It took us ten hours. The bus was 45 minutes late to start with (the trip started in Grenoble). After an hour and a half, when we were approaching Col-de-Lautaret, the bus stopped and there was a rumor that a rocky avalanche was blocking the road. We did not turn back immediately but waited there for an hour or so for the confirmation that we could not go through. So we had to turn back, and return all the way to Grenoble. The bus tried to make a U-turn, but the road was simply too narrow, so it had to reverse for quite a while. Next we faced a further delay because of the driver’s mandatory break. At 4pm. we were in Grenoble (we had started there at 11am.), and had yet another delay waiting for a change of the driver. Little after 5pm. we started a new trip to Briançon and Serre Chevalier, this time on another route via Italy!
Since we reached our apartment very late, we did not bother to go skiing the next morning or the whole day (Sunday), but explored the town and bought the ski-passes (45 euros per person for a week). After the rainy and gloomy weekend, Monday opened sunny and beautiful, and that is how it stayed for the whole week 🙂
Our first skiing expedition took us to La Salle-les-Alpes where we had to deal with some formalities regarding the apartment rental (which was via Airbnb, but the host was an real-state agency, not a private person). Luckily it was a blue track (moderately difficult) but still we had a long (7K) uphill with ascent of 130 meters when coming back. We have skating skis and the technique is not quite there yet to tackle uphills efficiently.
The next day was equally gorgeous, but a lot warmer. We did a number of loops on the blue tracks between Le Monêtier and the little village of Le Casset.
We started our third skiing day with an early morning run in -11C temperature. The morning was beautiful, but the day turned out cloudier than the others. We also had a very nasty Northerly head-wind on the uphill sections of the blue loop.
Then we took one day off from skiing, and did a longish walk instead. The pedestrian/bike paths were maintained as meticulously as the skiing tracks. Again we faced a chilly head-wind when heading North. Total ascent and descent for the day was 245 meters.
On our last skiing day we were brave enough to tackle a red track (difficult). The only difficulty we faced was again the strong head-wind when going uphill. The technique was still not there.
On our final day we did not bother to take the skis out but went for an early morning run. The bus back to Grenoble was 30 minutes late when we boarded, but arrived in Grenoble at the scheduled time.
This was the second time we spent a one-week Winter vacation in Serre Chevalier valley, and this time we had excellent snow and skiing conditions. We are definitely going back!