This year was the fourth time we spent a week-long (19.-26.12.) winter vacation in Serre Chevalier valley in Haute-Alpes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region. The last two vacations we took at the end of the season in March, but the first one just before Christmas. Even if that season the snow situation was very poor all over the Alps, the weather has been formidable all three previous times. This time the weather failed us completely: in four out of six whole days of our stay it rained or snowed heavily, the strong gusty wind making it feel particularly miserable.
We knew to expect some foul weather during our vacation. When we drove to Le Monetier-les-Bains the conditions were still bearable. In fact we saw some blue sky. Our hostess, this time not via AirBnb but Abritel, wished us a great vacation with the promise of one meter of snow during the next two days.
On our first day (20.12.) we briefly checked the condition of the ski tracks, but did not go as far as to buy the ski passes, but promptly returned to our apartment after a quick visit to a grocery store. The horizontally blowing rain, which only later turned into snow, was just too much to stay outdoors, making clothes and everything wet instantaneously.
Next morning did not look much better, but it was not snowing or raining anymore, so we took our skis out. Eventually the day turned out to be quite pretty, and it was not too cold. It is kind of charming that some of the picture have a retro feeling to them — I’ve noticed the same in the photos posted to Facebook by the Nordique Skiing resort of Serre Chevalier.
The beautiful weather did not last long; the next three days were grey again, with varying wetness of the thing falling down, aggravated by a strong and gusty Northerly wind. Still, we got out for short or little longer walks — we simply did not want to pay for skiing in those conditions. The first walk was just 5 kilometers and took us to the neighboring village Le Casset.
The next day’s walk took us down the valley to the opposite direction to La Salle-les-Alpes in equally miserable conditions, only that we had more up and downhill.
The third day of walking took us again to the direction of Le Casset but a bit farther. This was a perfect black-and-white day, and I took some marvelous pictures, but due to a mistake when uploading them to Google Drive I lost most of them. The falling snow was wetter than the other days, so we were completely soaked when back at our apartment.
Fortunately for us, the weather changed completely for our last day in Le Monetier-les-Bains. The Sun was out making the scenery brilliant. However, the strong gusty wind persisted making skiing arduous.
The beautiful weather continued the next day when we were homeward bound. Before driving to Grenoble we checked Col du Lautaret and Les 2 Alpes for snowshoeing, but the former was too chilly because of the wind, and the latter too crowded, so we gave up.
