When you have a ski day and you think it’s the best of the season. The next day you have an even better day. We did.
Day one was at Grands Montets. Slow to open after the overnight snowfall, we got out of the Bochard bubble at 11:40 for the first run. There seemed to be a bottleneck in getting out of the lift station. There was a 2m high snow bank to scramble over to get out of the building. Later on this was an uphill track through the snow but initially it was an all fours scramble, single file.
Nothing above the top of the Plan Jouran lift had been pisted. The Hearse lift was closed for the day but everything accessible from the Bochard was fair game and all off piste and untracked. Fresh tracking all day (once it started).
Next day was Domain de Balme, Le Tour. The Possets drag was closed but everything else was open and it was deserted. Laps of the Tete de Balme lift was the order of the day as the front chair was catching the wind and baltic. More untracked powder than you can shake a stick at.
Additional interest was provided by the pisteurs rescuing a broken piste basher under the back chair. Some ingenious rigging and two other machines to get it out. Very clever!
