J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by AllyG

Photo Piste Paul (well, his son's presumably) of Piste Paul and Bald-eagleman trying not to flatten a ski school class in Sauze, on Monday or Tuesday.

The pistes weren't too crowded, until the snow fell and the sun came out. I think the worst day was the final Sunday when I was ski-ing without the group and there were loads of people especially on the lower pistes.

Piste Paul's photo of Bald-Eagleman having a little rest ...

Piste Paul's photo of Brooksy pointing, 2 of the Wickhams, and Far Queue, on Monday or Tuesday.

Piste Paul's photo - Ian Wickham getting off the chairlift at the top in Sauze, on Tuesday. As you can see, it was pretty difficult doing this without falling over because of the lack of snow and the ice!
I was getting off and one ski took off on it's own (with my leg still attached) so I lifted it off the ground and skied on one leg and fortunately one of the group was next to me and he pushed me back across or we could both have fallen over!

Piste Paul's photo of himself, Felthorpe (not that you can see much of her!) and her husband standing opposite to the Wickham family, with Far Queue on the right, taken on Tuesday I think in Sauze before it started to snow.

Piste Paul's photo of himself and his son, very happy because there was plenty of snow, in Sauze on Friday.

Strangely enough I don't remember anyone grumbling that day about having to ski whilst it was snowing! ;)

You can see how much time you save by going to Val Thorens via Orelle, on this map, that I cropped from Google Maps. It's only about 45 minutes from Sauze to Orelle, but about 3 hours from Sauze to Val Thorens by road.
And there's a huge car park at Orelle right next to the gondola and there's a cafe etc. there and you can buy your lift passes.
I think the car park must have been free because the company that supplied the bus said they might have to charge us extra for parking, but they didn't :)




Ski-ing into Val Thorens from the top of the chairlift in Orelle was easy enough - there seemed to be a choice of blues and reds and we didn't bother using the piste map. And after that we just skied wherever we fancied going.

Coming back from our lunch stop in the centre of Val Thorens we had a quick look at the piste map and went up the Cascade lift to get a bit of height, and then up the Portette lift which had a sign at the top saying which way to go to the Grand Fond lift and Orelle, and finally along the flat blue at the top of the Grand Fond lift.

The red run down to the gondola in Orelle was really hard, as Felthorpe said, when we did it because it was steep and very icy with lumps of powdery snow/small moguls. However, there's also a blue down to the gondola and some (very sensible!) people in the group took this route.

When we were there the last gondola down officially left the snow in Orelle at 4-30 p.m. and it takes about 20 minutes.

Lizzie-B wrote: What a very resourceful party leader you are arranging the trip to Orelle.

Thanks Lizzie-B :)
I had actually researched and planned this 'escape route' as it were, before we got there, because I knew that Sauze has a reputation for icy pistes and that the links to the rest of the ski area can shut in high winds.

Admittedly I wasn't expecting the snow to be so poor, but I think it was exceptionally bad for the time of year :(

We were lucky that we picked the right day to go to Val Thorens - some of the others were anxiously checking the weather and wind forecasts, and we had several discussions about when to go. We had to give 24 hours notice to book the bus and we couldn't cancel free of charge - although as Ian W said we could probably have asked the bus to go somewhere else if there'd been a problem in Orelle, like with the wind in Val Thorens shutting the links.

I had skied the '4th' valley twice myself, when I was staying in Val Thorens, so I knew there was a fair bit of ski-ing just in that valley even if the link over to Val Thorens had shut. And I think they put up flashing messages at the bottom of the lifts telling you to get back if they're going to shut the linking lifts.