Skiing in the Alps

We finally got to take "le train des neiges" to the Alps for a day of skiing. This is quite an amazing service.  The train picks us up a few blocks from our apartment and then takes us to a variety of resorts near Gap in the southern Alps. On arrival to the closest town, they provide a shuttle bus to the resort. This only costs 15 euros for everything, round-trip.

The skiing in the southern alps is very warm. The French from these parts aren't very excited about skiing in the "north" in the grand resorts like Chamonix. They prefer their sun. Not surprisingly, with this kind of warmth it suffers the same problems as Whistler in America: rain and thaws in the middle of the season. it rained 2 days before we arrived so the snow wasn't very good. They are actually having problems keeping things open right now because of the lack of snow (it's been extra warm here for a couple of weeks).

We picked the resort of Puy Saint Vincent.   The resort is relatively low (4200 feet at the base and 8100 feet at the summit) so we didn't suffer any altitude issues.  The slopes were mostly intermediate but there were a few more challenging runs as well.  The lifts were simliar to what we have in the U.S. with chairlifts and "tire-fesse" (literally "butt pull").  There was a "snowboard cross" race the day we were there.  Very cool.

There are many, many resorts here but they are generally smaller than the U.S. The price of a ticket is cheap (25 euros with our "train des neiges" discount). Renting skies seemed comparable to U.S. prices.

We're hoping to ski some more. There are several resorts that offer x-country skiing, mostly groomed for skating.