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| Lago d'Arpy. |
The call came through with the question: " If we can carve out two days to ski together where would be an unusual -yet great place to ski?"
The above paragraph needs context - The question was coming from someone who lives in Geneva who has skied a lot.
"Lets try La Thuile" I suggested .
" Okay lets do it." came the reply.
Mark Daniels & his friend Till Aull picked me up in Chamonix and we drove through the Mt Blanc tunnel and arrived at the Chalet Hotel Eden in La Thuile.
The weather was cloudy and mixed, it was straining to snow but this fizzled out. The next morning the trees were dusted with snow. As we ascended in the cable car we could see that there had been some fresh snow.
Yet bizzarely as we got higher there was no fresh snow . Just inpenitrable fog. It was not looking good. We skied about and manoeuvred ourseleves into what I hoped would be a good off-piste run. It was horrible: The skiing was excatly like skiing on a corrugated tin roof that stretched for eternity, made more challenging by seeing absoultley nothing.
We needed a change of aspect and a change of altitude . We headed for the lower north facing slopes where we found blissful snow. A couple of laps through the trees was followed by a fabulous descent down to the Maison de La Neige hotel for lunch.
After which we repeated the same descent - agian it was fabulous.
A second night was spent at the hotel. The next day was beautiful. Instead of skiing in the resort we elecetd to go ski touring and headed to Arpy. Our goal was to climb Punte Crocce - the classic ski tour of the area.
The ski tour leaves from the road head by a cross country ski area and winds its way up through a forest to the beautiful lake Arpy
From where the route climbs to the summit of Punte Crocce .
From the summit we skied back pretty much the same way, stopped at the bar where we had left the car, then travelled back to Chamonix .
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