Powder Archives - Dave and Sara’s Excellent 2018 Adventure

The Hills Are Alive! Last Powder Day

By Dave and Sara on Friday, February 23, 2018

So today was our last day skiing. Luckily for us, it snowed all night and it was a powder day. While visibility was low, we were able to find a great area of rocks and trees that helped provide perspective. The snow was great. Really light and around knee deep. After we had our fill of skiing the powder, it was time to head back towards Champoluc to meet Karen at the top of the funicular for lunch.

After lunch, Dave took a ride up the magic carpet to get one last powder run before taking it up again to take the funicular down.

After skiing, Sara and Dave headed to the Spa for a very painful massage to try to mend our sore legs after three weeks of skiing. Tonight we are going to have a nice Mountain dinner and pack up for our move from the mountains to the city.

We also had some other exciting news to celebrate!

See you next time Champoluc!

A post shared by David Grunat (@sncarbone) on Feb 23, 2018 at 10:27am PST

We appologize for the lack of photos today. Due to the heavy snow we were bundled up pretty tight.

Also if you thought we could say ‘until next time’ Alps without a Julie Andrews meme, you were sorely mistaken.

Champoluc

Photos from our Ski Guide in Italy

By David on Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Here are all the photos from our ski guide the first two days at Monterosa.

Champoluc

Another Day, Some More Powder

By Dave and Sara on Monday, February 19, 2018

Last night, we went out to Le Petit Coq so that we could share with our friends all of the wonderful attributes of cheese. We had some wonderful raclette and fondue with a few liters of wine.

After filling up on cheese, Sara, Jeff, and Dave spent our last day with our guide, Fabio, that came over from Chamonix. After taking the funicular up we skied as fast as we could to make it over to the Punta Indren which is above Alagna.

This goes to the highest point of the Monterosa Ski Resort that is lift accessible. At the top of the Gondola, we put our climbing harnesses which we thought was for skiing on the glacier. We were wrong… We skied across the traverse, and hit the first of many side stepping portions which were quite exhausting. Once we got to the top, we arrived at our first open bowl area which had some relatively nice powder. We skied down a bit and hit another traverse. After side stepping to the top of the second traverse here, we realized what the harnesses were for.

There was a very steep very tight chute that we were going to rappel down in our skis.

The way this works is you ski down and clip on to the rope. Then skiing backwards the guide slowly lowered us down in to the chute. It was one of the gnarliest things I have ever done. The photo below does not give any justice to how steep this was.

Once we got down to the bottom of the chute we got to a wide open bowl of untracked powder.

It was a bit crunchy below but was great skiing. After getting to the bottom, we took a long traverse that also included a rope portion where we had to slowly lower ourselves through an icy chute in the woods.

This part was a hiking trail along a pretty stream and waterfall that had frozen over. After the hiking trail we joined up with a road that took us to a very small hamlet that had a parking lot and a pommel horse. We took the pommel up and then skied down the valley through backyards, across foot bridges and at least one little park. Once we arrive in Alagna, it was 2pm. We left the house at 8am and we basically did one run. With our legs shot, we needed to hurry back up the mountain to not get trapped in Alagna. It is a 6 hour drive from Alagna to Champoluc so rather than break for lunch we grabbed the gondola out of town. Once we got to the top of the Bettaforca, we finally stopped for lunch at 3pm. It was a such an amazing time. Here’s our wrap photo.

Karen had a lovely day at the spa and Nate and Christine hit the piste runs. Tonight we are laying low in the cabin and Jeff is cooking us a delicious smelling polenta and mushroom dinner.

Chamonix

Photos from our Ski Guide Yesterday

By David on Wednesday, February 14, 2018

After such an epic day yesterday, our legs were pretty tired today. We headed over to Grand Montets, again, where the reservations for the high tram were full (yes they have reservations). We decided to wait in-line (on-line?) for our first run. After about 25 minutes, we boarded the tram and headed up. The snow was still quite good but pretty chopped up. We were able to find some goods hidden and still had some fresh tracks. On the way down, we were able to find a location to put the sticker for Jake. We are thinking of him the whole time we are here. In the background of the photo is the Glacier d’Argentiere

After making our way down, we took the Gondola on the frontside back up. The frontside is a bit lower and much more chopped up. Dave did find a small 4 foot cliff to jump off which he did successfully. The highlight of our day will be our Valentine’s Day dinner at Hameau Albert 1er which is a 2 Michelin Star restaurant. Although, we won’t have any money left after, we are looking forwards to it.

As promised below are the photos from our ski guide yesterday (unedited). You can click on the photos and enter full screen.

Note: Leave us a comment if this works. The internet is really slow so it is hard to tell if it is working.

Chamonix

Great Mountain, Bad Visibility

By Dave and Sara on Sunday, February 11, 2018

Not much to post today. The highlight of the day was getting the washing machine to work. We had so much laundry and it is great to get it all clean. Having a place with a kitchen means that we have been trying to eat in. Last night we made some Salmon and Romanesco. It was great to eat something fairly plain.

This morning we headed over to Grand Montets to ski. It is about 15 minutes outside of town and came highly recomended from the Davidsons. When we arrived, it was snowing pretty good. The conditions were great but the visibility was not. When you are in the clouds, it is snowing, and there are no trees, it is impossible to determine what is up and down. Undeterred, we skied a few runs from almost the top, but decided not to go all the way up because it was just too hard to see. We skied for about 3 or 4 hours and decided that it was getting too hard to see. The takeaways from our first day here in Chamonix is that the snow is fantastic and the mountain is really fun. They are expecting to get about 30 cm tonight so conditions should be fantastic tomorrow. We have a reservation to take the highest tram at Grand Montets tomorrow. Hopefully we will get some great photos/video of the good conditions for our loyal followers. Tonight we are going to make some pasta with leftover romanesco. Yum!

Zermatt

Skiing with a Guide Part 1

By Dave and Sara on Sunday, February 4, 2018

Today started as a great day. Dave finally woke up and didn’t feel extremely congested. After some breakfast, we met up with our guide for the day: David from Alpine Exposure. After a short walk we took the funicular up about 1000m followed by a cable car, followed by a very old tram. The tram itself is basically only there for guides and we were the only ones on it. Once we reached the top (3200m), it opened up on to a beautiful field of powder. As we skied it, I kept asking myself, where is everybody else? In California the snow would be all tracked out and there would be nothing soft left. Note: it has been over a week since they had much snow. While this area had some tracks, there was plenty of areas where we had long distances of completely untracked powder. The snow was a bit heavy here and it certainly was a thigh burner. Additionally, the runs were long. Very long. After two laps through this area it was already getting in to the afternoon. Below is a photo our guide took of Dave skiing out of a small coulier in powder.

Next stop was a quick break to warm up and hyrdate. We stopped at the Blue Lounge and had a hot water and lemon, and then we were off to try to eat lunch in Italy. Skiing from the western side of the mountain to the eastern side of the mountain takes at least an hour. That hour is all skiing. Once we got to the eastern side of the mountain, it was time to take the tram up to the top of the Matterhorn Glacier (3883m). This is the highest lift in all of Europe. Up here it was cold. I didn’t see a thermometer but it felt like it might have been colder than yesterday which was -11f. The elevation didn’t hit us too bad, but you could tell that you were feeling a bit loopy. From there we skied down to Italy and stopped for some lunch at the Rifugio Teodulo which was at 3317m. The combination of the altitude and not eating until almost 3pm made for a very interesting time. The bar was very cool. We sat on the guide side which is less fancy than the restaraunt but had much more character. We also learned that you can book rooms at this rifugio which also seemed really cool. We ate some sort of combination of semolina dumplings and French onion soup, and it was so good!

After refueling, it was time to head back towards Zermatt rushing to catch the last chair to bring us up for skiing some powder on the glacier on our way home. To be honest, Dave’s legs were very shot on this ride back to the town. It was about 4:30 and we had been skiing basically nothing but powder (some of which was heavy and/or chopped up) and his legs were dying. At this point, we ducked a rope and skied out on to the glacier to a wide open, untracked, powder field of powder that was much lighter. After skiing down it, we both commented that it was something we will remember for the rest of our lives. The skiing was super crusie-y and really fun! As we worked our way down, there got to be a point that Dave had to throw in the towel. He feared hurting himself as the skiing was somewhat technical and his legs did not have the gas left. Luckily before we stopped, we were able to get a picture of the three of us.

After making it to the next gondola, it was time to hitch a ride back to the village. We left the hotel at 9 am and got back at 5:30. It was a really long day. David was an awesome guide and we are hoping to ski with him again on Wednesday after they get a nice refresh of new snow tonight and tomorrow. Below is a map where I tried to remember what lifts we took and generally what we skied. Yellow are the lifts and the green is generally what we skied. I promise that this map does not do any justice on the shear distance we skied. I am guessing this is maybe the most vertical feet I have ever skied in a day.

After skiing we headed down to the spa in our hotel. Unfortunately, what we thought was a hot tub was more of a warm tub. Interestingly, it had these beds you lay on and it percolates ice cold water out of them. Maybe people are in to that, we were not. After a quick Sauna, we headed back to the room to drink some wine we purchased the day before. Also, it was coed naked, but us prude Americans wore our bathing suits.

Blog notes: I apologize about the large amount of text. Unfortunately, we were too busy skiing so we didn’t take many photos. Also, we will likely tag on our dinner experience on to tomorrow’s blog post as we are likely going to be too tired after we get back from dinner.

Ciao for now.

Tag Archives: Powder