This morning we woke up to a winter wonderland up in the little medieval village. The forecast had snow overnight but we were very surprised by how much stuck, about 10 cm by 7am when we first opened the shutters. It was going to be an interesting ride out down the hill to the highway.
As Dave was warming up the car we got a message from our Airbnb host at a farm in the hills above Lucca. They were completely snowed in and their road was impassable, a big snow storm like this really is out of the ordinary here and so they offered us a refund and recommended we stay in the city where the roads would be cleared. We decided to head straight to Florence and called the hotel where we had booked the weekend. They said no problem the room was ready so we said good bye to the little medieval village and started the drive down the hill.
Luckily Dave has lots of snow driving experience as the road was narrow, twisty and unplowed. We got about halfway down before we hit a small uphill section and couldn’t get traction. Unfortunately the chains the rental agency gave us did not fit the car so we had to go without. It took us about 30 minutes of trying to get up the small, steep incline without sliding accidentally off the side and down into the valley but we made it. After that it was pretty mellow down to the autostrada and then once we got on that it was really easy, everything had been freshly plowed and the road was completely clear as if it hadn’t snowed at all.
It took about 2 hours to get until Florence (a much easier experience than getting into Genova even with the weather.) All the schools are closed and a lot of offices so everyone was out and about playing with sleds and getting in snowball fights. Our hotel is very close to the historic center but has a private parking lot. The room is nice and comfortable with a pretty view of the hills.
We had a boatload of laundry to do so we found a laundromat and had a very nice lunch around the corner while we waited for everything to finish. Lunch was at Trattoria Cantinetta Allegri.
Now we are back at the apartment resting and warming up before heading out this evening to see some sights and have dinner.
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.
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.
