Today we all took the day off from skiing to do a little sightseeing and wine tasting around the Valley.
We started the day with a coffee and pastry at a bar across from the apartment (very traditional Italian breakfast) and then jumped in the car and headed down the valley. A bluebird day, much different than the wintry mix we drove up under, made the valley look a lot different and more inviting. At the base of the Ayas valley where we are staying is the town of Verres. There’s a pretty cool castle there you can see from the road so we decided to check it out. The drive took us through the old part of the town which was small but cute and still decorated from Carnivale. The castle sits above the old town on a hill (if you recall from a previous post you can see the neighboring castles along the valley so they sit up a little above the towns). The visit was very reasonable so we decided to go in. Glad we did, it was really well preserved and very cool. Nice view of the mountains too.
From the castle we took the autostrada to the regional capital Aosta. We had a nice walk through the historic area which includes the old Roman city walls and then had lunch. The mountains are visible all around the city.
Leaving Aosta after lunch we headed to a wine tasting appointment Jeff made for a winery called Grosjean. The winery is family run and one of the original modern day wineries in the Aosta region. The grandfather, Dauphine, started making wine in the late 60s, reviving a wine business in the region that had gone away in the previous century. Our visit was hosted by Simone, one of the grandchildren still active in running the family business. He was very knowledgeable and it was fascinating afternoon. The family, along with others in the region, are dedicated to bringing back many of the indignious grapes to the area that haven’t been cultivated in a long time. Their wine is available in the US (one of their whites is on the menu at Al’s Place in SF) so check it out!
We spent a while at the winery chatting with Simone and tasting the wines so when we finally left we decided to grab stuff for dinner at the grocery store down in the valley and cook a simple dinner at home. Dave, Sara and Jeff are confirmed on their helicopter tomorrow morning early so it’s a quiet night in Champoluc. Karen is headed to a spa and Christine and Nate have another day planned on the slopes.
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.
We took a few lifts up and arrived to the ridge line between the valley we are staying in and the next valley over. Fabio led us through the off piste, it hasn’t snowed here in a while so the conditions were a little tricky. By the time we made it to the other side of the second valley it was lunch and we stopped at a great place with an amazing view of the Monte Rosa. After lunch we split up and Sara, Dave, Nate, Jeff and Fabio did another off piste run headed back to Champoluc. We came through this crazy couloir/gully that was beautiful and at the end we had to walk across an old avalanche path.
