Bluebird Day in Val d'Isere

We arrived in Val d'Isere on Tuesday. Finally, on Friday, we had a bluebird day for skiing! YEA! We can see! Skiing by braille is challenging. Skiing when you can actually see is fun!

Like most resorts we have visited in Europe, the main mountain at the base (in this case, 2) is very intimidating, and the runs you see coming down from the top look impossibly hard, but you take a series of lifts up to the top and there is all sorts of easier skiing up there.

As you might expect on a Friday bluebird day, it was very crowded.

Queue management at Val d'Isere, as we have experienced in all of Europe, leaves much to be desired. We really wish the mountain managers would come to resorts in the U.S. like Big Sky, Montana or Jackson Hole, Wyoming to study how queues are handled there. Without much effort, the queueing could be redesigned to improve each skier's experience. Currently, it is quite simply insane. You feel like part cattle and part sardine, as you move downhill through the line, fighting not to run into anyone else, and fighting not get run into by another skier. For anyone who's claustrophobic (and even for someone who's not), it is unacceptable. This detracts from the skiing experience. And yet, everyone in Europe seems to accept this as ok! It is not ok!!! No!! It is mainly why we do not want to return to ski here!

Aside from our negative experience of waiting in lift lines, we had a delightful day. This was our 18th day of skiing in Europe in 2020. So far, we've skied around 200,000 vertical feet, averaging close to 11,000 vertical feet per day. Of our 18 ski days, this was the 5th day with fresh snow. So far we have skied in 6 countries, and 9 different resorts. We would rank St. Moritz as our best ski experience, mostly because of more polite crowds in the queues. The layout there also lends itself to easier orientation.

Here in Val d'Isere, after so much snow, conditions were great on top.

From the top, we could see the lake dammed up at nearby Tignes.

We ended up at a place called "The Beach" for our lunch; we had quiche for the first time in Europe, and it was delicious! And so was the Napoleon!

Our lunch spot is called "The Beach" because in the summertime there's a lake right out in front of the building. Now the lake is covered in a blanket of pure, untouched snow.

The highlight of the day was skiing a long, powder-filled off-piste run similar to the Liberty Bowl in Big Sky, though not quite as steep at the top. The run is called "Germain Mattis" in the "Le Laisinant" area of the resort. I took a video of Brock, and he sprayed me with snow at the end!

We enjoyed "Germain Mattis" so much that we went back and skied it one more time. You can see the wide run above and to the right.

After that, our legs were shot. Right at the bottom of the lift, we caught the bus back to the hotel and relaxed for the rest of the day. After stretching, naps, and massages, we had another fantastic dinner at the hotel and turned in for the night.

We've earned a Saturday day off from skiing to knock around town.