In 2013, Mandy and I decided to visit a resort we'd never been to before, La Plagne.
Saturday
A stupidly early start for a, supposed, 6:05 flight held out a vague hope of an afternoon's skiing, but when we sat on the plane for two hours at Gatwick due to fog at Grenoble, we knew that wouldn't happen.
Grenoble can't really cope with the volume of people going through in ski season any more and it was pretty chaotic.
Transfer, about 2.5 hours, but relaxing and uneventful. Not much snow low down, but plenty as we started to climb into the mountains and well below our resort at 1800M.
Chalet Foret a little out of the way and a bit basic, despite being quite new (one socket in the room, no reading lamps over the beds, 2 hooks on the back of the door only. Staff friendly though and chalet was generally clean
Chalet Foret, La Plagne 1800
We walked up to La Plagne Centre to buy lift passes and look around. It's a very ugly ski-resort complex with no alpine charm and surprisingly limited shopping and eating options, given its fairly considerable size.
The track from our chalet to the centre
Dinner in our Chalet was pretty good. We shared the chalet with a group of 7 Welsh snowboarders (we did wonder for a bit, but they proved to be very considerate and were usually in bed by midnight), a couple in their 40s and two men in their mid 30s.
Sunday
We had a sunny start, so we walked about 300m down the track outside the chalet and found our way out onto the piste leading down from Centre to La Plagne 1800.
The snow was in generally good condition and we hopped onto a couple of lifts that took us up to drop down into the Champeray area, which was bathed in sunshine.
Some lovely weather and decent skiing
We had a great day's skiing, although (as was to be the pattern), it clouded up after lunch and visibilty reduced as the light became very flat.
Monday
Monday was a gloriously sunny day from start to finish, but I'd been striken with a stomach bug and barely got out of bed all day after a night with virtually no sleep.
Mandy skiied and enjoyed the day.
I ate a little bread and drank some tea and water - Not the best day's holiday I've ever had!
Tuesday
Tuesday we had a gentle day as I was feeling weak, having to stop after 500m on a blue, unheard of...
We headed over to Champeray again for lunch (I restricted myself to a thin - and horribly overpriced - packet soup, but frankly it was still as much as I think my stomach was ready for).
I don't look well, do I?
I felt better as the day went on, but visibility decreased as it clouded over in the afternoon and we headed back to the chalet fairly early.
Wednesday
Mandy had been sick in the night (the 'bug' went around a number of guests in the chalet over the course of the week), but she bravely struggled out to ski (I think mostly to make a point of what a wimp I am).
After a while she suggested I carry on alone, as she wanted to take it easy.
I intended to head over to Les Arcs, but as I was alone decided to make my way up to the top of the Glacier and do the reds and blacks up there.
Sadly, after a long, quite cold, journey, it turned out the lift to the main red was closed, so I did the Black, Glacier, which was great, covered in soft moguls and a challenge, but an enjoyable one, albeit a bit spoilt by having to pick my way through less experienced skiiers who hadn't noticed there was no red open.
One run was enough and as I headed back towards Les Arcs, I met Mandy, calling it a day around 12:30.
The Vanois Express
I skiied down the runs towards the Vanois Express lift, the biggest cable car in the alps, apparently, which is an impressive double decker affair linking the Les Arcs and La Plagne areas.
I then took a few lifts up and across and dropped into Les Arcs 1800 for a snack lunch. Very warm here, but the snow was less icy and the visibilty much better in Les Arc than it had been in La Plagne.
View towards Les Arcs from the Vanois Express
I headed up to the top of the resort on the Transarc chair lift and then skiied down Grand Renard, picking up a blue traverse to head back to the Peisy area and then down Ours (a red) to the cable car, not really sure how long it would take.
A run somewhere
I skiied a few more runs in La Plagne on the way back, including a less than fun run down the Les Sources red, which was busy with inexperienced skiiers struggling with terribly flat light by 3PM.
I dropped down into La Plagne Bellecote and caught the bus back to our chalet, it only being one stop from there.
Thursday
We decided to go and ski some more in Les Arcs on Thursday as Mandy hadn't been there yet.
The runs down to the huge cable car were treacherously icy as it had clearly rained on them and then frozen. One black, which I tackled but Mandy wisely bypassed, was frozen solid with a blue ice crust. It felt not unlike I'd imagine skiing down a bobsleigh run is and it was with great relief, and a little satisfaction, that I reached the bottom without falling.
Mandy takes a break
We met up again at the large cable car and crossed over to Les Arcs.
Pistes were never busy
We skiied around the area, returning via the Grand Renard after lunch and then made our way back via Chavettes to Plagne Bellecote.
Friday
It was snowing when we woke up and foggy, so we thought we'd drop down towards Montalbert, hoping for better vis amongst the trees. We got that, but it was accompanied by rain and we were soon feeling wet and cold, so made our way back up to Aime La Plagne, where it was snowing, but vis was dreadful. After a break for a hot drink and a look in a few shops, we tried a couple of blues, but again the vis was poor and we weren't having any fun.
The choice was half decent vis in the rain, dreadful vis in the snow or give up.
Mandy skiing, but not on Friday!
We compromised on the latter, grabbing some lunch from the Spar in 1800 and having lunch for an hour or so in the chalet.
It didn't look any better, but I was determined to go out, so we both caught the bus back to Bellecote and set off up Arpette, me with a view to heading towards Les Arcs.
Mandy took the blue back to Bellecote and I soon gave up the ghost, dropping down to the Arpette lift to return to the top of the blue and follow her down.
The bottom of the run was actually quite nice and we both, unknown to each other, did a second run on it, but at that we both called it a day and bumped into each other looking around the shops.
After a quick look around we boarded the bus and returned to the chalet to shower, change and pack.
Saturday
We had a very early start for our return to the UK and it was snowing and well below freezing as we trudged up to the bus stop in plenty of time for the coach.
We stood around and just after our pick-up time a coach appeared, but after waiting just across the road, it drove off in the direction of La Plagne Bellecote. It turned out some 20 minutes later that this was our coach and the rep couldn't be bothered to cross the road to check we were in the bus stop we'd been told to wait in and left us freezing there for 30 minutes. Needless to say this was the final straw for us with Ski World and they won't be getting our business in future years. If the rep had apologised instead of making pathetic excuses for not getting her lazy arse off the bus we might have had a little more sympathy...
We got back to the chaos that is Grenoble and battled through a check out scrum worthy of Sharm El Sheikh and finally boarded the flight home.
We were home in time for a late lunch and were able to start sorting things out before I had to go back to work on Monday.
Conclusion
We both felt La Plagne and Les Arcs were unexpectedly good for skiing.
There's plenty of wide open off piste skiing, if that's your thing and whilst there aren't that many really tough runs marked, many of the blues and reds are more challenging than their gradings suggest, quite the opposite of the 3 Valleys, in our experience.
Away from the resort centres, there are plenty of small bars and restaurants, much more akin to Austria or Switzerland, which lends the resort (especially La Plagne) more alpine charm than most French resorts can muster.
Some of the lifts are, as we'd read, a bit old and slow, but we didn't encounter any queues of note (admittedly, out of the school holiday peaks) and connections were generally good, if there were, perhaps, a few too many sections involving flats or slight uphills between lifts.
We both agreed that we'd be very happy to return to La Plagne, but we wouldn't bother with the Chalet Foret again, although it hadn't actually beeen bad, just not good enough to stay at again.
