Saturday 12th December - Pas de la Casa/Grau Roig

Another bright sunny morning, so plenty of sun cream and lip balm. However, it was notably colder this morning as we drove up past Canillo, El Tarter and Soldeu and parked up at Grau Roig. This area is over the back from Pas de la Casa, but when conditions are good it links all the way across the Grandvalira area back to Encamp, just a couple of kilometres from Andorra La Vella, covering a total of 103km of pistes with untold off piste availability.
This picture is looking down into Pas at the end of the area from Coll Blanc at 2528m.

This was the only run down into Pas to be opened, as they were running the snow cannons all day to try and get some coverage in time for Christmas week when the tourist season begins. It was good snow top and bottom, with an icy hardpack section in the middle so you needed to be alert! There are normally a lot of runs down into Pas and a new section is opening into Porte des Neiges in France which will add another 60km or so soon.

We got as far as this on the right, looking up to Cortals at the top of the Soldeu section, but because of the lack of snow across here, we were unable to connect into Soldeu. This is where the cable car from Encamp comes into from nearest Andorra La Vella. However, we were able to ski down Enradort, a nice fast red, and take the Llac de Cubil chair back across and ski down into Grau Roig again.
From there we took the track to Pressons, a frozen lake with a lovely restaurant, but the track was shocking and should never have been open - loads of rocks and ice, and quite a bit of damage to Hfu's rented board. We decided to use the Mirador black next time, which whilst it had snow on it still was in parts decidely hard work with very little snow coverage.
This is looking across Grau Roig:


We had a quick lunch with Andrea, our guide for the day from Australia, and then had a bit of a play the rest of the afternoon, mainly on the main drag from Coll Blanc down into Pas and the other side down into Grau Roig, before all too quickly it was 4pm and time to call it a day.
Here is the view up from Pas:


It was only 2 days, but gave a good impression of the 2 main ski areas, and left us all wanting to come back and see it in good snow conditions as many of the pistes were closed and some of the offpiste looked really good fun.
We drove back to Andorra La Vella for a fantastic dinner at El Bon Raco just on the outskirts of town, and headed back to Heathrow on Sunday afternoon after a leisurely stroll around the town in the morning.
I had fun with the Stockli's and they held up well despite the variable coverage, but I am still itching to use my Neo's - which will be 10th January now, in Alpe d'Huez, another 4 weeks away yet......