Alpe d'Huez January 9th to 16th 2010

Its easy to let a bad trip tarnish your views on a ski resort. Unfortunately, I travelled with 8 fellow skiers and boarders and we were delayed, diverted, went the wrong way in a 6 hour taxi journey, and didn't have any cases or ski's for 3 days and lost 2 full skiing days as a result. HOWEVER, I still managed to have 4 and a half excellent days skiing in despite the hassle's, and would definitely put ADH up there with the best in terms of extent, lifts, scenery, and general all round f***ing good places to go.

I had bought my new Scott Neo's for this trip, so you can imagine how pissed off I was when I found out that these, along with my clothes and most other peoples gear were still at Gatwick and hadn't made it onto our flight! Sunday and Monday were lost as a result of delays and lack of equipment, so Tuesday morning we marched down to the hire shop and all got what we needed to in order to get on it. For me that meant buying a pair of sallopettes - every cloud has a silver lining, and I chose a lovely pair of blue Quiksilver pants that I had been after for a while....

I also needed ski's, and selected some Rossi Bandit 80's to get a feel for the all mountain wider skis. These things were shite, and had edges like rolling pins, but at least we managed to explore the immediate area on the Tuesday.



Our chalet was in a fantastic position, right on the edge of the Altiport green run which leads you down to the Marmottes and Alpe Auris (Scare Chair) lifts, with about 25m of off piste to head through in order to reach the piste. At last, I clipped into my bindings and headed off to the Marmottes lift with my Mrs (Ali), and Phil who was boarding with us. Phil is a decent boarder, and we are both very confident skiers, but the first run we came to at the top of the 2nd stage of the Marmottes lift was a black onto a difficult red with moguls, in fairly flat light! That's what you call throwing yourself in at the deep end. Phil did a lot of complaining about it being difficult and then headed straight down it without incident, whilst I ended up waiting for Ali for ages, as she was shitting it on the icy moguls.....

Eventually we got down and skied right back into the resort, underneath the DMC lift.
The main runs around the bowl leading into ADH are blues and greens, nice cruisy pistes which all inter-link so you can head back into any part of town from the top where the lifts drop off.

This photo is taken from the top of the first stage of the DMC looking back into town.

We skied up Signal in the afternoon, and watched as a kite skier took off and flew across the valley. There are some nice long runs and tons of offpiste down the back of Signal into Villard Reculas and we skied right down as far as we could before taking the lifts back up and skiing down the main red which is used at night for floodlit skiing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. By now, I was getting pissed off with the Bandit's as the edges were proper spent, although being over tired probably didn't help. Wilko joined us for the afternoon, he is a less experienced boarder, but wanted to get out and about and not spend all his time on the beginner slopes.
Phil took a big fall on the way back down Signal, took his eye off the slope as we started to relax and speed up, and caught his front edge landing an ollie and he went flying. Luckily he wasn't hurt, but he did have plenty of snow right up his top and down his pants!
This is what Signal looks like floodlit at night:

Before going back to the chalet, myself and Stewart (who had been playing on the greens all day and having a lesson) went down to the Intermarche at Marmottes Centre and got a crate of Kronenbourg and a litre of Vodka to have around the place. Back at the chalet, we took a cold beer each and headed into the hot tub, followed by a very hot sauna. Perfect finish to an active day.

Dinner, wine, beers, coffee, a good chat with the other people in the chalet, and in bed by midnight on a lovely clear night.

SOOOOOOOOOO imagine everyone's surprise when we awoke to 50cm of fresh snow! This was Stewart first thing in the morning at the door of the chalet, not believeing his eyes. He had never skied in fresh powder before, and after they had pisted the runs, it snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed....and continued all day too:

Phil and Wilko joined us for the day, along with Ali and me. Stewart and his Mrs decided to do their own thing and take it easy. We headed up the top of the DMC and found the visibility really bad. We had a play around higher up, but were not getting anywhere fast. The snow was up to our knees and whilst it was great fun, it was bloody hard work, and Wilko was really struggling. One time he went off piste without realising and ended up in snow up to his chest it was that deep! He had to eventually climb out on all 4's and take his board off, and walk 1/4 mile to the cafe to recover! Here he is after climbing out - he said he has never been so knackered in his life!

It was pretty cold today, and we were all knackered after the mad morning, so headed down for a good lunch at Chez Leo, at the back of the Marmottes Centre. Stew said he'd had an amazing morning on the freshies, although Zowie didn't share the experience. We headed back out in the afternoon and ploughed on as it continued to snow, by which time a metre of snow had fallen in total, it was amazing! Phil and Wilko bailed early doors, and Ali and I had the last run down at 4.45 with Stewart and Zowie before heading back to the chalet for another hot tub, sauna and beer session. We had a good laugh that night playing some games after dinner, and had plenty to drink too, and made plans to ski the next day with Tim and Gary who we had met staying in our chalet, and their mate Paul who was staying in town for 3 nights. Tim was going to be in charge of the itinerary for the day....not sure if that was a good idea bearing in mind he had spent a couple of visits to rehab himself....!!!!
Wednesday had been a good day though: