T-Bar Heaven (From early Feb.)

The storm looked like it was going to hit hard a bit east of us, so we piled in the car and headed out to the Queyras.  This is a small area close to the Italian border.  For those of you who didn't know parts of Italy have broken records for snow-fall this year.  Just meters and meters of base with deep snow continuing to fall.  The plan was to ski these amazing little hills with great trees and powder while the storm was on, then head back to La Grave in time to see the top open.  

We skied at Abries for a day to begin with.  Luckily for me, Kurt had spent a week here earlier in the season and had dialed in many of the runs to hit.  The most amazing thing about the place is that nobody seems to ski off-piste there.  For the entire day we were the only ones skiing epic runs off of the north side of the resort right down to the road.  They even had a shuttle bus at the base of the road to take you back to the lift.  Honestly, when I say we were the only two skiing these slopes, it is the actual truth.  Not one other person back there.  The terrain was all time as well.  Steep, tree skiing in over-the-head powder.  Lot's of steep little mini-golf style terrain.  It was fun to ski something totally different than the alpine style skiing in La Grave.

We skied Abries again in the morning the following day, and moved over to San Veron in the afternoon.  They had a very similar north aspect that you could drop off of and head out a valley to get back to town.  The most interesting part was the very upper north face pitches.  They all dropped off into the amazing couloirs.  Unfortunately we skipped them due to lack of visibility, but I think they deserve a trip back for sure.

One of my favorite parts of the whole trip, was how many t-bars there were.  T-bars that went on for miles.  It was one t-bar to another, for well over 20 minutes and over a thousand meters.  Reminded me of riding the t-bar down in White Pass when I was a kid.  We got word that the telepherique looked like it was going to open the following day, so we headed back home and with perfect timing, had another amazing day at La Grave...