It’s day 2 of our Meribel and the 3 Valleys build up to half term focus.
Monday 8th February 2016
The weather forecast looked like it would be one of those days where in the evening beforehand you mutter the words ‘no more beer for me it’s a powder day tomorrow’!
So up nice an early to make first tracks in the ‘powder’ raring to go. You’re probably thinking I’m going to write something like ‘what powder?’ or ‘i really should have had that extra beer last night as today’s snow is pants’!
But NO! Not only was powder present it was there with much of its friends. Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t deep enough to flow over your head and can’t breath. But there was best part of a foot of light fluffy heaven so all was good.
But do you know what the best bit was? It seems like people in resort this week don’t want to mess it up as I had first tracks for a couple of hours! And yes I did have a big grin! 🙂
Right so on to the weather and snow conditions, quite the mixed bag today and like a good horror film it doesn’t have a happy ending!
But before that, lets start with the weather in Meribel first thing. As mentioned above we were expecting a nice sunny day but it was quite cloudy, i always think if you are going to give us a cloudy day with flat light you might as well snow too!
Still hit the slopes feeling fresh and by 10:30 the Sun made an appearance, it pushed away all the clouds and showed Meribel in all its snowy glory!
We skied to Courchevel yesterday (see yesterday’s post) so we thought we would go the other way to report back on how Val Thorens was doing.
Big crowds hanging around the resort of Val Thorens as if they were waiting for someone to shout ‘GO!’ before they were allowed to venture further. I didn’t wait for the green light and skipped around the resort testing their powder and creating pretty lines.
Around 13:00 the wind started to show its hand and the flags at the 360 bar (I wasn’t drinking honestly!) were as solid as if they were placed in the North Pole. We decided to get back to the Meribel valley.
If you remember one thing about these little posts it should be this: in the 3 valleys when the wind comes lift start to close down, get in your valley!
It was quite lucky too as wouldn’t you believe it the lifts started to close.
All day the pistes were empty, at times we had them to ourselves. It was if this was the first or last week of the season, where were all the skiers??
We skied on down the Mottaret around 14:00 for a bite to eat, and WOW!
I have lived in the 3 valleys for over 5 years and I have never seen so many people queuing for the three main lifts in Mottaret.
Imagine all the skiers from Courchevel AND all the skiers from Val Thorens all in one place trying to get home and you would be spot on! That is exactly what was happening!
There were some very worried looking faces in the queues. However on the up side the taxi drivers face had big grins!
By about 15:00 it was hard to get out of Meribel, we decided to call it a day. After all the lifts might be closed, but the bar is aways open…