π
2018-01-04 01:01
in Nsnow, Snow
We had our hopes up, arriving during a snowstorm that made it hard to even get there, but sadly it was a warm snowstorm, and everything below 2000m got rained on.
The next morning, we showed up at Les Arcs 1600, and they warned us that just about everything was closed. The bottom was for avalanche danger and crappy wet snow, while the top was closed for avalanche danger and high winds, so we just went home.
what a shame given that quite a bit of snow did fall, even at town level (although it was wet with rain on top)
The next day, we tried again, and only the bottom boring part of the mountain was opened. The top was closed due to wind again, closed as in we never ever got to see les Arcs 1950 and les Arcs 2000 during our 6 days there :( Still, bottom o fthe mountain without rain is better than nothing at all, so we went for that:
ultimately it's an old badly designed mountain setup that doesn't account for bad weather, and segments itself as soon as wind arrives
Bourg St Maurice
The main train station
a little bit of very wet powder
one of the few bottom lifts (below freezing level)
more wet powder, not great but better than nothing
cable car to La Plagne, the other side of the resort we never reached due to winds
By the afternoon, wind was still too strong to get to Arc 2000, but at least we got nice views:
After a nice day at Tignes, we came back to ParadiSki the next day, and sure enough wind soon became a problem again :(
I made the mistake of thinking the weather would be good enough to attempt a crossing to La Plagne to see the other side of the resort, but by the time we got to the cable car, the only ways to cross were closed due to wind and not scheduled to re-open. We then wasted time going back and undoing the long crossing we had just done, just to be told that the way up to les Arcs 2000 wws also closed due to wind, and that we weren't missing much anyway because virtually everything up there was closed, you guessed it, due to wind. What a crummy unsheltered resort...
Needless to say that by then I was really starting not to start this resort, so much time wasted...
early morning, things were looking open, but it didn't last
we made a beeline for the cable car to the other valley
we made it across to where it was nicely raining, and came back to our side so as not to get stuck
nice village down there
back to Arc 1600, the boring part of the resort, but what was open
Arturo seems always happy, no matter what :)
I got more on the pissed off side, called it a day and went back home
what a shame everything was closed, the views were otherwise nice
And on this not high note, that was it for ParadiSki. If I had not made the wrong call of trying to go to val d'Isère on our last day, and getting stuck there without being able to ski at all, we might actually have seen a bit more of ParadiSki on our late day, but considering how unreliable this resort had been, I expected it would fail us again that last day, when in fact it had portions of it open when Tignes and Val d'Isère were virtually fully closed. Sigh... |
