Hitting Kickers

Well, technically not a full weekend, but have just come back from a day on the slopes at Les Arcs.

After months of hassle with lastminute.com trying to sort the tickets out, we booked onto a Eurostar from London to Bourg Saint Maurice leaving on Friday evening arriving 6:30am Saturday, before heading back to London at 10:15 pm on Saturday getting back into London at 7:30am on Sunday. So 2 nights on the train, no accomomodation costs and one day to make the most you can of your time on the slopes.

Arrived into Waterloo on Friday to scenes of chaos. All Eurostar services had been cancelled due to a fire on the line just outside central London. People we’re being turned away and told no services would be running until the Saturday morning at best.

Fortunately, they took the decision to run the ski train from Ashford and ferry us all down in coaches. Massive relief…

Good laugh on the train, with a good mix of holiday weekers and one day heros all in positive spirits with many of us getting stuck into a few bevvies. Called it a night at around 2am for a few hours sleep before arriving into Bourg at about 8am, a little later than scheduled, but still leaving us plenty of time to get sorted.

Bourg Saint Maurice station is just a short transfer to Les Arcs, so we decided to ride there. Tignes was reported to have slightly better conditions, but would have involved a pricey cab ride to be shared between just 2 of us, so Les Arcs it was to be. Lift passes bought and luggage left at BSG, we got the funicular up to Arc 1650 and then a bus up to 2000, and we’re hitting the somewhat deserted slopes at around 9am.

Glorious sunshine all day… probably the hottest conditions I’ve ever snowboarded in, and great visibility until late in the day. The pistes were hard and packed which lead to some fast riding. Without any fresh snow for a week or so, there didn’t seem to be many natural kickers or rollers about so there weren’t many opportunities for pulling piste-side jumps. Off piste was pretty crusty and generally not worth the effort in the morning. By about midday things started to soften up a bit and generally got slushier throughout the afternoon, in a good way.

Les Arcs is probably one of the uglist resorts I’ve ridden - hence no photos I’m afraid - but it does have some great runs. After riding the Swiss Wall in Avoriaz earlier this year, I was loving the steep mogul runs Les Arcs had to offer. We headed for them first thing and just before lunch. Tiring but rewarding.

Massive bonus was a total lack of lift queues, I suspect as a result of Saturday being the main change over day. Also this meant few childen and innexperienced skiers/riders out there.

With a couple of stops aside, we rode from 9 til 4:30pm and covered loads of ground. Whilst we didn’t get much freestyling in I did manage to work on my switch riding a bit, which is coming on well. Decided next time I go for a week or more, I’ll definitely put much more effort into riding switch, possibly designating a whole day to focus on it.

Looks like there is snow ahead for Les Arcs, and a good end of season to come. Ugly as sin, but loads of fun to be had.

So, coming off the hill yesterday evening, a few apres beers watching France beat Scotland in the 6 nations, then back down to Bourg for the train and the long sleep home. Now have Sunday afternoon to watch the football and chill out with the family. What did you do this weekend?

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 18th, 2007 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Ski travel, Les Arcs, France. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.