Hitting Kickers

An awesome week snowboarding in Serre Chevalier last week. Finally getting round to post about it. Here’s goes.

After a few large group trips, this was going to a small, hardcore, flat out snowboarding trip with just 3 of us in total.

Day one started at 3am in South London with taxi followed by bus to Stansted Airport for a 7am flight. Landed in Turin at 10am, picked up our hire car and started the 2 hour drive to Serre Chevalier.

Turned out to be a really easy drive, with some cool scenes along the way. Started getting exciting when we went through the ski resort of Montgenevre, before descending into Briancon and passing through Chantermerle en route to our destination, Villeneuve at Serre Chevalier 1400.

We couldn’t get into our apartment until 5pm, and at this time it was only lunchtime so we changed into our snowboard gear in the street, fitted our bindings and headed for the nearest telecabin.

The forecast had been for a dusting of snow the night before and that seemed to have been the case, though it was clear blue skies by this point. Much excitement on the first lift up.

We spent the next 3 or 4 hours hitting up the upper Villeneuve runs towards Monetier, before heading back to our apartment to check in.

Day two we decided to get over to the far side of the mountain and check out the Briancon runs before heading back via Chantermerle. After studying the piste map over night we worked out a route, and got cracking via a network of chair lifts. Well worth the effort. There’s a number of mainly red runs, and with the pistes fairly hard packed and fast, we had a great morning caning it down the tree lined slopes, hitting piste-side kickers and launching off any ledge and roller we could find.

We were quickly starting to realise why this place is regarded alongside Chamonix as one of the top snowboarding resorts in Europe.

More of the same in Chantermerle in the afternoon, and a solid days riding all in all. Though in all honesty, we were hoping the forecast for snow over night was going to come true, as the odd icy patch was appearing here and there.

Waking up on day three, we were indeed greeted by heavy, heavy snowfall. Estimates ranged from a foot to a metre of snowfall at resort level in a day. It snowed all day in fact, leaving visibility pretty poor (was also having trouble with my goggles steaming up that day) but some great powder, some of the best I think I’ve ever ridden.

It was a very tiring day though, fighting the visibility issues, and looking for slopes steep enough for us to keep some decent speeds up.

Day four was a pure bluebird powder day and we were up for first lift near enough, and bar an hour around lunchtime when the Porrel telecabin broke down in Briancon leaving us stranded, we were on the hill til last lift. Absolute belter.

We’d earnt ourselves a few beers after that and hit the après. Word of warning if you find yourself drinking in Villeneuve: watch out for the Eichbrau. Damn, that’s a strong pint!

Day 5 saw a slow start thanks to the beers from the night before. Feeling pretty shitty but another sunny, blue-sky day so up the hill we went. Spent a couple of hours sessioning the Grand Serre lift, hitting the powder bowl under the lift and took a couple of laps round the boarder cross.

Day 6, after some regrets about being hungover the day before we had an early start and maxed it out with a hefty 7 hours snowboarding, spending most of the day in Monetier. We found a good ledge off a black run that we sessioned most of the morning. Also ended up in the snow park high up between Chantermerle and Villeneuve. Hit a few things, and pleased not to stack on any of the rails.

An awesome day, rounded off by our only seriously large night out. Hit the Grotte and the (only) club in Villeneuve for many, many beers. Crawled home around 5:30am fully prepared to right off the morning on the hill the next day.

So, day 7 started about 12:30pm. Pretty shaky at first but blew the cobwebs away before long. Hit up a load of tree runs, headed back over to Monetier for a couple more hits on our ledge, though it was starting to lose its shape.

Ended the day getting the last lift up Casse du Beef chairlift and coming down the tree run under the chair. Some of the softest powder we found there at the back end of the week.

Day 8 was time to go home. Our flight was leaving Turin at 9pm, so we could get a days riding in and had decided to check out Montgenevre. With our 8 day lift pass, we were entitled to use a day at one of the neighbouring resorts for no extra cost.

Montgenevre had come highly recommended, so I was keen to see it for myself. Being a Saturday, it seemed to be quite busy with weekenders and day trippers.

We tried to cover as much ground as possible, found some powder in their designated free ride zone, plus a few kickers to hit. Looks like a cool place I’d like to go back to, maybe for a long weekend trip.

A great week all in all. A few things I would like to have done more of - riding fakie, more spins off kickers - and will have to force more of that next time I go, but pretty pleased with the way I was riding. Definitely improved my powder riding. Very confident on any terrain now on or off piste. Enjoyed hitting a few ledges a small cliffs, and taking on the tree runs particularly.

I took loads of footage on the helmet cam, which I’ll try to cut down into something worth posting over the coming weeks.

Looks like this will be my last major trip of the season, but will try to squeeze in an extra weekend here or there if I can.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 6:14 pm and is filed under Ski travel, Snowboarding, France, Serre Chevalier, Montgenevre. 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.