"Early season multiday ski touring in the Queyras Regional Park, staying in Gites with showers and plentiful home cooking each night. This is a beautiful area well away from the major resorts, where the skiing is characterised by steady climbs and numerous lovely descents in pine forests, often skiing on powder at this time of year."
5 days
Intermediate
4:1
Dates:
06 - 10 Feb '12
Price:
£575
Ski Ability:
3+
Fitness:
3+
Experience: You need some previous ski touring experience to join this tour.
Included:Guiding Fees and Expenses.
Other Costs:Gite nights, food, travel and uplift during the tour ~ £350
This is a great early season multiday touring area, with plenty of good varied descents often skiing on powder snow if you go in February. There are numerous ways to ski through the Queyras Park, linking up Gites along the way.
Due to the nature and variety of terrain, touring is possible in the area in most weather and snow conditions.
We meet initially in La Grave, then drive over to the Queyras to begin our tour.
Sample Itinerary
Subject to weather and snow conditions, the plan for the week is as follows:-
Day 0- Sun
PM Pickup at Grenoble Airport, travel to La Grave - discuss plans, sort food and kit, overnight in valley.
Day 1 - Mon
Early drive to St Veran, from where we use the lift system to gain height, before taking in a good north facing descent en route to the Refuge Col D'Agnel. 600m ascent, 800m descent ~4-5hrs. Various routes are possible to reach the hut.
Day 2 - Tue
Circular day tour from the Col D'Agnel, traversing across into Italy and back - 870m ascent and descent ~5-6hrs. Overnight at the refuge.
Day 3 - Wed
We now head north, crossing two cols via a series of great north facing descents to our gite at Ristolas. 500m ascent, 1500m descent ~4-5hrs. We also have the option of taking another summit to make the day a bit longer.
Day 4 - Thur
A 5 min bus journey takes us to Arbries, from where we use uplift then skins in order to link up 3 north facing descents to our final gite at the head of the valley. 5-800m ascent, 11-1400m descent ~5-6hrs.
Day 5 - Fri
On our final day, we make a great circular day tour from the gite - again with the possiblility of crossing over into Italy. 900m ascent and descent ~5-6hrs - longer and shorter options are also available. PM return to St Veran to pick up the car, before driving back to La Grave.
Day 6 - Sat
AM, early start to make the drop off at Grenoble Airport.
Food and Accommodation
We run all of our ski tours on a guiding & instruction only basis. Food and accommodation must be paid for seperately. Our recommended hotel and meeting point in La Grave is the friendly and comfortable Hotel Edelweiss** run by British/Dutch couple, Robin and Marlon - who we will happily put you in touch with if you'd like to reserve a room (or the hotel can help arrange a twin room with a fellow course member if you like). You are however free to make other accomodation arrangements if you choose (La Grave also has a number of other hotels, gites and rental appartments available at reasonable prices - see the La Grave website for more details). The guide will book other accommodation during the tour, which you pay for direct as we go along.
Travel
Full travel details are provided with your joining instructions. La Grave is most easily reached by a low cost flight to Grenoble, then via bus to La Grave. If you choose to hire a car, then driving times to La Grave are about 1.5hrs from Grenoble, 2.5hrs from Lyon, Chambery or Turin and up to 4hrs from Geneva.
To make travel arrangements a little easier for this tour, we are arranging a free Grenoble Airport Pick up and drop off at the start and the end of the tour, to coincide with Easyjet flights from Gatwick.
We will be picking up at Grenoble Airport on Sun 5th Feb at17.30pm and dropping off on Sat 11th Feb at 7.30am . If you would like to be picked up or dropped off at the airport at these times, then just let us know when you book.
Ability and Experience
You need to be a good off piste skier (see ski ability level 3) able to put linked turns down in powder, with previous ski touring experience in order to join this tour. The week involves 5-6 hour days with generally steady climbs and typically 6-800m ascent a day - so you can expect to be skinning for 3-4 hours a day (see fitness level 3).
Equipment
We will supply you with a full kit list. You are responsible for bringing personal clothing, a rucsac and ski mountaineering skis, boots and kit (local hire is available). We are delighted to be working on this tour with Backcountry UK, who provide excellent service and advice as a leading retailer of ski mountaineering equipment in the UK.
