Back from a very snowy week on our Queyras Ski Tour this year. This is one of the very few areas of the Alps where you can enjoy a multiday tour early in the season – and early season is the best time to visit the Queyras, with lovely powder skiing in open larch forests almost guaranteed at this time of year. We started the week at St Veran, making our way up through the lift system before skinning up to the Chateau Reynard. A long ski down the SW face gave some good turns in the upper half, before we donned skins again to head up to the Refuge Blanche for 2 nights.
The welcome and food here was excellent as usual and we had the place to ourselves the first night, being joined by a group of gendarmes training to be in the mountain rescue team the following night. The first day we skied two local cols (one in the morning and one in the afternoon) in very snowy weather (which meant low vis but plenty of great powder), then the next day headed back out to St Veran putting the track in over the Col de Longet to get more good powder en route to Ristolas via a short road transfer.
Wednesday dawned clear with bluebird skies, so we took the lifts above Arbries in order to ski down through the forest and skin up l’Epyiol for a sublime descent in deep deep powder down the lovely Gite in Le Roux – definitely some of the best snow I’ve skied in many years! On the final day the weather was kicking off big style, so we headed back to Arbries to enjoy some more amazing tree skiing off the lifts, before making a long snowy drive back to La Grave to finish off the week. You know you are onto a good thing when you get to put a fresh skinning track in every day of the week, so all in all a great time and good company – with excellent snow to boot.
