© Barnaby Bos
Cold, sunny days in Verbier
Exploring the farthest areas of the 4 Valleys
The conditions have been up and down here in Verbier over the past week, with snow earlier in the week turning into light rain to around 2100m. The last few days have seen glorious sunshine, and bitterly cold temperatures, with lows of -10ºC in the village, and even colder, down to -17ºC, up the mountain.
Up top, the snow is still as a fresh as if it had snowed yesterday, with roughly 30cm of powder underfoot. Though much of the easily accessed off-piste areas are heavily tracked out, there is still lots of amazing, hardly touched areas of the mountain available for those who are willing to work for it. With a base of 85cm in town, 265cm at 2200m, and 355cm at the top of the Col des Gentiannes, there’s no doubt that the snow is here to stay, which definitely bodes well for the late season.
The forecast for the rest of the week is for a mixture of light snow and cloud cover over the weekend, and then blue skies and bright sunshine from then on. There appears to be a very cold front coming in with some websites predicting temperatures as low as -22ºC at the top of Mont Fort, and -17ºC at 2300m.
This week, I managed to venture over to the other side of the 4 Vallees, beyond Siviez and Thyon. The journey over there was fantastic. Along the way, there is a large bowl with a few drag lifts accessing some incredible reds and blacks. Having hit the mountain nice and early, these runs were still almost untouched and it felt like I was putting in fresh turns on some clean corduroy. There was a thin 1cm layer of fresh snow on top of the hard pack, which provided great grip and confidence when skiing at high speed.
In Thyon, there is an area almost the same size as Verbier to ski, but I find that it tends to be quieter. First, I skied of my favourite runs in the 4 Vallees, Les Mayens, which has 850m of vertical descent and takes you for 3km down into Veysonnaz. Most of the way down the snow was grippy and forgiving, with only a few small sections with icy patches. It started becoming softer towards the bottom but the whole run was a pleasure to ski for the most part.
The Piste de l’Ours was half open, as it was hosting a race competition which meant that traffic was squeezed into a smaller area of piste. After the mid station, it opened up into the full slope again but I found the run to be very icy most of the way down. Catching the 4-man chairlift up, we then skied down the Etherolla black piste. This is an awesome run with a good level of pitch, yet wide enough to put in some large, fast turns. On top of this, it was very smooth with only a few small bumps nearer the bottom of the piste.
Back over Verbier way, the runs are in a slightly better condition I would say. Despite Chassoure-Tortin being a huge mogul field once again, towards the right-hand side you can find good snow and smaller moguls, making it easier to tackle the behemoth itinerary run. Without a doubt, one of the best runs in the area is to ski from the top of Lac 1 chairlift all the way down to Le Rouge, around 6km in total. Quite often this route can become quite bumpy towards the end of the day, given the large number of skiers heading back home to Verbier. Recently, however, the run has been smooth and enjoyable for the whole day, with only a few bumps to watch out for.
Finishing off at Le Rouge apres-bar was a great way to end a long day with fun, upbeat music being played until 19:00. If you have a full 4 Vallees ski pass, then I would definitely recommend hitting the slopes early and heading as far over as you can get, as the skiing is fantastic along the way.