Day 19: Meribel, Les Menuires, Val Thorens

First the news from last night. Meribel beat Courchevel 9-4 in the ice-hockey. An enthusiastic crowd of somewhat less than 100 people watched the match. A lot of the support was in English. The choice of music (which appeared at every break in play) was slightly weird. I wasn't expecting "Mrs Robinson". For some reason I hadn't worked out that an ice rink might be a cold place, so despite all my outside clothing I was cold by the end of the event. The driver of the ice resurfacing machine got a big cheer when he ran out of water half way through the job. One of the Meribel players was sin-binned for obstruction. It looked exactly the same as the rest of the play to me.

Bottom of Europa Cup course

I was woken by a big crash at 8am, which turned out to be the weird triangular window in my room falling open. That may explain why I was so cold!

The Europa Cup  is in town, with three races. There was an Austrian standing on a balcony above where I took this radio-ing comments on the course back up the mountain for his team, apparently with good effect, since an Austrian won.

Mary suggested that the Messes slopes above Les Menuires might be good, and, indeed they were. The snow was much nicer there again. This did cause me to find the other half of Les Menuires, which means I should maybe revisit my assertion that it doesn't look like some piece of the banlieus dumped in the Alps.

Les Menuires

Mont Blanc in the distance from Bouchet

Looking South(ish) from Bouchet

Since the snow was good and I had time I decided to  see if I could get to the top of the whole 3Vallees, so up to Val Thorens then up the bubble and cable car (Cime Caron) which they claim is at 3200m. From there down a black run round the back (really in the fourth valley of the Trois Vallees) and then up two slow chair lifts to they to the top of Bouchet at 3230m. Back down to Val Thorens and then up on the wrong lift so had a quick run down a nice red (the snow in Val Thorens was nice today!). Up and down via Mottaret to Meribel. A long day, which My Tracks reckons at close to 95km (which may be a slight under-estimate, since the maps shows some use of the transporter beam).


For the benefit of The Editor I have included some photos that don't include Mont Blanc today, though I believe that there's an obscure French law (<insert link to made up Wikipedia article here>) that says you have to have at least one picture of Mont Blanc every day if you can see it.