Verbier Archives - Dave and Sara’s Excellent 2018 Adventure

Last Day in Switzerland

By Dave and Sara on Friday, February 9, 2018

Tonight is our last night in Switzerland. It is sad to leave but our next adventure in France awaits us.

To recap from last night, we were planning to go out for some pizza at La Pergola. Unfortunately, when we arrived, they said that their pizza oven was broken. I am not sure that I believe them as others who ordered after we arrived were able to get Pizza. I think they were so busy that they were trying to disuade people from ordering pizzas to give the kitchen a break. As we couldn’t have pizza, we went for pasta instead. It was still quite good.

This morning, we headed back out to the mountain. As it hasn’t snowed in a few weeks the mountain is pretty chopped up. In fact, last night we learned that one of the yellow runs we took yesterday is known as being one of the longest mogul runs in the world. The moguls across the mountain were big. Some of them four to five feet tall it seemed. Anyways, on day six of skiing, Dave was having some troubles getting in the groove. At least there were some great views to be had. Below is a photo with Verbier at the base.

After skiing some off-piste next to the runs, we decided to try the last run we did yesterday this time with good visibility. The run was quite nice. The beginning started with large moguls, followed by a wide open bowl that had some nice snow in it. We descended in to the town of La Tzoumaz:

The path went down a winding road where after a while, there was an actual road with cars next to the run. The path continued to provide us with breathtaking views. The photo below shows the bowl that we skied down way off in the distance.

We also passed a really adorable cheese shop off the road.

Once we reached the town, we took the Gondola back up and headed to lunch on the mountain. We found a great chalet called Chez Clovis. We both had, of course, soup and enjoyed the beautiful views.

After lunch, we worked our way back to Verbier. We ended up taking this route that went right through the town. I am bummed we didn’t get a photo of it; however, they even had slots in the road, so you could ski across the asphalt without damaging your skis. You had to watch out for cars. There were also a couple times where you had to cross an active pomel horse lift. The run went through the chalets in town which I plan to buy a few of with all the money we are making off the stock market right now. Stocks are up, right?

After skiing, we headed back to the room to clean ourselves up. We then went to grab an Apres at Le Rouge. This was another recommendation from Sara’s friend.

Tonight as it is our last night in Switzerland we are of course going to eat some cheese. Off to eat Raclette at La Caveau.

Before we leave Switzerland, here are some of our closing thoughts:

You really do eat a lot of cheese.
If you ate meat, you would be very happy.
People here are very nice.
They aren’t lying when they say it is expensive.
In one part of the country everybody speaks German (Zermatt), then you drive 1 hour and everybody speaks French (Verbier).
Skiing many days without a washing machine results in a really stinky hotel room.
It gets cold here, -24C is a new low for these two California constitutions.
We would happily come back to both towns! Switzerland, its been a blast.

Verbier

Above the clouds

By David on Thursday, February 8, 2018

Bonjour from Verbier!

We spent yesterday afternoon relaxing and walking around the town, it’s very different from Zermatt. Where Zermatt is down in a valley, Verbier is on the hill and more spread out with fancy chalets and hotels going up from the town center. It’s got a very different vibe too. The terrain reminds us a lot of Kirkwood or Deer Valley with a lot of fun off piste options and it’s steep too. We’ve seen many more skiers with alpine touring gear and even telemarkers than we did at Zermatt and the off piste areas seems more well tracked (although it hasn’t snowed since we got here so it might be looking like this in Zermatt too). So there’s a soul skier group. Then there are lots of well heeled Brits of all ages. In addition to the normal restaurants and apres bars that you’d expect in most resort towns there are also tons of nightclubs. Like DJ battle, EDM nightclubs.

Last night we had a lovely dinner at Aux Vieux Verbier recommended by one of Sara’s colleagues in LA (thanks Patrick!)

We also stumbled on a great wine store called Vinabagnes where we met some very nice locals who gave us recommendations on where to ski off piste and also let us taste the local wine from the Valais region of Switzerland. Wine is grown here on some pretty steep terrain, similar to what I’ve seen in Piemonte, and the earth is very minerally.

This morning we headed up the hill via the Medran gondola. Since we arrived there’s been an inversion with a very low cloud cover (this morning it was actually snowing in town) and clear blue skies at higher elevations. After the first gondola we took one more gondola and two trams, all the way to the top of the Mont Fort peak. Although we wanted to follow the alpine touring folks off the back we weren’t exactly sure how to make our way back to Verbier (one of the locals we met said it required an hour of skinning, the other said 20 minutes)and since we didn’t have skins and an hour hike seemed extreme we stuck to the front side. Still very fun and very beautiful.

We found a great place in the sun high above the clouds for Jake’s sticker. Thanks to everyone who helped me try to find a few more. A day before I left I found a few in a very random place at my house. I have no idea how they go there but once I found them I had enough for each stop on our trip.

After that we skied a bunch of different runs all over the mountain; they could use a good snow so a lot of crunchy bumps. We grabbed a late lunch of the hill (soup again cause Verbier is $$$$$) and then decided that we would take this long ‘yellow line*’ run down the valley and call it a day. Judging from the runs we had already done it looked like it would take us about 45 minutes to an hour. Perfect!

*A ‘yellow line’ is an off piste run that is marked in the center with neon yellow poles about every 20 ft. The skiable area is so massive off each lift that it’s easy to get lost, but more on that later.

Leaving lunch we followed a ridge line and topped into really fun stuff that took us down to a gate. Yea, the yellow line we planned to take down to the base was marked with a gate and a bunch of signage. Luckily it was open but still. We waited until we saw someone else go in and then we dropped in behind. The top of the run was fine, a little crunchy but still fun. We watched the skier in front of us disappear into a little gully, beyond the gully was a random cat track with really high walls on either side. Couldn’t see much of anything as we would our way down this cat track except that it looked really freaking steep on either side. Then we got to a giant sign that said a bunch of stuff in French and also don’t turn right, high avalanche danger. So we went forward a little bit and then visibility dropped a lot. We were in the clouds. Luckily two locals and a ski school instructor with a little kid came up behind us. The local guys went right and told us to follow them. The ski school dude and the little kid went straight. I’m not sure we made the right decision in hindsight because the local guys said the visibility was worse over there but we followed the ski school. We lost the ski school in the fog so stuck right to the poles, it was hard to see one past the other but we make a really good team and eventually got below the dense clouds and back onto the mountain run. After that we called it a day.

After skiing, we walked around town for a bit. We stopped by a local butcher and purchased some stinky cheese and bread to go with the wine we purchased yesterday for our hotel room apres-ski. We watched a bit of TV and waited for our next pizza adventure at dinner at La Pergola. I think all we are going to eat on this trip is melted cheese in some for. Tomorrow is our last day of skiing in Verbier and the. We are off to France on Saturday.

Verbier Zermatt

Next Stop Verbier

By David on Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Today was a fairly low key day for us. Before we get there, we should let you know about our dinner last night. We went to Restaurant Du Pont last night for some fondue. This was one of the oldest restaurants in Zermatt. Compared to Ferdinand’s earlier in the week, it was not as good; however, we were still happy to be eating cheese.

After eating dinner, we headed back to the hotel to pack and attempt to update the blog so images aren’t rotated. Unfortunately, there is a bug where it looks right on an iPad or iPhone but is flipped on a computer. I think we now have it fixed. We also worked on trying to get the subscribe option to work. Therefore, let us know if you get an email notification about this blog post or if you don’t.

This morning, we left the hotel in our electric chariot taking us to the train.

Today was our last time of making the transfer via train. The train was pulling in as we arrived at the station. Once loaded up we headed down the mountain to Tasch to pick up our car/minivan.

The car we got is 4×4 but unfortunately is quite big and ugly. We didn’t get a photo of it but we will at some point. I’ll use this for an example:

The drive from Tasch to Verbier was fairly grey. It looked like the views would have been nice but was mostly covered by either clouds, fog, or smog. We couldn’t tell. Anyways, here is a brief clip showing our drive in.

Once we got here, it was a little too late to hit the hill. Instead we went and grabbed some lunch at some sort of health food cafe that is part of the W Hotel. We both had bowls and I had a juice. It was nice to eat something healthy after eating so much cheese. The rest of the day is fairly uneventful. Mostly, laundry, settling in to the new hotel, and getting important supplies such as hotel wine. The one thing I will say about this hotel is it is not nearly as nice as Zermatt. That being said it will do for the three nights we are here.