Verbier Archives - Dave and Sara’s Excellent 2018 Adventure

Today we took the long, scenic trip from Verbier to Chamonix. Normally this would be a 45 minutes to 1 hour drive via Martigny but this being the mountains, Mother Nature had other plans for us. A week or so before we left a huge mudslide took out the road and it’s closed until Spring. Dave posted on the Chamonix Facebook page asking for alternative routes so that we could avoid going all the way down to Geneva and a very nice person gave us the backroad way via Portes du Soliel and Cluses. Yesterday when we checked google maps, the app recommended that we go over into Italy and back through the Mont Blanc tunnel but since we are travelers with no set time limits we opted for the longer and what we hoped to be more scenic route through France.

It did not disappoint. Sweet little Alpine villages nestled into valleys along the Rhône River between dramatic peaks and snow covered larch forests, the road took us through the Haute Savoie region of France up over the Pas de Morgins.

On the way we stopped in Cluses, by far the largest town we drove through, at a giant Carrefour to load up on essentials and get a French SIM card. So far we’ve found it very easy and relatively inexpensive to get a local number and (at least some) data.

After leaving Cluses we joined one of the main highways for about 30 minutes before turning off for thr Mont Blanc Tunnel/Chamonix/Milan/Turin exit. We immediately started to climb again, passing though smaller tunnels, past frozen sheer rock faces and over waterfalls.

We arrived in Chamonix around 2, dropped our bags and groceries and went out to grab some lunch and check out the town. This time we are staying in an apartment with a kitchen and washing machine. It’s very centrally located to the Aiguille du Midi cable car and the center of town.

This town is very cute and it is full of hardcore mountain people. People who are strolling around with their touring skis, harnesses, climbing ropes and crampons like it’s just their regular thing they do on Saturday.

We had lunch at a pizza place called Restaurant Le Boccalatte with great people watching, the food was just ok. After lunch we walked up to the Main Street which has a store from every possible outdoor company you could imagine and lots of charcuterie shops. We stopped by a second grocery store to grab a few small extra items for the apartment then we headed back to the place to rest and do laundry.

We decided that we wanted to hire a guide for Tuesday after looking at the snow forecast and when the guide that was recommended to us by our guide in Zermatt was unavailable we went back into town to the Bureau of Guides to book one. Second trip, still early and still interesting.

Our French is non existent so it’s no surprise there was at least one misstep during the grocery store outing. Coming back to do laundry we realized that we had purchased fabric softener instead of detergent. Ooops…back into town for the correct bottle that could face our dirty ski clothes. This trip clearly cutting into our happy hour time was not as enjoyable.

This evening we cooked a dairy free dinner, attempted to do laundry and watched French Olympics coverage. Tomorrow will be our first day skiing in France.

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.

Tag Archives: Verbier

The Road Less Traveled

Above the clouds