After landing in France at Grenoble airport, we took a coach ("Bens Buses") the 111km to Les Deux Alpes, it was pretty uneventful and dark so we saw very little but once we started up the winding roads into the mountains we started to get a feel for the place.
When we arrived and got off the coach, nothing could have prepared me for the place, it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before, snow drifts 10 feet deep at the side of the road, the alpine lodges, snow everywhere, the night life, everything about this place was fantastic!
The lodge we were staying in was nice enough, although there was barely
room to swing a cat, 6 of us in a 2 bed lodge, but it was fuctional and that was all we needed.
We popped up the road for pizza that night whilst meeting everybody off the bus then got a relatively early night ready for our first day on the slopes.
The next morning, ski pass in hand, we set off up the slopes, 2 skiers and 4 snowboarders (me being the most novice by far).
Les Deux Alpes is a little different to most other resorts, generally the steepest slopes are towards the top of the mountain with more gentle slopes further down, however this was not the case with Deux Alpes, it was the other way around.
I had been advised by regulars on the goneboarding snowboarding forum that the best thing to do was travel all the way to the top of the mountain and work our way down - possibly getting a lift back down the last bit as it was mainly black runs, however we didn't start at the correct lifts so only got a bit of the way up the mountain before we headed back down one of the slopes.
At this point I'll just mention the chair lifts, if you've never been on one before, you should get some practise riding with your back foot out of your bindings (just standing on the board) - as this is how you'll exit the chair lifts, on top of a short slope, you have to get off the chair and ride 1 footed to the bottom of the short slope (I'm talking 6-12 feet really) - and if you've never practised, you WILL fall off - several times!
Anyway, back to our first descent from low down the mountain, and this as it turned out was a bad idea, the slope was a green run (the only one at the bottom of the mountain) which should have made it easy but it was designed for skiers, it was a narrow winding path and as a novice all I could do was travel down it on one edge until it turned 180 degrees then I swapped edges - it was terrible, it hurt my shins & calves - by the end of it, me & Rich were positively aching!
Thankfully at the end of the run, we stopped at the main lift (cable car) up the mountain and promptly got on board, it took us up very high and as I was starting to wonder how much further it could go, the end came into sight - and by the end, I mean, the next station, where you got out and into another cable car which went up even further. After this cable car, we then got into an underground railway which took us right up to the top of the mountain - the views were amazing and we spent some time just admiring it and feeling lik
e we were on top of the world!
The "bottom" of the mountain where our lodge was is at 1650m above sea level. The first cable car stopped at 2600m, the second one stopped at 3200m and the funicular railway brought us out at 3421m above sea level (the mountains actually continued to 4102m but that was beyond the point of reasonable slopes).
Once we set off from the top, things improved
dramatically for me, we were on wide open slopes with plenty of room and I got into my linking turns rather than just falling leaf all the time.
I have to say, I lost it and fell over A LOT this day, I had some real high speed ones too where I cartwheeled several times before coming to a halt and by the end of the day I was positively aching, but I wa
s loving every minute of it as well!
The ibuprofen gel came in particularly handy that evening I can tell you!
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