Season Diary - Day 30

Friday 21 March, 2025 - Val d'Isere, France

After the strain and mania of the last few days, today was a day to chill ...

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I love chill ski days. There's something about just switching off your skiing and just enjoying the turns, not worrying about rocks and snow and avalanche risk. Ski from lift to lift, enjoying the views and enjoying your turns.

This was that day. A late start is the morning, we set off to, effectively, do a loop of the higher slopes of Val and Tignes, first heading to Chaudannes in Tignes, up the new Marais lift, linking to the back side of the Aguille Percee. From there, a lap of the Percee lift thanks to some poor map reading by the group.

Aguille Percee is a funny old lift. There's no real reason for most people to take it, if I'm being honest. It's an ultra-long, ultra slow, old, fixed grip lift that, in theory, links Tignes proper to the lower resorts of Le Breviere and La Boisses.

But it does that by a series of reds and blacks that are pretty gnarly for most skiers. The black, Sache, runs around the back and can be mogul-y and utterly, utterly horrible at times, luring skiers in with the mellow upper slopes thinking they can tackle it.

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And it is slow. So slow. So unbelievably slow. Between the three of us, we have completed an entire round of the alphabet memory game on the way up - you know the one, "I'm going on a ski trip and in my suitcase I'm packing ... an apple ... an apple, a banana ... an apple, a banana, a cucumber" only more imaginative and filthier; repeat for all letters of the alphabet, including the preamble each time... you get the picture, it's a long and boring lift.

So why does it exist? Because Aguille Percee is kinda cool. This whopping great big hole in the rock - aguille percee means "eye of the needle" in French - is supremely dramatic, especially as its size and scale emerges on the way up.

So, maybe the Aguille Percee lift does have a role - a chance to sit and admire the stunning scenery we're skiing in all this time.