Mont Blanc deaths revive tragic memories of 1957

Les Droites, Mont Blanc

My chalet guests often ask me to point out Mont Blanc (4810m), which you can see clearly from most of the Les Arcs ski area. I explain: you are looking at the Italian side, and it's actually only 15km away as the crow flies.

However, last Sunday as I was once again gazing at the rounded dome of Europe's highest mountain  I couldn't help thinking of the tragic plight of the two Lithuanian climbers trapped on the rocky north face of Les Droites, below the peak at 3900m.

They had sent a text message on Friday saying that one had tried to set off on skis back to Chamonix and the other was managing to "keep warm in his bivouac using his gas stove". Several attempts were made over the next 48 hours to reach the climbers by helicopter, but with high winds and  heavy snowfall  they were unable to get lower than 4300m, or closer than 300m to the stricken pair.  Finally, on Sunday afternoon a helicopter with heat-seeking equipment was able to ascertain that they were both dead, the one who set off on skis having fallen in the Lagarde couloir. Their bodies will be recuperated when the weather permits.

The local paper mentions a similar tragedy that befell two British climbers in 1999. One was eventually brought out alive after being heroically rescued on the end of a winch line,  lowered several hundred meters from a helicopter in atrocious conditions (apparently the wind was blowing the snow vertically up the mountain and high above it). This surviving climber lost both feet and hands through frostbite.

Vincendon and Henry

However, I was reminded of the extraordinary drama that took place on the Brenva Glacier (south side of Mont Blanc, visible from the ski area of Brévent, above Chamonix), some 57 years ago. The appalling failure of various attempts to rescue the climbers Jean Vincendon and François Henry (both in there early 20s)  led to structural changes in the way that mountain rescue in France is carried out. 

On 22nd December 1956 the two men, experienced winter climbers, set out from the Torino refuge to climb the Brenva. By chance they came across the celebrated Italian mountaineer Walter Bonnatti and his climbing partner, who encouraged the two young men in their planned ascent. The four climbers slept at the Fourche refuge and setting off in different directions early the following morning. However, soon the Bonatti cordée found conditions worsening and decided to change their plans and to rejoin the others on the Brenva route. By the time they met up the weather was considerably worse and the four climbers had to spend that Christmas night in improvised snow holes. The following day they decided to head for the safety of the Vallot Observatory refuge. Vincendon and Henry fell behind and the groups became separated; they never made it to the refuge.  

Down in Chamonix friends and associates of the climbers were getting worried (no mobile phones in those days). The Chamonix Mountain rescue service arranged for Sikorsky helicopter to overfly the area. The crew spotted Vincendon and Henry. They were unable to land but they did drop parcels of food and blankets (in fact their fingers were already so badly frostbitten they were unable to undo the knots of the string around these packages).   

Having established they were alive another rescue mission was launched, using one of the biggest Sikorski helicopters possessed by the French army (known as 'The Elephant') to drop a rescue team close to the the two young men.They would then assist them to the Vallot refuge, which was only 400m away. 

The crashed Sikorsky S-55, "The Elephant"

Incredibly, the helicopter crashed, the snow and wind proving too much the for The Elephant, but even more unbelievably none of the four occupants of the aircraft were injured. Seeing the extremely poor condition Vincendon and Henry were now in, the senior rescuer, Commander Legall, had to take a tough desicion; the two helicopter pilots being only lightly equipped were in danger. He decided to place Vincendon and Henry in the crashed carcass of the helicopter, to give them a bit of shelter, and to get the pilots to the Vallot refuge as quickly as possible. He would then return with his colleague to rescue the climbers.

The climb to the refuge with the inexperienced pilots took a long time. One fell in to a crevasse and it took an hour and a half to get him out. By the time the party reach Vallot they were exhausted and it was nearly dark. There was no question of Legall returning to the men in the wreck of The Elephant. 

The following day, 1st January 1957 saw a further worsening of the weather and no further rescue attempts on the mountain or from the ground could be attempted. It was only on 3rd January, after mounting media interest and government pressure that two state-of-the-art, lightweight Aloutte helicopters were able to land near the refuge and rescue Legall and his party (why hadn''t they been used earlier?). One Aloutte overflew the wreck of the Elephant, and saw no sign of life from Vincendon and Henry. 

In Chamonix Vincendon's father, himself an experienced mountaineer, pleaded with the authorities to abandon the rescue in order not to risk further loss of life.  It was not until 20th March that Vincendon and Henry's bodies we able to be brought down, by a team of 28 guides. A chilling epilogue to the drama was that Henry's body was found outside the wreck of the helicopter, probably indicating that we was still alive when the Aloutte flew over them.

There were huge repercussions, in the press and among the different groups of guides, rescue services, police and military about how such missions should be organised and who should have responsibility for the difficult decisions that have to be taken. As a result the Pelotons de Gendarmerie de Haute Montagne was founded , based on integrated military mountain rescue systems established in the Soviet Union.

However, even the best resources and organisation isn't always enough to save lives on the mountains, their power being perhaps greater then human  endeavour. 

There is an excellent, detailed account of the Vincendon and Henri tragedy in PisteHors.com, http://pistehors.com/backcountry/wiki/Avalanches/Vincendon-And-Henry

Our thoughts are with the friends and families of the two Lithuanian men who perished last weekend.

Plenty of snow in Les Arcs - another disastrous season?

Last week, outside the chalet

It's not been a bad winter so far in Les Arcs. Regular falls of snow and relatively low temperatures have resulted in some of the best top-to-bottom conditions I have seen here in the last decade. Even a day of heavy rain at the end of last week was followed by another 10cm of snow that same night, further consolidating the snowpack in preparation for the substantial snow showers forecast for the next few days. The lifts and pistes of Paradiski have been  pretty well 100% open since December.

Les Arcs and the other large, high-level ski resorts of the Alps, will be hoping for a big thaw, rise in temperatures and closure of low-lying pistes and  lifts before the French school holidays begin next week. A few more days of rain followed by a warm sunshine would be perfect!  Lift ticket sales have remained static for the last couple of seasons, but there's every sign they might be lower this year because of all this snow, as well as the general economic malaise to which the ski industry is becoming susceptible.

This doesn't make sense, I hear you saying. Surely snow is what makes money in a ski resort, the 'white gold' as they used to call it in the glory days of the 60s and 70s.  Well, the problem is that in a 'good snow' winter the indigenous population will head for the lower, family-friendly resorts that are dotted around Savioe, the Alps and other mountainous regions of France. These resorts may be quite low, typically between 1200m and 2000m, with only a handful of lifts and pistes, but the price of the lift pass, accommodation and nourishment will be significantly lower. Most people taking children on a skiing holiday don't actually need 600km of pistes and 200 lifts to have a good time. Small ski stations in the Jura, Vosges and Massif Central make a point of offering an authentic, welcoming ski experience, focussing on good value and 'traditional' holiday values.

Ironically the 'mega-resorts' have invested massively in snow making networks to protect their revenue in 'bad snow' years. For example, at Les Arcs more that 40% of the pistes are covered, and a few years ago the huge Adret des Tuffes reservoir was constructuted in the Arc 2000 valley to provide 400,000 cubic meters of partly gravity-fed meltwater to the snowmaking network.

Abandoned in 1995

Such projects are very expensive, and many resorts now use as much electricity making snow as they do for running the lifts.  All this leads inexorably to rising prices for the consumer - the skier. Lift passes rise year on year, and for the first time ever this year I noticed a figure greater than €1000 euros appearing on the Les Arcs Price list (6 day Paradiski family pack, €1017 euros). Even the cheapest 6 day adult pass is now €225 euros - compare that to the popular family resort of Metabief - Mont d'Or in the Jura (20 lifts, 42km of pistes), there the same pass costs less than half, at €109 euros.  As a father of 3 myself, I would certainly be considering somewhere like this for my family if I wasn't already rooted in Les Arcs, much as I love the place!

At the peak of the 'credit crunch' (the winter of 2008/9) Les Arcs saw a 4% fall in lift pass sales. Not much perhaps, but if that goes on for 10 years it would be the end of the business. Not that the smaller resorts themselves are in anyway immune from the same economic pressures. Yesterday's local paper carried an article about 'Ghost Ski resorts' (english version on PisteHors.com)', adding  Drouzin Le Mont to the lengthening list of village resorts closed or abandoned in the last few years. The best know example of these is Abondance, in the Portes de Soleil domaine. Briefly rescued by an American millionaire a few years ago, the future of this pleasant cheese-making village as a ski resort is once again looking dubious.

Drouzin - likely to close down

Perhaps now I should mention global warming. I have skied in France during every season for the last 25 years, and I'm not sure myself whether le réchauffement has really has had much effect on the skiing business yet, compared to other factors such as the emergence of snowboarding (more on this another time).  

Economic, political and social issues (couch potatoes don't do skiing....) are still the major factors determining the success or otherwise of a ski resort. This view is echoed by Laurent Reynaud, director of the French ski areas association (quoted in the article cited above):

" The fragility of ski resorts is not just down to climate change but also their structure. Those who had the foresight not to invest in cable cars and gondolas are doing okay. Managing costs is the key. Take the small resorts in the  Vosges for example, equipped mostly with drag lifts: they are maintaining their market share.”

Perhaps Les Arcs had better watch out!

Going nowhere? Municpal morosity and railway riches

Empty, sad.. and expensive!

Leafing through the latest edition of  Le Petit Borain, Bourg St Maurice's quarterly 'magazine muncipal', is a depressing experience.  Since the departure of the 7 BCA from the Quartier Bulle barracks last June, the permanent population has effectively shrunk by a third, with a consequent reduction of spending power and municipal revenues. Like all communes in France, Bourg is being affected by a significant decrease in government subsidies and other contributions (in the order of 10 - 20%) and faces a rise in VAT later this year to 21%. Bourg St Maurice has debts of about €35 million euros, which it is trying to reduce by €2 million a year to eventually increase its ability to raise funds (more borrowing?) for future projects.

As for current projects, it seems the only thing that is going ahead this year is a new covered car park at Arc 2000, which will cost €350,000 euros and hopefully generate €80,000 euros a year. Does Arc 2000 need a new, expensive car park, I ask myself, for stationary cars to sit in for 7 days? There seems to be plenty of parking, covered and uncovered around, including the under-used car-park at Pré St Espirit. How about buying a few buses and offering a decent bus service from Bourg to Arc 2000 on Saturdays with enough room for luggage, etc? Think how much carbon and money that could save over the 20 year projected payback period of the Lac des Combes project.

Life in the 1970s

Another major project,  the Centre National de Ski de Haut Niveau is in suspended animation while the regional authorities decide how much (if any) they are prepared to contribute. The 'opinion piece' at the back of Le Petit Borain, from the leftish 'Avenir' group points out that the town will need to raise nearly €14 million in two years if CNSHN goes ahead as planned,  by selling of bits of real-estate,  such as the old Renoveau holiday camp (it went bankrupt 3 years ago).  If you are interested in buying a sprawling, run-down Soviet-style collection of buildings and campsites, is on the market for €6 million! Strangely enough this is the same amount Pierres et Vacances paid to buy up Intrawest's remaining share of Arc 1950 last year...

Perhaps the best the town can hope for is selling it at 30% below the asking price, as happened with the old Gendarmerie (went for under €2 million in the end). The empty barracks are going to cost the town €400,000 a year to maintain; not hard to see why the Ministry of Defence was delighted to sell them for one euro!

Bourg St Maurice station in the 1920s

Enough of this. Let's celebrate one of  the greatest projects Bourg has ever seen, and possibly without which we wouldn't all be here. This year is the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the railway. The only reason there is a railway line all the way up the Tarentaise valley is that the ambitious engineer behind it, Abel Gotteland, planned to extend the line all the way to Turin and Milan. There was going to be a 22 kilometre tunnel from Viclaire (just after Bourg on the way to Val d'Isere) to the Aosta valley in Italy. It had taken nealy 40 years to build the railway this far from Albertville, but Gotteland reckoned the tunnelling stage could be done in 5 years, with 5000 men!

How feasible this was we shall never know, because the advent of the First World War in 1914 put an end to the project. But it did leave us with one of the finest pieces of railway engineering in the world which was regarded as an asset to the development of the skiing business right from its earliest days. Trains come from as far away as Amsterdam, London, Brest, Hamburg and Madrid. Chalet guests who have been sitting in 5 hour traffic jams on Saturday ask me sometimes, why can't there be more trains, a direct service from Geneva airport perhaps?  Apparently the line and its terminus are already 'saturated' on Saturdays, no room for any more trains.

Jacqueline Peretti, the Mayor

Mde Peretti, the Mayor, says in her forward to Le Petit Borain:

"This year will be a year when we lay the foundation stones of major structural projects which will be our way of responding to the economic crisis we face, with determination and goodwill... lets not believe that our future will be mediocre...." 

Perhaps her words would have a less hollow ring if she had reminded the townsfolk of some of Bourg's great past achievements, products of the imagination, ambition and sacrifice of people like Abel Gotteland  in the face of far worse circumstances and even more difficult times.

Funicular fun

Being vehicle-less for the past two weeks (long story) has been quite liberating. I've done more walking than normal, especially around Bourg between the Les Arcs Express funicular and the town centre. I've enjoyed also the walk through the frozen  park to the supermarkets a few times.  But I have spent a lot of time on the Funi, and a fair amount of time waiting for it at both ends. Even after using it regularly for the last 10 years to get in and out of  Les Granges I still get confused by the time-table, especially in the late afternoons, and this is compounded by the occasional 'operational error', when it doesn't stop here when it should do.

Never stopped by snow or bad weather

Some of my guests find it hard to get the hang of it, and I think the record is 6 journeys up and down before finally managing to get out at Les Granges. I always try patiently to explain how it all works, but glazed expressions and odd questions often belie a fundamental lack of grasp. The commonest mistake the guests make (please don't laugh!) is getting on the one going down when they actually want to go up, or vice-versa. I try to get them to think of it as an upside-down cable car on rails, but I don't think this helps much...

Bottom station of the old TPH,
now demolished

Love it or hate it, the funicular is a vital lifeline for Les Arcs and Bourg St Maurice. Without it I imagine the town would be a rather sad and forgotten place (like Aime) with very little in the way of tourist infrastructure.  The number of users has grown every year (over half a million last year) as Bourg's popularity as a budget resort option and a summer destination grows (same effect as Brides Les Bains/Meribel).

Past and present...

The 'Arc en Ciel', as the funiculaire was originally named, opened on 23rd February 1989, so next season we'll be able to have a 25th birthday party. It was the third link between Bourg and the ski area, having been preceded by the 2 stage chairlift via Les Granges (1961 - 1974) and a téléphérique (1974 - 1989) which was never much good because it was too prone to high winds blowing down from the St Bernard Pass and only took 68 people - not enough for the fast-developing resorts of Les Arcs.

The decision to build an expensive funicular (for which the town is still paying) was taken in the light of the up-coming 1992 Albertville Olympics (remember Torville and Dean?), for which Arc 2000 hosted the Speed Skiing event, the 'KL'. (Much of the valley's infrastructure was improved then, including the upgrading of the railway to take TGVs and the express dual-carriageway road from Albertville to Moutiers.)

Building the bridge over the Isere

Unusually for a funicular railway of such length (2.9 km) there are no tunnels.The Grande Motte funicular at Tignes was built at the same time and for the same reason, but entirely in a tunnel. Various geological problems caused delays, and it missed the Olympics completely, opening eventually in 1993.

The 'Arc-en-Ciel' uses a simple, prefabricated structure made in sections in a factory rather then on-site in a potentially hostile climate. Once the earthworks were done, it was all bolted together easily and quickly.  The two 'rames' each hold 276 people and the 7 minute journey was a great deal faster and more comfortable then either of the previous uplift systems.

View from the cab

We all got a bit excited a couple of years ago when the SMA (now called ADS, who franchise the funicular from the town, who own it) announced they were going to re-furbish the carriages. However, all this resulted in was some rather flat-footed graphics on the outside, a change of name to the dull 'Les Arcs Express' and absolutely nothing on the inside, which continue to look tatty and un-loved.

It'a shame that this, and the appalling Elephant-and-Castle type walkway linking it the railway station are the first impressions  many visitors have of Les Arcs.  The location of the bottom terminus at the wrong end of the station and miles from the town centre is  for me one of the "5 Great Planning Mistakes of Les Arcs" - surely another 500m of track wouldn't have broken the bank back then in the prosperous 1980s?

However, lets be thankful that that the people of Bourg had the courage and vision to build such an efficient,  reliable (never been stopped by snow or bad weather), safe (there has never been an accident) link. Just think of the amount of  Co2 and pollution saved over 25 years of car-less transport. If only we could persuade them to simplify and extend the timetable into the evenings, perhaps run it every 15 minutes rather than 20, and splash out on a coat of paint and some new flooring for the inside.....

You can even get a hand-made Funi 'custom beanie' hat as a souvenir, made by some enterprising British girls and their grannies. Worn compulsorily by cool Coolbus drivers, and ideal for keeping warm while you have to wait 40 minutes for the next one to Les Granges....

Courbaton 1750: war, peace and power

Ariel view of Courbaton, note the barrack-like buildings

There's a forgotten corner of Les Arcs which has always fascinated me. Nestled in the forest between Arc 1600 and Les Granges is the 'village' of Courbaton, consisting of a number of large, barrack-like buildings and few much more recently built luxury chalets. Like many things connected to Les Arcs and Bourg St Maurice, the older buildings at Courbaton owe their existence to electricity: they were constructed in in the early 1950s as living accommodation for several hundred of the workers involved in construction the Malgovert hydroelectric scheme, the key feature of which is the enormous dammed lake at Tignes which is connected by 17 km of tunnels and pipes to the power station, directly below Courbaton at the edge of Bourg St Maurice. The 'Cité de Courbaton' as it was then known included cafeterias, medical facilities, a place of worship, a bar and other facilities for the EDF workers, many of whom were immigrants, including the legendary 'Spanish tunnellers'.

Ice stalactites in the spooky tunnel

The twin pipes and tunnels run directly below the plateau of Courbaton, and nearby you can see the impressive concrete conical structure which acts as a huge pressure valve for system. It's about 40m wide, and just as deep (carefully fenced off, but if you climb up the rocks nearby you can see inside). There is also a long, spooky tunnel cut into the mountainside below the plateau (follow the cross-country ski route to find it) which I assume accesses the bottom of conical structure.  Beyond the heavy iron gates you can see little, but hear distant gushing water. In the winter this tunnel breeds the most amazing stalactites and stalagmites of ice,  some a couple of metres high.

Once the scheme was completed, in 1952 Courbaton became a   holiday camp for EDF employees, where they could enjoy ski and summer holidays partly at their employers expense. It's now in private hands  and been extensively renovated for holiday lets.

The guardhouse of the fort at Courbaton, still largely intact

Long before all this Courbaton also had a strategic military signifigance. It's situated on a small plateau at about 1500m, looking north across the Haute-Tarentaise valley to the Col de Petit St Bernard and the Italian border (today only a few kilometres as the crow flies). After the annexation of Savoy by France in 1860 there was continuing anxiety about the behaviour of the Italians, culminating in 1914 with uncertainty about which side they were going to be on in the 1st World War. An elaborate batterie was constructed, with 6 large guns trained to repel any Italian advance and also to help defend the Fort du Truc, on the other side of the valley and right in the path of any putative invasion attempt.  Much of the batterie is still there, you can get to it on skis or foot from Arc 1600 (more of this later). Towards the end of second world war it was used by the German army as a reconnaissance point (again to keep an eye on their allies and later enemies in Italy). Most of Savoie was liberated in August 1944, after some extremely protracted and bloody fighting. That same year the American allies  installed a powerful artillery battery  to help dislodge the last German forces, clinging on grimly above what is now La Rosière, across the valley (they were finally defeated in the spring of 1945).

Marketing poster, 1963 -
"from the train direct to the snow"

Still in the throes of economic depression after the completion of the Malgovert scheme and the subsequent departure of its workers and their spending power, Bourg St Maurice began to turn to tourism to boost it fortunes. In 1961 two chairlifts were built, from the Pont de Montrigon (near the bottom funicular station) to Les Granges, and from there to Courbaton. There were six or seven pistes, including a rouge that descended back to Bourg (still skiable today). The ski area became know as Courbaton 1750, and even than a marketing feature was ease of access from the railway station, aiming to attract skiers from Chambèry, Lyon and even Paris. More lifts were constructed, extending as far as the present day Cachette and eventually up to the top of the Arpette and the Deux Tetes.

Some opponents of Les Arcs campaigned for the enlargement of Courbaton 1750 as an alternative to the initial development of Arc 1600 in 1968, without success. The chairlift from Bourg continued running until 1974 when the  telephèrique (cable car) was built, the top station of which is still clearly visible (and scanadalously derelict) next to the top station of the Funicular, which replaced the cable car in 1989.

Courbaton 1750, on the Granges piste. Note the chairlift.

It still possible to ski down the old 'World Cup'  red piste, one of the gems of Courbaton 1750. It starts on the right of the Mont Blanc piste, a few hundred meters below the site of the old Mont Blanc lift. It's a bit overgrown, but the route is quite clear. You have to cross the road twice (the piste was abandoned when the Arc 2000 road was built) before you reach Courbaton, bearing left beside the village where you can see the remains of the batterie.  The 'Coupe de Monde' then gently descends through the meadows around Orgière, before reaching Les Granges. A taste of Courbaton 1750, and the early days of skiing on these extraordinary hills, pre-Les Arcs.

Free on Saturday?

Saturday is a special day for most people - a day to relax and do things you want to do rather than have demands made on you at work, a day to set your own agenda. (Sunday is  more a day for not doing things...) I can't write about Saturday without thinking about Ian McEwan's fabulous novel, which is certainly about doing things, although with unusual consequences. Highly recommended.

Saturday in a ski resort like Les Arcs is also a different kind of day. People leave, people arrive, no one who works here can go skiing and every week we deplore the inevitable traffic jams and airport delays (snow in England today!). 

Saturday nightmare traffic

When I am dealing with guests whose journeys have been long and painful I always remind them that in 24 hours it will all be forgotten, they'll be having a great time on the mountain and Saturday seem like just a bad dream. Until the next one, of course.

 I warn my staff that the most difficult half-hour of each week is the first half-hour spent with new guests; the psychological stress of saying 'goodbye' to a bunch of people who you have come to like  whose company you have come to enjoy, and then, often only minutes later, having to 'turn it on' for a new set of faces, with all the inevitable questions, anxieties and demands.

Saturday, I don't ski

If you are lucky to get here in good time on Saturday (perhaps if you arrive reasonably rested from the Friday night Eurostar service) it can be a great day to enjoy the mountain. There are very few people around on the slopes and there are a few bargains to be had. At Les Arcs you can by a special ticket on the internet called "Samedi je ski" It costs only €26 euros (instead of the normal €46 for a day ticket) for Les Arcs or La Plagne (you can't use the Vanoise Express which links the two). You need to register, and it's all in French (but pretty easy to understand) and you print of the voucher in advance. It was aimed at local students, but anyone can benefit. 

However, a question came up recently on the Snowheads.com forum about free lifts in Les Arcs that you could use for just a couple of runs in the afternoon after arriving. I was surprised as I set about responding just how many free Saturday skiing options I could come up with, and some of them are not just for Saturday:

Free skiing in Les Arcs - ideas for that Saturday afternoon with no lift pass: 

La Millerette at Les Granges - always free!

1) Get yourself to Arc 1600 and you can ski down the fabulous Granges run to the funicular half-way station (at Les Granges where my chalet happens to be), and get the funicular back up. Runs every 20mins, so you can get a few runs in. It's also possible to walk through the resort to the start of Violettes (harder red), which starts behind the bottle bank behind the Arcelle restaurant (hard to find, we call it the 'hidden run', but its worth it!) which also runs to the beginner slope at La Millerete (always free 250m drag lift), next to the funicular station, I think technically you should have a ticket for the funicular from Les Granges, but there is no system/personnel to check. 

Funicular - sometimes free?

2) You could extend this descent by taking the Combettes lift near the ski school, which is free on the weekends only. From the top of the funicular there is also a long blue piste (Bois de Saule) and plenty of off-piste possibilties. You could even follow the 'old' Bourg St Maurice piste down as far as Montrigon (you have to cross the road twice), but the funicular stops there are much less frequent. 

3) From Arc 2000 or 1950 ski down the Marmottes and Cascade pistes to Pré St Espirit (bottom of the Comborciere lift) and get the free bus back back up - nothing wrong with a bus as a ski lift, they use them all the time in Austria! Especially as it's free. Also at Arc 2000 the St Jacques (very slow), Cabriolet and the baby lift are free on the weekends. 

4) Not free but cheap: you can get a pedestrian ticket for the Transarc lift at Arc 1800 for about €10 - just watch out they don't see you carrying your skis. From there you have 1000m descent to Pre St Espirt taking in most of the Arc 2000 valley, and then again free bus either up to 2000 or back to 1600/1800. You can do the same on the Vallandry chairlift (€7 euros a ride). 

Why only Saturdays?

But will Saturday always be Saturday? Some tour operators have wisely shifted their change-over days to Sundays to avoid the problems resulting from the limited transport infrastucture. This has got to be a good thing, and I wish, for example, Eurostar would run Saturday night/Sunday daytime service to allow us to make the switch in our chalet (about 2/3rd come this way). But the resorts themselves, their hotels, apartments, ski school etc. seem firmly stuck to Saturday. 

Apart from the the misery of awful, long journeys just think how much pollution and Co2 could be saved by avoiding the kind of traffic jams you get when 40,000 cars a day trying to get up a road designed in the 1930s for much lighter traffic (I am thinking of course of the N90, our local Albertville - Moutiers - Bourg St Maurice - Val d'Isere route).  Perhaps it's time for a more flexible concerted approach by all involved, but in the end it might need a new law to make it happen.

Comborcière - the bear facts

Today has been a remarkable day on the mountain - fantastic snow everywhere, but glacial temperatures  (-9c at the bottom of  TransArc at 13.00!) and much colder higher up in the wind and out of the sun. I thought was going to freeze to death coming  down the Arc 2000 valley to Pré St Espirit, where I planned to return via Comborcière and the Malgovert piste and maybe a bit of 'Couloir du Soldat' and into the trees above the old 'Olympic' piste that leads to Les Granges...

Watch out, they may be coming back!

As I was alone, I had a bit of time to think during the chilly 15 minute ride on the Comborcière lift  up to the Petit Fond Blanc (2400m). I remembered reading that this was the first lift constructed in the Arc 2000 valley, in 1968 as part of the original 1600 lift system, quite a while before the Arc 2000 resort was born in 1979.

The name Comborcière deconstructed and translated means 'Vale of the Bear' (la combe = vale, l'ours = bear).

There were once bears there, and the next lift up the valley, Bois de l'Ours translates as  'Bear Wood'. According to one account the last bear was shot in 1924, just about where that chairlift starts. Because of unregulated hunting bears had almost died out in the Alps by the 20th century, so even then they must have been pretty rare (another account I read says this happened in 1890s, so I'm not sure which to believe...). Perhaps like the wolves, they will one day reappear - they have managed to preserve a small bear population in the Pyrenees.

Notice the old drag lift trace to left of present lift

The 1968 lift was a very long, and quite steep button lift. You  can still see the trace of it in the trees to the left of the present lift. Previously, there was a popular walking and skiing route from the top of the Arpette back to 1600, via a long flatish track that runs from the bottom of Comborcière roughly parallel with the road - you can see the start of this from the lift, on the left after about 100m. It's used a lot by piste-bashers these days, but it's still a pleasant walk on a nice day, with wonderful views towards La Rosière and Mont Blanc.

However, that track passes under the notorious Avalanche de Chavonnes, which has proved fatal on many occasions.  In fact it killed Robert Blanc, the co-founder of Les Arcs, in 1980, while he and a team of pisteurs were searching for 2 lost girls (a very dramatic story, more in later blogs). So if you do walk or ski there, take heed of the warning notices and don't risk it if the conditions aren't right. The road below is now protected by a 'paravalanche' tunnel, in which you will see a simple plaque commemorating Blanc, at the spot where he died.

So the logic of the building the first Comborcière lift was to avoid skiers having to take this dangerous route home, although it also opened up the long, bump run underneath and the wonderful off-piste terrain accesssible from the Malgovert piste.

The present lift (3 person chairlift) was built in 1985, as drag lifts started to go out of fashion. Rumour has it that the old drag lift is still in use somewhere in Poland! A new lift is scheduled for 2017,  and hopefully by then the neighbouring, painfully slow Pre St Esprit lift will also be replaced, in 2014 (if you ask me, that should have been done years ago, and paid for by the Arc 1950 developers....).

And finally, a personal Comborcière  anecdote: I was skiing with my wife about 6 years ago. We were heading for the excellent Chalet de Pré St Espirit restaurant at the bottom. I had got about half way down, but I couldn't understand why it was taking her so long- she was skiing much more hesitantly and slowly than usual. When she got to me I asked her what was wrong. She looked at me, and after a moment said:

" I wasn't going to tell you this till we got to the restaurant, but I am being really careful because I am pregnant again!"

About 9 months later our third child, Thomas, was born. Perhaps we should have called him Little Bear...