© Alison Shayler
© Alison Shayler
© Alison Shayler
Sunny lunchtime skiing at Brevent & Flegere
Spring conditions and lots of sunshine
This week has been a great one for cruising around the pistes, enjoying lunch in the sunshine and bouncing about on spring snow - more like April than February, but it’s so much fun that we’re not complaining.
This week I’ve mostly been nipping up Brevent in my lunch break for a few laps while the pistes are quiet, with a quick jaunt over to Flegere if time allows. I’ve actually been very pleasantly surprised by the condition of the pistes, given the mild temperatures we’ve been experiencing.
The “magic moment” seems to be between midday and 14:00, when the shadier pistes have softened from bulletproof to firm and the sunnier pistes have not yet turned to mush. It’s also the quietest time of day, as most people are having lunch and the ski schools are in between morning and afternoon session.
Starting over at Brevent, we headed straight up to the top and did a lap of the Charles Bozon piste and enjoyed dry chalky snow at the top and slightly softer snow towards the bottom; nice and grippy with no icy bits, perfect for swooping down the steeper sections in big wide turns.
The runs off the Cornu chairlift were lots of fun; with the front side being a bit bouncier and more chopped up, and the Charlanon piste over the back being harder and faster but still well covered and in great condition.
From here we headed across the Liaison to Flegere, straight up the Index chairlift and down La Floria piste. This was suspiciously quiet but I guess that’s the good thing about February, so many people are practising snow plough on the nursery slopes with their kids that the slightly more advanced pistes become fairly abandoned.
I didn’t have high hopes for Flegere, it is such a sun trap that it is usually the first place to suffer in warm weather, but it was actually far better than I expected. The usual suspects were looking a bit worse for wear - the tail end of the Pylons piste now has a few rocks peeking through and the bottom of the Index was a bit like mashed potato - but otherwise, there was very little rock-dodging going on and the pistes are bearing up remarkably well.
Up at La Chavannes, DJ Sugarleg was blasting out a few beats while people enjoyed a leisurely lunch in the sunshine.
All this is set to change on Friday/Saturday with a bit of weather disturbance moving in and possibly bringing a bit more snow with it; however, the sun will have his hat back on by Sunday and the rest of the week is looking like more of the same. It may not be February as we know it, but we’re loving it all the same!
