Slideshow: Fancy MySimple
PDA: portrait landscape

To Map of Outing

So after Saturday skiing I by at "Cheers", no I mean, Evelyne's and Adel's castle (like my castle but in grenoble and slightly bigger). To recuperate, I bring a nice Camembert and a Rioja which was superb. Then we continue the feast with two Mont d'Or for four people (compliments of Valerie and Guilleaume), potatos and portugese rice. A good recuperation after a day of skiing.

Sunday, after a previous grandiose plan having fallen through, we plan for a tranquil skiing. But where to go? we are no specialists like Alex. We check out skitour and after looking around we decide to do Charmant Som. For me it works well because it gives the weekend a name (all the Soms).

As we leave Grenoble, we say pity that we did not buy a bagette. I say, no worries we'll get it at Sappey. Mental note, there is no boulangerie at Sappey. There is a truck that sells bread, but not early in the morning. Then as we drive up, I asked Evelyne if she had printed out the topo and route description....ergh, how shall we put it, no!. We vacillate where to go...I take initiative and decide we'll stop at Col de Porte to ask around. We get good Beta at Foyer de Ski (I even bumped into a colleague from Grenoble), and head for Cottave.

There we get read for some late morning skiing at almost 10:00am, but this is find as it is a small outing. The team is comprised of Evelyne and Tom and Anna. Anna supposedly is not a good skier (she is fine), but she is very bold and fearless (fearless until we start saying things like, "ergh, yeah I guess it is steeper than we thought or hmm... it would not be a good place to fall here), but other than that she does great.

The route goes up the forest most of the way. Then it goes up to snowfields to reach the summit arête. The big advantage, in addition to safety, is that it is not dense and you get great views of the surrounding mountains!. We reach the summit after 2 short hours and head down to find a sheltered space to eat lunch, which we find with lovely views.

The descent is mostly uneventful, except for a missed turn by Anna which experienced her a good tumble (the video has been censured by the Motion Picture Association of America). We luckily recuperate everything including her pink glasses (very important, and yes she needs them for seeing). At last we return to the cars. Obviously been my super nice car (it is almost from this decade) I have Evelyne clean and wipe the skiis before loading them.

Summary : 2h/+800m, descent chill with long lunch.

skitour topo