Ski holiday day 6: my first half-pipe - ouch!

Today, went across to La Plagne for the day. It's only about 45 minutes drive and I've been before with Sam and Lucy. You can buy your tickets at a station when you turn off the main road and then drive up to the resort. The chatty lady at the ticket office told me I should park in Plagne Montalbert, but that's quite low down and we were worried that the snow cover might be a little thin down there so we carried on to Plagne Centre at 1970m, where we can park free of charge just at the bottom of the Bergerie lift.

La Plagne is a confusing collection of resorts, but they are well connected by runs and lifts and you just need to get your head around the whole place. I am gradually getting it properly compartmentalised in my head, but this is my third visit, so it's about time. La Plagne is on a bigger scale than Les Arcs and I think the key difference is that you can often see one resort from the other, which makes it harder for me to know where one stops and the other starts. Like many ski resorts, there's a difference between the resorts and this is mainly down to when they were developed. The more recent projects are much nicer, presumably because the developers have aimed for a more upmarket clientele, but also perhaps because planning regulations have caught up with the monstrosities being built on the side of beautiful mountains.

As you drive up the mountain, there's one particular monstrosity up on the right. I think it's called Plagne Aime 2000 and basically it's one massive hotel complex. When Sam and Lucy first saw it they thought it was being built and the building was covered with scaffolding, but no, those are the balconies. It must be seven or eight storeys high and I'd like to think that no-one would build anything like that nowadays.

Compared to Sainte-Foy, the skiing is much more varied and there are many, many more runs, but it is a lot busier and not as pretty. Snowboards are very much in the minority in Sainte-Foy, but here they often seem to be dominant. I should make it clear that I don't really have a big issue with snowboards; they can be a nuisance, but then so can other skiers.

There was quite a long queue for the Bergerie lift (the first time we'd seen a queue this holiday, so we took a smaller lift into Plagne Centre.

We took a couple of lifts up with the idea of doing some long runs down through the trees, but these were closed so, instead, we worked our way across the resort towards Plagne Bellecote, but coming down the final blue into the resort, we took an off-piste diversion to try a half pipe. This is like an open spout and the way to ski it is to run up the side until you lose speed, then turn quickly, run down the steep bit, gathering speed again until you slow down at the other side - repeat until finished.

I was skiing it reasonably well, but then got a bit fast, stopped concentrating and had a backwards crash. I bashed my head quite hard, so hard that I was surprised by the force (normally ski falls - and I've had a few - are comic and painless, but this one whacked me good and hard) My first thought was that it was a good job I was wearing a helmet. A quick shout here for the excellent RX Sport, which has provided varifocal prescription lenses for my Oakley semi-wraps (one of the few companies able to do this) and also provided Bolle goggles (with prescription inserts) and Bolle helmet (which was thoroughly tested.

Sam treats me like a toddler when I have a fall. Before I can start crying and feeling sorry for myself, he tells me I'm fine and skis off.  He was trying the same trick here and was at the bottom of the slope and queuing for the Arpette lift before I'd caught up. I thought I was OK, but I wasn't sure; I think I was just shocked by the force of the blow and it's a long time since I hit my head that hard so I had no calibration. Anyway, I told Lucy I was going for a sit down and a hot drink, so we all ended up having an early lunch and a couple of drinks in Plagne Bellecote.

Fantastic views from the top near Roche de Mio

The plan was that Sam and Lucy were going to ski some blacks they had missed last year down towards Montchavin while I did a long blue called Mont Blanc (there's a Mont Blanc in every resort around here) which I did last year, but when we saw the map of open routes after lunch, they were almost all closed due to lack of snow. Mont Blanc was open as it's the run down to the fast cable car between La Plagne and Les Arcs (the Vanoise Express). Once that's closed there's no link between the resorts and no Paradiski. The snow cover is poor this year and I guess those blacks are just a little too low. Mont Blanc will be open with artificial snow from the blowers running every available night.

We were now on Plan C and so we took the cable car up to Roche De Mio at 2700m, where there's a good view of Courchevel in the Three Valleys on the way up. The views from the top are fantastic and we skied down via Le Tunnel through Belle Plagne, where my friend Chris goes skiing each Easter, and up the Colosses lift to make our way to Plagne Centre.

Ski essentials - helmet, lemon tea and a Ricard. That's
ugly Plagne Centre in the background.

Sadly, the howling wolf noises and projections of bats on the wall of the tunnel seem to have been dropped in favour of stars. It's not quite the same! I left Sam and Lucy at the top of Colosses so they could try some routes they hadn't done before and I headed back down the mountain to the bottom of Bergerie (my reference point). I skied a few of the blues from Bergerie back down to  Plagne Centre where it's fun to ski through an arch in the big hotel complex on a green back to the base of Bergerie. I bumped into Sam and Lucy there. They hadn't wanted much time and the skiing had been quite icy and scary for them.

Lesson for today - leave half-pipes for the kids on snowboards.