Chasing Powder in the Alps (Part 4): Larch Laps
Having wrapped up a week of tree skiing in Limone Piemonte in the far southern Alps of Italy, we drove a few hours north to the western-most point of Italy, still in the Piemonte region due west of the city of Torino (Turin). This area of the Alps, along with the Haute-Alps of France just over the border, is full of extensive larch forests. Larch trees are conifers but have the unique characteristic of losing their needles every winter, after a golden phase in autumn. Larch forests make for great powder skiing since the snow mostly falls through the bare tree branches onto the forest floor, rather than piling up on the trees like in normal conifer forests.
We scored some surprise post-snowstorm powder at Bardonecchia and Sestriere in Italy, toured the expansive terrain of Montgenèvre in France on a beautiful blue sky day, then caught another massive snowstorm at Serra Chevalier in France when there was literally too much snow to ride!
I'll talk more about those experiences below, but first here's a collection of photos from our time in this "larch land" of the Alps.
The highlight of this stretch of our trip was a surprise powder day at Bardonecchia. Since it was a couple days after the storm ended we had only expected to ski groomed pistes, so I was astounded to stumble upon a broad basin full of pristine untracked powder, with hardly anybody around and a surface tow lift that looked like it had just opened up! This turned out to be another one of my all-time best powder days, as I lapped fresh line after fresh line all day long. Claudia got in on the action too!
Claudia skis untracked powder days after a storm at Bardonecchia, Italy.
Next we headed to Sestriere, a high elevation purpose-built ski town at the heart of the massive interconnected Via Lattea / Monts de la Luna ski areas, which straddle the border into France. Here we discovered another surprise powder zone where, similarly, a previously-closed lift opened up fresh lines in steep larch forests. We also enjoyed a gorgeous blue-sky day skiing endless pistes from Italy over through the vast terrain of Montgenèvre in France and back.
Finally, we moved over the border into France, basing ourselves near the city of Briançon, where there's a charming walled town at the foot of the mighty Écrins mountains. The nearby ski area of Serre Chevalier was the bullseye target of a big snowstorm forecast to slam into the western Alps. We'd actually hiked right through this ski area last summer during our trek around the Écrins, so I was excited to slide over the same mountains on my board.
The storm dumped nearly a meter of powder, but I soon discovered that there was TOO MUCH snow to ride!!! The powder had a frustrating quality of being thigh deep but also thick and slow. On my first run of the morning I could not gain any momentum through the snow and I had to scooch my way downhill on my snowboard, plowing a trench inch by inch all the way down the mountain. It took me a full hour to get to the bottom, exhausted and drenched with sweat by then. Even when I was able to get on some steeper terrain, I could barely gain enough speed to make turns. Worst big powder day ever! 😅
Fortunately, the snow settled overnight, and the next day at Serre Chevalier was a fantastic redemption powder day as more of the upper terrain opened up and I played my cards right for catching the openings of various lifts. This was our last ski day of our trip, and a fitting grand finale of our month of chasing powder in the Alps!
