Ski touring from Les Orres: fresh powder and wide-open terrain in the Eissalette valley, with a great crew and a few surprises from the weather!
Today I’m meeting up with a crew from “the North”… From a Hautes-Alpes point of view, the North starts somewhere beyond the Col du Lautaret!! François, Boris, Étienne, Nicolas and Philippe have asked me to take them ski touring from Les Orres, and the day they’ve picked could definitely be worse!!
They don’t have a car, so the “constraint” is that we need to start skiing straight from the resort… hardly the worst constraint in the world! We use the ski touring uplift to sneak into the Vallon de l’Eissalette through the tradesmen’s entrance, picking up a first descent along the way and bagging an easy extra 500 m of vertical…
We wait a little while for the ski patrol to finish securing the resort… With all the very recent snowfall, the avalanche danger is still at level 4, and today the sun is shining! The kind of high-risk day when powder fever can easily lead you astray…
Our first descent is through sparkling powder — not bad for a warm-up. The group is full of enthusiasm. The banter is flowing. Before long, everyone feels free to express their own personal style and particular enthusiasm for exploring the snowpack!! Some display genuine scientific curiosity in this field! We leave the Les Orres ski area behind and enter the Vallon de l’Eissalette, where we enjoy perfect solitude for the rest of the day.
After a few minutes among the larches, we emerge into the wide-open spaces of this beautiful valley, completely immaculate and untouched… We savour the moment!
We climb towards the Col de l’Eissalette. A few clouds begin bubbling up and thickening above us. Visibility deteriorates considerably. We stop a little before the col, where the slope begins to steepen. I don’t want to risk drifting onto steeper terrain — today’s avalanche danger is serious enough as it is! Time for a lunch break instead.
Just when we’ve almost given up hope, the cloud begins to break apart and a little window of blue opens above us… We get ready and launch into the descent! This delicate powder in such wide-open terrain is an absolute treat! We take turns leading the way down…
The skiing stays excellent all the way to the bottom of the valley, where we rejoin the classic access route into the Vallon de l’Eissalette, devastated by a monstrous avalanche that certainly gives us something to think about!
Thanks to the little chairlift, we complete the loop via the pistes and, to finish things properly, round off this magnificent day of ski touring in Les Orres with a well-earned beer on the terrace! to the small chairlift, we complete the loop down the slopes, and to top it all off, we wrap up this magnificent A day of ski touring in Les Orres with a small beer on the patio!
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