Mad Dog in Serre Chevalier

Every once in a while we at Mad Dog get a chance to leave the desk behind and head for the thing we all desire most at this time of year, the mountains.

This time it was my turn!

So with everything booked well in advance we got in the car and started our journey to Serre Chevalier.

Ben, Lloyd and myself endured the 9.5hr journey down to near the Italian border fairly well arriving in good time for a few demi's at our favourite 'local' Mojo bar in the old village of Villneuve, les sal les Alps. Warmly welcomed by Mel and Tim the bar patrons and other familiar faces from around the place.

Our first couple of days on the mountain were pretty good, bright blue skies, quiet pistes however there had been no new snow for a while so the off piste conditions were not great at all and on piste things were getting a bit icy in places lower down near the resort.

However....what a difference a day makes....

Day 3 and the skies were overcast, thickly overcast. Not put off by the bad visibility we headed up onto the mountain regardless, after all we came here to go riding.
The first few runs were hard work, very flat light, sketchy pistes, low visibility.

Then the heavens opened, beginning with a heavy shower of little ball bearing type flakes of snow that quickly made the pistes brilliant fun, super fast and starting to get quite soft. Then the snow turned into huge fluffy flakes and was absolutely bucketing down, so much so that within an hour or so there was around 6 inches of beautiful champagne powder everywhere. The visibility was still very limited, in fact it was probably worse than before but it was starting to not matter as there was so much soft stuff.

The snow continued to fall and by lunch time the slopes were pretty much empty, any of the french skiers had gone home to hide away with a Vin Chaud, the Italians had scarpered back across the border in search of some sun which left ...us...the only people on the mountain it seemed.

We were careering down slopes in powder up to our knees having the time of our lives. At one point we stopped and i looked around us to find, to my amazement, we were on a piste!! the powder was so deep i thought we were still on the off piste run we started off on, but we had just joined back onto a red run. incredible!!

This kind of behaviour continued right through until the end of the day as did the snow. In fact it continued to snow all that night as well, but more on that in a minute.

Totally exhausted we took ourselves of to the 'local' for a bit of a Apres de brief (as you do) Sometime later we eventually got home and collapsed in our beds with the determination for the first lift in the morning.

Day 4 was one of the most epic days snowboarding i have ever had, the conditions were more than anyone could ask for. Perfect untouched powder runs, soft squeaky pistes, empty slopes, bright blue skies, shangri la!
We spent the entire day spotting new runs down through the trees from the lift and giving them a go once we reached the top. Amazingly we barely saw another sole all day, we were cutting fresh tracks on every descent.

The off piste in Serre Chevalier is very accessible, there are many sections which are in between pistes with nothing dangerous hiding under the snow or any cliffs that pop up out of nowhere (obviously i do not condone going out there and 'going for it' i know this resort well and know where i'm going, always have someone show you where is safe!!!)

So with hats, coats, trousers, ears and even some mouths and noses full of powder, we called it a day, smug in the knowing that for the rest of our time on resort we were not going to have to worry about the snow conditions at all. Obviously some more would be nice, but you cant ask for too much.

I wont bore you with the rest of the weeks riding escapades as they were all along fairly similar lines really. The weather stayed great, we even got a dusting more snow a few days later just to top things off. The french half term holidays began near the end of the week which made things a bit busier, but even then the longest we waited for a lift was no more than a couple of minutes. Various great times were had out and about on resort during the evenings, Mojo's, La Grotte and the Swedish bar being the highlights of these (thanks guys!!) I even learned why its a bad idea to have a snowboard with you after an apres session ending at 2am, tarmac and snowboards don't mix very well.

We had thoroughly great time and i feel incredibly lucky to have had the conditions we were blessed with during our stay. The resort left a lasting impression on me the first time i went there, and i think it has done the same for Ben and Lloyd, fear not Serre Chevalier, we shall return...