Champoluc. What Season Is It?

07/04/25

This blog entry starts with a final couple of days skiing in Cervinia. We had some lovely fresh snow followed by bright sunshine.

Most notably we had pizza from La Moulin bar and restaurant at the bottom of the Valtournenche cable car. I don’t know why we haven’t had pizza here before but we’ll definitely be back. It was delicious and proper Italian value rather than resort prices. The only downside was having to wait until 7pm before we could pick it up but then it was just a couple of minutes before we were back in the van and scarfing it down.

Moving on to Champoluc

We looked at the forecast of unrelenting sunshine and decided we’d better move on before everywhere was snowless. Our next destination was Champoluc – last time were were here we had to put the snow chains on part way up the road to the resort. This time we were looking at the snow free valley and wondering where on earth it had been snowy enough to put chains on. The sosta was very quiet; only one other van was here when we arrived on the Friday afternoon and the weekend didn’t get much busier with half a dozen vans maximum. We tried to decide whether it was due to the weather or maybe because Easter was the next weekend and people were saving themselves for their long break.

Sunshine in the sosta at Champoluc

Apart from a lack of visitors, the sosta was very much the same as last time we were here. It was priced at the ‘high season’ cost of €20. Annoyingly the rest of the resort no longer thought it was high season and so the free navetta (shuttle bus) was no longer running. One new feature at the sosta was the collection of personal data, including passport number, which we had to send by Whatsapp to the manager of the sosta, Quite a few Italian stopovers ask for this, I assume part of the collection of tourist tax and registration of visitors. I have photos of our documents on my phone so at least we don’t have to ferret them out of their safe storage.

A walk to Saint Jacques

Waking up on Saturday morning we decided that it was too warm for skiing. We headed off for a walk instead, up the valley alongside the river. We were completely over prepared, thinking that we might encounter some cooler temperatures as we ascended.

In the end we were so warm that we had to stop in the Walser village of Saint Jacques for ice cream. As we enjoyed some ice cream from old fashioned glass ice cream bowls (no cones because it wasn’t the summer season yet) we watched ski mountaineers descending, carrying their skis in their rucksacks across the grassy slopes behind the bar. We suddenly felt less over equipped.

After our ice-cream stop we ascended more steeply up the valley and into the woods where wood-ants were scurrying through the dead pine needles. So many that the ground looked as though it was creeping along with us. There was no way we would be stopping here. We did a circular loop back to Saint Jacques finding some snow and ice on the shady side of the valley. We also found more ski mountaineers descending the paths which required skis off, skis on, as patches of snow were interrupted by bare ground.

Up to the Alpe Metsan

The following day Paul wanted a rest so I took myself off on a solo walk up the steep side of the mountain opposite the sosta. The grassy slopes were terraced, offering a switchback path up through a couple of villages to the Alpe Metsan.

We may tend to think of Alps as mountains, but really the Alpes are the mountain pastures or meadows. The Alpe Metsan was a lovely wide flat area, covered with snow and surrounded by mountain views. Well worn paths criss-crossed the area, which was fortunate as I hadn’t bought any snow equipment with me and was wearing trainers. As I started across the snow I was asked to take the photo of a couple of Italian gentlemen against the mountain backdrop. They waxed lyrical about the beauty of the area but told me I needed to stay until June to see it in it’s full springtime glory. Sadly Schengen rules are not going to make that possible.

There was a mountain restaurant up here in the meadow, busy with families enjoying a picnic at the many tables. Paul was going to be disappointed that he hadn’t joined me as ice cream was on offer again.

View back down the Ayas Valley

That afternoon I dragged Paul out for a stroll into Champoluc. We’d finally worked out that we could get into the village by walking out of the back of the sosta and along the river, rather than on the main road. We could tell that it was the start of the British Easter break with the sound of so many people speaking English. A couple of the bars were busy with people checking in and meeting their reps. But as the British holiday makers were arriving, the sosta was emptying and we were left alone for our final night.

Skiing the Monte Rosa

We had decided to ski on the Monday, but we wanted to leave the sosta in the morning so that we didn’t tip over into another 24 hour period. We thought that we’d be ok to park up at the Frachey car park to access the ski area. The car park in Champoluc itself is now a No Motorhome zone but when we’d walked through Frachey a couple of days previously it looked ok, spacious and with some decent sized spaces. We figured it would be pretty empty on a Monday in low season. We were right, it was very quiet, but – as we pulled up into a space that had enough room for us to overhang our back end – we saw a No Motorhome sign we hadn’t spotted before. That wasn’t good. Most car parks along the valley road have the same signs, but we took a chance on a parking area that didn’t have a sign immediately next to it (although there was one further along the road which I assume was meant to apply to the spot we were in). We crossed our fingers that no one was going to worry about us on a quiet Monday.

Frachey funicular

We had a great day skiing the Monte Rosa area from Champoluc to Alagna and back again. The three valleys are all quite different; Champlouc was quiet with hard icy slopes from being in the shade. Staffal was busy with British tourists and we could see motorhomes in the very convenient sosta (in hindsight we probably should have stayed there). There was a deep well of fog at the bottom of Alagna’s valley. We talked to a couple of teenagers who were on a school trip. Some school! they were talking abut their planned day of heli-skiing and wondering if it would be cancelled due to a lack of snow.

Paul rode the cable cars on the lower sections while I skied the slush down to the bottom, at one point I stopped for a snowboarder who was on his back. A first responder was with him and said “broken collarbone, it happens” with the sort of shrug I would normally describe as gallic. The poor guy was in obvious agony but there wasn’t anything else I could do, the stretcher was due and I was probably best out of it’s way.  I continued down to Staffal, sobered and slightly more cautious (although in all honestly I’m pretty cautious anyway).

We weren’t sticking around up here but we were glad we’d had a day on the slopes and we’ll be back again I’m sure. Maybe next time it’ll be ‘high season’.