Fine Winter 2019

Exploring Les Arcs
The ski resort where you don’t have to ski!
I
love the mountains and snow, but I’m
not a great skier. There’s only so many
pistes that my nerves and my knees
can take. I don’t necessarily want to miss
out on the pine forests and beauty, but I’m
always on the lookout for something “off
piste” and a bit different.
Club Med
The Club Med Panorama opened in
December 2018 in the Les Arcs Paradiski
region. As you’d expect, it’s got pretty
much everything you could expect from a
Club Med with snacks and drinks waiting
for you as you ski off the piste, food and
drink of every description and an endless
supply of jollity and entertainment. If
you’re here with your family, they really
have got all bases covered!
Skiing into Spring
Spring skiing is a relatively new concept
here and it makes a lot of sense. Covering
the period from the end of March to the
end of April, there’s still plenty of snow
to be had with the added advantage of
much warmer days, lighter evenings and
less people on the slopes. I was amazed
that in early April, I often had the slopes
to myself and combined with a variety of
“special offers”, it makes it a great time for
beginners or families with young children
to ski.
Balades a Raquettes
But while the family flung themselves down
the slopes, I headed into the forest to
give snow shoeing a try. Snow shoeing is
diverse, brilliant fun and not as hard as you
may think. You need a good pair of boots
(which you can hire from Club Med) and a
guide who will supply you with snow shoes
and poles.
Tea and cake at 2,000 metres!
My first guide was Antoine, who offers a
whole host of snow shoeing and hiking
activities. You can snow shoe for as little
as an hour or for a whole week. There’s
even a day long snow shoe hike which
involves a fondue lunch at an Alpine chalet.
There’s also night snow shoeing and an
overnight option where you sleep in a log
cabin in the mountains.
Antoine’s style is pretty relaxed. He clearly
knows these mountains and their heritage
well, and he’ll soon have you snow jumping,
and bouncing down steep descents which
you never thought you’d be capable of.
Although perhaps his most impressive
feat is producing a large and delicious cake
intact from his back pack along with hot
tea at 2,000 metres! I could come to love
Antoine!
With Mont Blanc in the distance, you
can walk in the Mont Blanc forest, in the
Beaufortain mountains opposite Les Arcs
and up the Petit St Bernard pass along the
French Italian border. Antoine caters for
varying levels of fitness and stops often –
to point out a bird, a particular tree or a
mountain. And nothing beats the fact that
you’re high up and off the beaten track, in
amongst the pines, listening to the silence
of the snowy mountains.
http://www.baladesducolporteur.com/
Snow shoeing and Qigong
My second snow shoeing outing with
Marie was a much more spiritual affair. A
botanist, Marie’s style of snow shoeing
more closely resembled Nordic walking as
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