The Escapades - Meribel Valley

What are The Escapades?

The Escapades are a set of lifts in the Three Valleys that you have to ride. There are 14 of them, and they are spread out over the entire Three Valleys. You have to go through the turnstile and your lift pass automatically records if one of the lifts is an 'Escapade'. If you complete all 14 while on your trip, you get a badge and a certificate. You will also get to experience most of the Three Valleys, which is where myself and Eleanor come in.

While planning our trip to Mottaret for January this year, I came across a post, that talked about The Escapades, and they sounded like a lot of fun. These were people who had done them all in one day mind you, which we would have loved to do, but realistically it was not possible for our first trip to the Three Valleys.

The piste map below shows the Escapade lifts on it, they are the lifts with the small green cirvel with a strange curved yellow arrow going through them.

Three Valleys Piste Map (click to enlarge)

Starting Out

Eleanor and myself decided we were going to go for it though! We arrived, and spent a day or two skiing the area, getting a feel for the pistes, and we then decided to ask about the Escapades. Now, what we didn't know was you don't ask in the Tourist Office, because they have never heard of it, and neither had the ski schools that were based in the Mottaret tourist office! We went across the hall, and asked the ski pass people, they knew! We got a small print out of which Escapades we had already completed. At this point I should mention we had guessed around about how many we had done, and put it around 5. It turns out we had only been on two!

Escapades - Three Valleys Pass

The lifts you have to get are very specific, and in a couple of days skiing around, we had only managed to get on three of them! It was not looking like we could just complete this by skiing around a bit. It was time to plan!

The Plan

We took out the piste map, and decided we were going to have to split the remainder up to at least two days. We were staying right smack in the middle of the Three Valleys, and it was January. We had short days, and would have to double back on ourselves, twice, it was not going to happen in a single day.

Also, we were without a computer, and we hadn't skied most of the runs we were picking out before, so it was all gut feeling, and making sure we got all the little green circles in!

Escapades Plan

The plan was simple, lots of lifts, sky down to other lifts, and eventually finish our first day. In the picture above, the lifts with a '(E)' beside them are Escapade lifts, and we were doing them!

Lots of Lifts

We set out early, needing all of the day to get this done. We stocked up on a big breakfast, and took to the slopes. It started out badly, we had one of the longest drag lifts ever as our second lift, and at this point we had done about 50 metres of skiing to start off, we were still tired and stiff, and we lost one of our group on that lift. On the plus side it was a first Escapade of the day!

We were also going to get some skiing in finally, which was nice! It was a beautiful run down into Saint Martin De Belleville, some red, some blue, but all nice!

Then it was a long Gondola back to the top of the mountain. What we had noticed about the Escapades was you had to go to the edge of every part of the piste map, by the end of this, we were going to find ourselves visiting almost every village, every valley, and occasionally out of our depth!

This day went a lot like this, we did lots of skiing, lots of lifts, and made our way through most of the escapades on this side of the mountain!

The Glaciers

We've been skiing a long day, gone up and down too many lifts, and at this point down to two of us, having lost Angus in Val Thorens to his brothers. We head over to the Glacier de la Pointe Renod. This is not an easy task, it takes lots of lifts, and the weather was not helping, it was cold, and it was windy. In the passage between Val Thorens valley and Orelle Valley it was bitter, and the snow was being blown right off the mountain, leaving a rocky passage.

e made it through there, and skied to the bottom of the lifts, a long, long run, much longer than it looks on the piste map. Up we go, up the Glacier, and it was bitter. We get the Bouchet escpade and start to head back down. Again, we have to ski in this bitter weather, but at this point we're also starting to lose the sun. The long lift Rosael was the hardest challenge of the day, we were starting to seriously worry about our fingertips and toes.

Back across the passage at the peaks between Orelle valley and Val Thorens we go, making our way across the mountain, we had some short uphill sections to go, or we wouldn't make the last escapade of the day: Col, to the top of the Glacier de Thorens.

Again, lots more traversing. At this point, we are out of the sun. Onto the Moraine lift we go, and it's bitter. I can honestly say it's the coldest I have ever been. Both of my feet, all the way to my ankle are numb, I can't feel them, I can't move my toes properly. My hands are numb, my fingers haven't had feeling for a while now, and it's moving to my palms, I'm losing feeling in my palms! This was new to me, I had never come across this before. Both of us were considering mild forstbite a serious possibility. But we still got on the nest lift, up to the top of the Glacier. We were committed to finishing this.

At the top of the glacier, we were presented with a new challenge, skiing down an run, that is pure ice, with a dozen areas blocked off for being too dangerous, we couldn't feel our hands or our feet, and we have been skiing hard all day. It was not pretty, we headed off piste, to try to get some sun and to try get some powder, neither helped.

When we made it off the Glacier, and started to get back to Val Thorens valley, it was a nice feeling, we were still freezing, and we still had more lifts and skiing to go, but it was the end of the Escapades for the day.

The Plan - Part 2

Escapades Plan - Part 2

Our second day seemed to be much shorter, just check out the plan for day versus the plan we had for our first day! Much less on there.

However, part of the shortness was I left out some of the runs, I was feeling cocky, we could see the finish line.

We only had five escapades to go, and we were going to finish this come hell or highwater! Out we went, little did we know what was ahead of us!

The first few went fine, some nice runs, lifts were good, and the sun was out, so it was a nice change from the Glaciers! Then we came up against our first problem, the Prameruel lift closes for lunch. We arrived about 2 minutes after it had shut up shop. And this is one of the Escapades. Note to the lift companies, don't close the escapade lifts for lunch!

On the plus side, we had to ski past the end of the runway for one of the altiports, I felt very like James Bond.

We took this as a sign and skied a gentle blue for some lunch. We went to the Bel Air restaurant, and it was pretty good, mind you I would have eaten almost anything, I needed sustenance and that was all there was too it!

We skied around Courchevel 1650 after lunch, doing one of the escpade lifts twice, we were defintely getting over-confident! On our way back to get the Prameruel escapade, we came across a red run, called Roc Mugnier. This isn't a problem Eleanor and myself will pretty ski down any piste you put us on, but this was nearing the end of a second very long, hard day's skiing, and we were confronted with a very steep, mogul filled, powder-then-ice piste. Part of the problem was a large number of people had also stopped on this hill, and quite a few others were already on the ground after falling. Added to all this was the sun was not on the piste, it had that dusk feeling, there are no shadows, so it's difficult to make it a mogul, a drift, and ice.

In hindsight, it was quite an experience, and in good light conditions, and zero exhaustion we would fly down it and come off the bottom with the adrenaline pumping... we'll have to go back to find out!

So, we get to Prameruel, the second we beep through, we've completed the Escpades! That was a nice feeling, that we couldn't enjoy fully yet, because we had to make our way home, and it we had cut it pretty tight!

We get off the Prameruel lift, shoot across some green and blue to start making our way home. It's around 16:00 at this point, and we have to make our to a lift called Marmottes, it closes at 16:25, and if we miss it we're spending the night in Courchevel, not to mention we can't show off our shiny badges!

Up a very long, slow chairlift we go, the Aiguille De Fruit. Eventually we hop off, at this point it's around 16:10, loads of time. We only have a very short red to go to get us to Marmottes. Oh dear... the piste map is not quite accurate! Of course, most piste maps have little errors here and there, it's par for the course. It just so happened, that the red run we needed was the most inaccurate representation we had come across so far! It was not a short little 2 minute run, it was a long, long, steep run. But, we still had 15 minutes, so we weren't worried.

Then we came across the barriers that let us know the piste was closed, and we had to head down to Courchevel. There was no other way to Marmottes. So, we did what everyone does in that situation, we skied off the piste, around the barriers, and started down towards Marmottes.

Now, we weren't quite sure why the piste was closed, but we were going to find out... turns out there wasn't much snow on most of it, areas that looked like a mogul, were, sort of, they just didn't have snow on the downward side! I've skied on grass, you can do it, but rocks, not so much.

After picking our way through about a hundred metres of rocky terrain, we shot out onto pristine piste, and flew down to the Marmottes lift. We arrived with a few minutes to spare even... I wasn't worried!!

The Badges

We flew across some more reds, and some busy blues, back down to Mottaret... straight to the ski pass office. We handed in our passes, slightly nervous, what if we had missed one!

Then the machine made a happy sound, and the assistant smiled, we had done it! We were officially King and Queen of the Mountain! So that everyone else would know to kneel before us, we were issued with certificates of Mountain royalty, and badges to be worn at all times.

The Escapades - Badge of Honour

We attached them to our ski jackets, made our way to our local creperie, expecting to be issued with free crepes... it turns out we still have to pay. That was disappointing!

The Aftermath

Eleanor and myself sat in Mottaret, eating delicious crepes, holding helmets, gloves, certificates, and badges, exhausted, but ecstatic that we had completed The Three Valley's Escapades!

Next Time...

Doing it in a little over two days is good, we're pleased... but there is this nagging, or perhaps calling, that if others can do it in one day, we have to go back, and prove so can we!