J2Ski Holiday 2014

Hey - I found a naked one of those mini-snow cannons on the video! Or at least I suppose that's what it is - it looks rather like a toadstool ...

And I always thought the snow cannons have yellow/orange jackets around them in case someone skies/snowboards into them. I didn't think they could also be for insulation ...

Fair summary Ally of our afternoon. All I can say is that I am mighty glad CatP had mugged-up on how to get a prone skier in deep snow standing up again on youtube :)

Yes - it makes me wonder what I should be mugging up now on YouTube for our next ski holiday ... ;)

you're all lucky...the way down on the right side of the piste markers was moguled and even more difficult...and the video shows the last bit as a pisted run ...it wasn't when I/we did it..just marked

Well, whilst we're discussing my navigational mistakes, I thought I'd say something about the pistes and the piste map and where I got confused - so that anyone planning on going there in the future doesn't make the same mistakes as me!

The gondola in Madonna di Campiglio that goes up to the highest point in the ski area (Passo Groste) is in 2 sections - Groste 1 Express and Groste 2 Express marked as 45 and 46 on the piste map (it stops but you can stay in it right to the top). The first section ends at the Boch restaurant and when I went up it the first time it didn't continue upwards because of the high avalanche risk. Looking at the piste map I thought we wouldn't be able to get onto piste number 60 and across to Monte Spinale via the Boch Express chairlift - but in fact you can - because it looks uphill on the map (it doesn't have directional arrows on the piste map).

And I thought the Pinzolo-Campiglio Express actually stopped so you had to get out after the first section, because it does a 45 degree bend - but it doesn't. You can stay in it all the way to the ski area at Pinzolo, although as I said before, it does take 22 minutes to get there!

When you're at the top of Monte Spolverino, in the Folgarida sector, and you want to get to Madonna di Campigliio, or Marilleva, you have to go down 7 to where the Solander restaurant is and the gondola comes up from Daolasa, and then turn left (still on piste 7 apparently) ski down a steep bit and at the bottom of it you can either branch left for the chair back to the top of Monte Spolverino and the way back to Folgarida, or go right for the chair to Monte Vigo and Madonna di Campiglio and Marilleva.

And on the way back from Monte Vigo towards Folgarida, you can take either the red 9 or 12 but you always end up back going down the steep bit on blue 7 to where the Folgarida chairlift is on the left and the Madonna one is on the right. So as far as I know you can't get back without going on the small Folgarida chairlift, number 23 on the piste map.

As I said before, piste 66 coming down from Passo Groste has a nasty flat section and ends up in a car park by the Groste gondola (although you can take the chairlift 39 followed by 40 up to Monte Spinale before you get to the car park). We were rather confused about this, because at the bottom the signs disappeared and the piste went upwards so you had to either take your skis off or walk in a herring bone. If you kept straight on at the last bit you ended up in the car park, but other skiers seemed to be turning to the left and walking up a bit of piste that was even steeper but which I discovered afterwards joins the blue 78 by the bridge and avoids the car park.

Going from the Folgarida side to the far side of the valley in Madonna (where Monte Spinale and Passo Groste are), there's a bridge you can ski over. But coming back they have a moving carpet! And I only managed to get from one side to the other over this bridge but there's also a route under the bridge somewhere, because the others found it, and a route between the Groste gondola and the Spinale Express gondola. I didn't want to risk looking for it and end up walking up a hill or something (or going the wrong way and climbing over a bank back onto the piste, like I did at the start of the week!). There are several strange blue pistes through Madonna di Campiglio itself, which I didn't bother investigating because we managed to get where we wanted to without using them.

To ski the last bit home, from the Malghet Aut where the ski schools and restaurants are and where the first gondola takes you to in the morning, you can either bear right and ski down the blue 2, or keep straight on and go down the black 1. The blue got really chopped up at the top by the end of the day and tended to have several casualties on it, but further down it was fine and then it has a turning to the right for those going to Upper Folgarida but you have to keep left for Lower Folgarida. The black wasn't too difficult but it is fairly steep so if you do it without stopping you're likely to get leg-ache!

There are about 20 mountain restaurants in the ski area of Folgarida and Madonna di Campiglio, and I should think I went into about half of them during the week.

The poshest one I found is the chalet Fiat at the top of Monte Spinale. I did wonder, when I first walked in, if I was in the right place, it was so posh! And it has one restaurant area that's laid out as though it's for a wedding - presumably that's for people who reserve a place there.

The mountain restaurants seemed to have a self-service section, which is just like anywhere else where you go and fill your tray up and then pay. But they also had a separate area where you said what you wanted and paid at the till and they gave you a voucher and then you went and got your tea and cake or whatever - I generally did it like this because I reckoned it was quicker.

They all seemed very new, and the toilets were miles better than the ones I've seen in France - and you certainly didn't have to pay to go to the toilet! The only fault I had with them was that sometimes there was a queue in the ladies, so maybe they need more cubicles.

So, I was very impressed with the mountain restaurants. The food was great, it was very reasonably priced, the service was good, and as long as we weren't there at the main lunchtime at around 1 p.m. the queues weren't too bad and we could usually find somewhere to sit together. There was usually a very good view from them as well (when it wasn't foggy or snowing hard, that is!).

And we never had to look at the piste map to search for the nearest restaurant. They always just turned up in front of us, because there are so many of them :)

The pistes were much longer than I was expecting, after reading up on how long they were, because one piste generally runs seamlessly into another. So that, for example, ski-ing down from Monte Vigo to Marilleva 1400 there's a total run of 4.7 Km, made up of the red pistes 11 and 23. And going back up, it's split into a gondola from the bottom followed by a chairlift, so that you don't have to ski all the way down if you don't want to.

Davidsa2 had one of those apps on his phone that tell you how far you've skied and how fast. And according to this we averaged around 25 miles of actual ski-ing per day, which I'm sure is nowhere near as much as we did in Tignes, but that was because of the poor visibility, the powdery lumps, and the other less experienced skiers on the pistes. We got pretty good at avoiding other skiers/boarders and casualties. I found there were fairly long stretches with few people on them and then we'd get to a ridge and I'd bang the brakes on and peer anxiously over the top and there was usually about 30 people crowded closely together struggling with powdery lumps.

I didn't ski into anyone all week (in fact I never have skied into anyone) but I got hit twice from behind by other people. Once by a boarder who's board collided with my skis and knocked me over, and once by a skier who whacked me on the back but didn't actually knock me over.

There were very few pistes and occasions when it was safe to take the brakes off and really 'go' for it. We managed it a couple of times first thing in the morning on the freshly pisted red Brenzi piste, and a few more times over in Pinzolo. Davidsa2 logged a speed of 45 mph (and I was going faster than him!) :)

Here's a photo of Billip1's daughter, on the blue home run - piste number 2.
She hurt her knee ski-ing, and the medical centre in Folgarida checked it over for her and told her it was nothing too serious but to put a knee brace on it and not to ski for the rest of the holiday. So that's why she's not in our lovely group photos on the last day :(
(Photo Billip1)