_edited.png){kind=small}
la Rosière - 2022
Skiing Easter 2022: 26th March-2nd April
La Rosière is a compact resort close to Bourg St. Maurice in France, and shares the Espace San Bernardo ski area with La Thuile, just over the Italian frontier. So the 'flavour' of the resort is a French/Italian blend.
​
Rather than being a purpose-built ski resort, much of the original mountain village has been retained despite more recent development. Mont Blanc lies just to the north, and although not an especially high resort, according to snow history reports La Rosière has good snow cover well into Spring, even at village levels - good news for our trip, as we were there right at the end of the 2022 season.
La Rosiere Village
La Rosière shares the Espace San Bernardo with its Italian partner resort, La Thuile, and is listed as an ideal ski domain for all skill levels, but especially suits intermediates and beginners with plenty of blue and red runs. Although the region is less extensive than the Paradiski, home of la Plagne, or the Portes du Soliel where we've skied at Avoriaz, the piste map indicates plenty of variety for a 6-day ski trip. The resort is reputed to have excellent skiing conditions throughout the season which extends well into April. The lift pass for 6 days is €231, making this a better-value resort than many others in the French Alps.​
Domain skiable San Bernado
At the summit of 2800m, the resort crosses the frontier from France into the Aosta valley in Italy. The lift system and pistes interlink the two resorts, with the lift pass covering the whole area comprising 152km of runs served by 34 lifts altogether.
Opening in La Rosière in 2018 was a new skiable area of the mountain, the Mont Valaisan sector, claiming to provide more 'technical' skiing challenges on 5 new red runs. Check out the resort's webcams for current snow and skiing conditions.
​
Mont Valaisan Ouverture 2018
La Rosiére panoramo from the walkway at the summit of Le Fort lift
Accommodation
La Rosière retains a pleasant balance between traditional, alpine 'old town' buildings, and newer, purpose-built hotels and residences. The pistes are behind the village to the north and east.
​
We stayed in a comfortable, value-for-money AirBnB apartment in Residence Les Bouquetins at the top of the village. Effectively a studio-and-a-half, it was small, but provided the added benefit of a mezzanine sleeping area that was a little more private. It was close to all the village's amenities, and was very nearly ski-in/ski-out, requiring just a short ski-boot stomp to the closest snow adjacent to the main lift. It facd south with a lovely sunny balcony for aprés-ski.
Residence les Bouquetins
Travelling
We took the Yeti 'van' cross-Channel from Portsmouth to Ouistreham with Brittany Ferries, loaded up with driver, all the ski gear and most of everyone else's personal kit.
​
Following an uneventful overnight crossing (which included comfortable cabin accommodation), an early morning arrival in Ouistreham preceded a pleasant and unhurried cross-country jaunt through Normandy and Central France to an overnight stop at the charming, Burgundy town of Cluny (map).
Cluny
After a comfortable night at Hotel Saint-Odilon, the Yeti left Cluny, heading in to Jura and on towards Geneva where the rest of the team were flying in from Southampton.
With no delays, and now everyone 'on board', it was a couple of mostly autoroute-hours driving up to the resort at La Rosière. We arrived mid-afternoon to check in to our accommodation hassle-free.
​
Returning similarly, two flew home from Lyon, two brought the Yeti home, with an overnight stop at the amazing banks-of-the-Loire town of Amboise in an extraordinarily good AirBnB, hearty breakfast included.
Amboise
Our trip - video clips
Although a relatively high resort and hence, blessed with snow late into the season, the first half of our week was sunny and quite warm! So morning skiing was best as by early afternoon, even at higher altitudes, the 'going' became soft. Nice grippy snow none-the-less. By midweek however, conditions deteriorated and although colder, visibility reduced so that by Friday, we were skiing in fog. Friday evening witnessed a snow-storm with an amazing dump of snow in just a couple of hours - just in time for our trip home. Snow chains were fitted to the Yeti after breakfast on Saturday to travel safely to the valley road below.
​
Links below are to the GoPro raw footage video clips which at least evidence the fantastic snow and weather conditions we had for the first part of the week. Sadly, with the final couple of days beset with poor visibility, more cautious skiing so as to stay safe on the mountain took priority over setting up the GoPros. The clips we did get are poor and hence, not included here.
​
The clips have been processed to run in YouTube at full 1440HD resolutions (adjust YouTube's settings to get that) and time-lengths are listed in the format mins:secs. Properly edited clips will appear in due course.
Day One:
First Run of the Day; 7:23
Clip 2; 7:52
Clip 3; 6:27
Clip 4; 11:06
Clip 5; 11:37
Clip 6; 12:01
Clip 7; 11:07
Day Two:
Later in the week ...
First Run of the Day; 3:00
Clip 2; 4:40
Clip 8; 12:01
Clip 3; 5:05
Clip 9; 6:52
Clip 4; 8:14
Clip 10; 1:12
Clip 5; 9:49
Clip 11; 6:41
Clip 6; 7:49
Clip 12; 11:26
Clip 7; 4:56
Clip 13; 7:57
Day Six, Clip 1; 5:30
Day Six, Clip 2; 2:06
