Road tripping to La Grave and back

La Grave. At least once in a skiers life time you wanna go there and experience this special spirit there. La Grave is well known for its high-mountain ski area and attracts people from all over the world. I always wanted to go there and now there was the time to get there…

But why would you leave home, when you have good conditions here? Good weather was forecasted for the whole week, snow was good here and we knew that the conditions in La Grave won’t be awesome… Still, we wanted to go and give it a try…

Back to where it all started… Innsbruck. I met with my friend Andi, left my car at the mechanics because it needed to get serviced, loaded up all the stuff and then continued to drive with Andis’ Beauty, the red “Porsche”. On the road again – yes! 70km’s driving later, an extreme noise stopped the driving. What was wrong? The tail pipe – oh no! We somehow managed to drive to the ÖAMTC, where the Lady was already laughing at us because she could hear us coming from far away… Well, another hint to stay back home? The car would need to get serviced, would that be possible? And would we get to France and back with “Beauty”?

Instead of going back home with the train, I made a call to my good friénd Toni at the Arlberg. It was much closer than going back to Innsbruck, so he was so kind and organized us a place to stay at the Arlberg – thanks Toni! It was cool to spend the day in Pettneu, meeting some familiar people back from the days where I worked there as a ski coach…

The car got repaired within the next day, so we left Landeck around noon. It was an odyseee of driving, we took the Italian Highway, lots of toll stops inbetween and spending some time asking people the right way. A tunnel? 45 Euros? Sh… We went into the wrong direction… That happens when you’re road tripping and you are not well prepared – so we paid our dues 😉 Won’t happen again – for sure! But it made this trip even more unforgettable 😉

But going back through this horrific expensive tunnel? No, we tried a different way. My Gps showed us a different mountain route with a mountain pass inbetween. We gave it a try. One hour driving and then just frustration – the pass is closed. Why couldn’t they write this down earlier? Hahhahaha… Well, I guess sometimes just shit happens…
So back the same way, through the tunnel and just before midnight we arrived in La Grave, at the Gite le Rocher. If you visit La Grave you should stay there! Cool hostel, nice people and I guess the weirdest decor I have ever seen…

The next day – blue sky, exploring new Terrain. The worlds’ famous Telepherique brings us up to 3200 meters. You don’t wanna be stressed riding this cable-car. It reduces the fast pace, you have to slow down… That is what I think is very special about La Grave, nobody is stressed out, everybody is taking it easy and slow…

Skiing on hard packed snow, enjoying the day out. While skiing, a crevasse collapsed and made us aware of being out skiing on a glacier…

I’ve seen quite a bunch of videos about La Grave. If you like steep skiing, it is a cool place to be. The terrain offers many options. At this time to less snow and some of the classics haven’t been skied by the locals, so we made most out of it and took it easy…

One Video is worth watching as it gives an insight of this place. Here we go:

Strolling around town later on…

One more day of quite good weather. So Andi and me decide to drive up to Col du Lautaret and see what’s possible there. Many options, after some discussion which one to choose, we decided to hike and ski this nice mountain…

A bad weather front moved in the next day, brought some fresh snow to the mountains again, still to less but it’s a reason to go back there and definetely stay longer!

8 hours later, we are back home. Beauty brought us back safely… A short, long trip, opening the eyes to see what’s possible to do there – a beautiful place that needs to get explored…

Thanks Andi for the memorable trip! Hopefully Beauty will survive for much longer…