Grand-Massif: Les Cascades

Starting with an unparalleled view of Mont Blanc at the Grandes Platières in Flaine at 2393m and falling gracefully for 1700m over a massive 14km piste to Sixt Fer à Cheval through the Vallee Giffre, les Cascades is a stunning tour through Grand Massif's prettiest valley.

This is Grandes Platières in Flaine which claims to have the best view of Mont Blanc in the region. It is quite a pretty mountain and was stylishly wearing a little cloud beret yesterday.

Yesterday we visted Samoëns which is part of the Grand Massif which consists of 5 linked ski resorts. The highlight of Grand Massif, according to their website, anyway, is the 14km long blue piste called les Cascades (The Waterfalls). It feels very backcountry, although it's extremely well pisted with fun, easy bits of off piste on the way. There are no chairlifts on the run, which is great because you get the true quiet of an Alpine valley without the constant thrumming of chairs rattling over their guidewheels.

This is the start of les Cascade. 75 is the highest number on les Cascades where normally runs start at 20 or so.

The run takes you down from 2400m to 760m at the tiny village of Sixt Fer à Cheval which is also part of the Grand Massif with its own, very small, sets of runs.

Natalie sets off down the valley - you need to keep your speed up as there's quite a lot of uphill.

It's quite difficult getting from Samoëns to the top of the run as you have to take 1 bubble, 1 draglift, and 4 chairlifts to get there. It took us about 2 hours from the bottom of Samoëns to get to the top. And then, including a picnic along the way, only about an hour to do the run itself.

Not a bad spot for a picnic we thought.

Coming from the Portes du Soleil, i'd equate les Cascades with runs like Tovassierre down to Morgins from Mossette and le Grand Paradis from Chavanette to Champéry. However, les Cascades ends up very low down (760m) and they aren't kidding when they say Manque de Neige (lack of snow) or that there are rocks in the piste. Our skis weren't very happy with us for the last part of the run which is where the Cascades actually are and the piste takes to zigzagging down a steep, very narrow, very icy, rocky path to the village. There are a few snow cannons, but they really need a lot more to keep this run open through these warm winters. The one advantage they've got is that le Giffre, the valley you end up in, is in constant shade in the Winter, so the snow that is there tends to stick around.

Les Cascades themselves - did i mention they are frozen?

Once at the bottom there's a bus to take you back to Samoëns every 25 minutes or so, which is free with your lift pass. The bus driver was extremely funny as well, or at least, all the French people on the bus found him to be a riot while we, of course, didn't have a clue what the joke was about. Really need to work on our French.

More Les Cascades themselves - ok, this one isn't frozen.

And i leave you with a photo of us where you can't really make out any facial features whatsoever. We do look rather cool though.