Les 3 Vallées, France, Report: Dumping Croissants, Powder, Pillows, and No One Out…

We awoke yesterday to a dusting of snow at the Fahrenheit Seven hotel here in Les 3 Vallées, France (on the Epic Pass).

My crew wasn’t fired up, but I was.

I was in line at the gondola at 8:55 am.

Second gondola, and straight up to the Signal chair.

Signal was closed, so I lined up with one other guy.

He looked pretty legit and had a backpack, so I bluntly asked him:

“Bonjour, ça va ? Je m’appelle Miles, et toi ?”

He said his name was Eric, then switched to English and asked if I was alone.

I said I was, and he suggested we ski together.

Excellent start to the day. I’d already made a new friend.

I’d scoped a great tree skiing zone the previous day, and from the top of Signal, we headed straight for it in a whiteout.

It was wild up there above treeline.

I floundered, zigzagged, apologized, and eventually got us where we wanted to go—and it was good.

It wasn’t crazy deep, maybe 12–18″ of new snow, but it was untouched.

I’d taken photos of the zone the previous day, and we used those to find clean lines through the trees and bushes.

Spaced trees and bushes were incredible.

Tighter trees revealed areas with almost no snowpack at all.

We bobbed and weaved, taking snow to the chest in modest, unsteep terrain, and we were happy.

Then the chair we’d really been waiting for opened.

Now it was steep, short, sweet powder runs—and we were the only people skiing the entire zone.

It turns out Eric likes faceshots, and in French, “faceshots” is “faceshots.”

We started on the far left and worked our way slowly right each run, never worrying about anyone else getting there first.

The day was a dream.

We skied, laughed, and had it all to ourselves.

We couldn’t believe our luck.

We completely tracked out two chairlifts’ worth of powder and headed home content at 2 pm.

C’est super!

Insane day and I even made a new friend who has been super helpful dialing in where we should go next.

Martin took me out to tapas for dinner and some super drunk French people made dinner extra fun.

Merci, la France!