Alpe d’Huez, France
February 12th - 18th 2017: The classical dilemma of a skier is whether to have to blue skies all week during your ski vacation, or whether you should wish for “bad” weather in hopes of getting some fresh snow. This year however, there was no dilemma to be had as the sun shined the whole time, making for absolutely great photos! However, this all came at a cost of all the little snow that was left melting quicker than one would like. Nonetheless, it would have been a shame if it was cloudy the whole time because that would have meant missing out on the stunning views of all the surrounding peaks! Not only are the peaks rather tall, but lots of them were of interesting structure, some resembling pyramids, other pointy needles, and the back of a Stegosaurus! And of course I can’t forget to mention the view from the top of Pic Blanc at 3300 metres, where you could see mountains so far away, that the view truly felt endless, because even peaks in Switzerland and Italy were visible! The Matterhorn and Mt. Blanc included! One of the things that also makes Alpe d’Huez so special was the ski slope from the very top to the very bottom, which in total length reaches up to 16 km, making it the longest black run in all of Europe. Usually when you see some stat like this, you would usually just consider it to be some marketing statistic, but not gonna lie, that slope was one of the best ones I’ve skied down for sure! On top of all these amazing things, we got really lucky with some of the most beautiful and colorful sunsets I’ve ever seen. The intensity of the glow coming from behind the mountains, where the sun always managed to find the perfect spot to set, always actually made me want to hurry and stop skiing in order to get my camera, which is already saying a lot considering how much I love skiing! From now, whenever I’ll see a beautiful sunset, I’ll probably start comparing it to the ones from Alpe d’Huez, because they, along with the whole location, were absolutely perfect all week!
[more photos from this area]
