15km Black trail cross country skiing at Le Desert with Charlotte and Alexis

Alexis, Alain and Charlotte, the Mont Blanc is somewhere behind

 The Friday before we left the Chartreuse we took Charlotte and Alexis to Le Desert and thought we's try the black trail which is 15 km long and fairly hard.  We were told at the station that if we found it too difficult there was a passage at a point onto the red trail to it short, so we were prepared, just in case. 
Alexis was brave, climbing up over 100's of meters were tough for him, and Charlotte was ready to cut off the black trail, but we carried on and once we were at the highest point, we didn't see Charlotte or Alexis much, as they like descending (and falling) fast, I mean Alexis just shoots down and doesn't brake at all and Charlotte barely.
Whereas I'm a cautious type and I slow myself down a lot.  Alain who learnt to ski in Norway with telemarks is a great skier but was jolly tired at the end.
I have to say the first half of this trail is amazing (before it meets with the red one), the views were sometimes fantastic and snow was good (not frozen), the sun shone and we had the trail to ourselves, really just us four.
Afterwards we treated ourselves to a couple of hot sugary cappuccino's and the children had some jam rissoles that I never got chance to taste as they were quickly eaten by two happy but exhausted children.

Still in La Chartreuse Le Pic de la Cochette 1618m

Last Wednesday Alain, Oliver and I planned to snowshoe up onto the Le Pic de La Cochette. This is a fairly short (just over 3 km up) but  a difficult path to climb with a denivelation of 400m+.
So kitted out with our snowshoes and our poles (thanks to Decathlon) and my runtastic pro app running we started out.   Unfortunately super unfit Oliver aged 17.5 didn't get further than 800 meters....too hard he said, so with car keys in hand a little money he left us to it.
The snow was deep in places and it's supposed to take an average of two hours to reach the top but I love going up more than coming down so I was up in 54 minutes and Alain a little (6 minutes) later. 
The view was just breathtaking and I could have stayed up there all day, but had to be back for lunch with the children and besides I'm scared of heights  so this is as close as I dared to go to the edge.  On the above photo you can see the Mont Blanc in the distance which is about 80 km away (I think)

 Alain made it and was rewarded with a couple of sliced of yummy saucisson...Did you know that you burn lots of calories snowshoeing! 

 The descent was fast and Alain was more at ease going down than  up and I had to run (with snowshoes) to keep up with him.  Thirty three minutes later we were down.  Poor Oliver was in the car playing with his phone and had (and still has) no idea what he missed.