Champagny Webcams and end of the snow 2009

Cross Conutry sking closed for the season:

This winter the alps has had a huge snow fall and hence the cross country ski season has been open until April!

Keep in touch with Champagny all year round via the webcams!

Webcams

The webcams show the mountain area all year round so that weather and snow conditions can be checked.

Fete Du Village

The Village of Champagny le Haut holds a Village Fete every July around the 20th of July.

The day is started early with local men ringing a cows bell to wake you at 8am and sell you some croissants or a Pain o Chocolat! In Friburge the alert is raised by local boy cammie on his French Horn (Known as a cor D'harmonie) in french.

The central village of Le Bois is decked out with stalls and bunting and the all important bar and winesellers. The crowds are entertained with traditional dancing , music and singing.

In the evening the traditional savoyarde soup is boiled up in a huge cauldron and a large que forms in anticipation of the feast. Over one hundred people of the area and tourists all eat together in the open air in the village square a real souvenir as the French would say!

After the food the music and dancing starts again and turns into the Bal sur l'etoiles or dance under the stars!

As a fitting finally to the evening a firworks disply is set off from the otherside of the river which fills the mountian air with a smell of gunpowder. All that remains is a bit morer partying and the magical walk home to your bed in whichever part of the small mountian paridise your lucky enough ot be staying in.

FÊTE à CHAMPAGNY LE HAUT EN SAVOIE FRANCE

The Gorzderette

The Gorzderette is a unique competition for lovers of winter in the mountains.

The competition was devised by Stéphane HUSSON, Erwan LELANN and Sam BAUGEY and this year reached its fifth year.

The competition is held every January in the valley of Champagny le Haut and is centered around the Tour de Glace near the village de le Bois at the gate of the Vanoise National Park.

The competitions format has changed slightly over the years but the main diciplines of Ice Climbing, Ski-Arc(Cross- Country Sking and Archery) and Luge de Foin(Sledge race) have remained at the centre of the event.

In the early years the event was run alonsgside the Derby de Mont de la Guerre in association with the Champagny ski club.

The event broke away and run for the first time in isolation two years ago. At the same time the Big Air section of the event was scrapped and a new discipline of Cordee was brought in.

The Cordee aimed to bring in a test of mountenirring or Alpinisme to the competition. The Gorzderette team built a short course of snow and ice allowing the teams of two to navigate the course of jumps over faux creavasses and balancing over slippery ridges.

The course proved to easy in the first year with many teams achieving a high score. The course in 2008 was extended and increased in difficulty which meant a much tougher test for all the competitors.

The competition goes into it's sixth year in 2009 and must yet again build on a record success in the previous year.

See the site of the gorzderette here!

Champagny on Wikipedia

Friburge is a small hamlet located in the valley of Champagny le Haut. It is unique in the valley in many ways as it is the only village in the valley to (at time of posting) have it's very own wikipedia article.

The full article can be found here!

The article is acurate in many points but seems off in many of it's facts also. It mentions the an avalanche in the 50's destroying the school which is still very much there in the centre of the hamlet just nearby the water basin.

Skiing in Champagny

Champagny is one of the villages of la plagne and is hence connected to La Plagne and via the Vanoise express to Les Arcs.

You will find Champagny stuck on the funny triangle in the top right hand corner of the la plagne piste map. This piste map does not do the area justice as the passes taht interweave between the north and south side of the la plagne area cannot be easliy described in a 3 inch wide 2d representation.

Investing some time in the south side slopes of Verdon Sud and Champagny village will reap rewards.



The Bubble from the villages takes you up to the main meeting area for ski schools at 2000m.
From here you can descend to either the borsiliers chair to stay on the village sector slopes or the verdon sud chair which takes you up to the top of verdon throught the centre of the huge verdons sud bowl.

The Borsiliers chair take you up to a height of around 2200m and a quick descent to the next chair which whisks you on up towards the top of the mountain. From here descent towards la Plagne give you the option of the carella chair which is a long but fast chair taing you to the roche de Mio with possibilities of continuing to the glacier or a short legless up quills which gives you a ski directly down into Plagne centre.

The pisted sking back down to the bubble from here is blue all the way if you need it but beginners should be aware that in low visibility the run back to the bubble can seem like a long way!!

The Verdons Sud bown is a huge playground of powder snow with a wide variety of pisted and unpisted terrrain in close proximity. The pistes interweave on the way down which allows everyine to chose there route and still stay in contact.

Once the steeper pistes become too cut up the off pistes between them provides th classic descent in an out of hollows, bumps and jumps all the way down to the Borsiliers Restaurant and if you have the legs for it continue down to the village down the le Bois piste.

This Piste is a red down through the trees under the bubble to the village. It is often marked up for good skiers only and this is good advice as the narrower sections can cath out tired legs with not much room for error!

The classic descent to the village is however the Mont de la guerre which taks a huge solo route from the to of les verdons all the way doen to the villages. The route has an off piste touring feel due to the solitude from the main pistes and often needs a good snow covering to allow the lower sections to be skiable but in condition it is a superb run back to the village only surpassed by the true off piste runs to Champagny le Haut

Champagny en vanoise

Champagny en vanoise is situated in the heart of the alps at the gateway to the Vanoise National Parc.

The village of Champagny-en-vanoise is at an altitude of 1250m while a little higher up the valley Chammpagny le Haut is at a height of 1450m.

The villages are popular tourist resorts in summer and winter due to the great variety of activities available.

Champagny is connected by cable car and ski return to the paradiski ski area which boasts 425km of pistes, 3 glaciers, and 2 summits of more than 3000 metres...