Issue link: http://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25062
Our first night in La Grave, France, we could feel huge mountains rising around us, filling the air with the syrupy scent of larch trees and earth, of keening glaciers and wind-haunted stone. In just a few short years, this seductively discreet town has become the center of a whole new alpine myth-not just the next big thing in the Alps, but possibly the last big thing. The skiing, mountaineering and ice climbing are exceptional at La Grave, and the mountain is virtually deserted. In slopes clamored over by winter sports fiends for more than a hundred years, such finds are rare. In the morning I stepped out to see what new Eden we were sullying now. I was stunned and stiff from the swayback mattresses in the Castilian Hotel, a creaky three-story monument to the truest impulses in adventure travel cheap prices, great character and a communal atmosphere. The clientele reflected the town's mostly young and relentlessly international population. There was more than a foot of fresh snow on the ground and it was still fa lling. The telepheriques (cablecars) of the Meije glaciers that climb 6,000 vertical feet, vanished quickly into heavy clouds. There are only four ski routes shown on the map, none of them marked by signs. Everything else is up for grabs: cl iffs, bowls, chutes, ravines. If you get hurt you better have carte neiqe to pay for a helicopter evacuation. There is no ski patrol. At the bottom of the tEdepherique, the day's avalanche hazard is posted with a number, one (low) through five (very high). Our fi rst day was a th ree (considerable) and the blizzard was picking up pace. We staggered off the top telepherique into the jaws of a ranting storm at 10,500 feet-perfect conditions for our fi rst time skiing the famously 24