Saturday Trip to Refuge du Grand Plan

Refuge du Grand Plan is a refuge that is "guarded" all season by somebody who cleans, cooks, clears the snow, keeps the fire burning the wood stove, et cetera and visitor's pay to come and stay. It's located above Courchevel 1650 and can be accessed most of the winter by a groomed cross country ski trail. Lots of people also take the lift up as high as they can go and then hike into the back country and ski down. The tracks in this photo are from back country skiers, sadly not ours. We went up today with Jean Max and a friend of his, Spencer on rando-skis and the rest of us on snow shoes. Jean Max's cousin is the guard for Refuge du Grand Plan, so we went up to visit her and had lunch in the refuge. Lunch was pretty simple, crozets (little square shaped pasta) and diots de savoie (sausages) and raspberry tart. Fred (Jean Max's cousin) goes food shopping once a week in town to stock the refuge and brings it all back to the refuge via snowmobile. She has a pretty cool job if you ask me!