Sector: Les Crêtes
Starting from the Lac du Plan area at 2300 m (7546 ft), close to the base terminal of the
Bellecombes chairlift (35), this gentle and circuitous track has the distinction of being the sole inter-sector link piste through this section of the ski domain, facilitating the [only] continuous on-piste route for a summit-to-base descent.
It is reached either via the
Séa Grand Nord, the
Grand Couloir, or from any of the routes joining the
Grand Nord into the Lac du Plan area.
It funnels out of the Lac du Plan tarn depression through a cutting at the crest of the ridge, to emerge high on the flanks of the Thuit Coomb. This point is a severely busy bottleneck in the pistes network, and the piste surface gets very choppy very quickly each day because of heavy traffic. It really should be regarded as a blue-grade route, yet it holds no nasty surprises for confident progressive beginners.
As soon as it has emerged into the coomb, the route swings wide to the skier's left and follows the contour line in an arc tracing the line of the cirque-ridges above. Almost immediately to the skier's right is the entrance to the
Déversoir run, a really inviting steep drop-off for good intermediate and advanced riders to cut down towards the
Voûte (31) &
Thuit (32) chairlifts.
At the mid point of its sweep across the coomb, the
Route du Thuit bisects the
Thuit piste, one of the best intermediate-standard runs in the domain; the steep slope above skier's left at this point is its red-profile upper section, which is accessed via the
Séa Grand Nord from
Le Diable 2400.
The rest of the
Route du Thuit is very straightforward, simply continuing on the contour line ahead to flow out of the coomb and into the upper area of the plateau at
Les Crêtes 2100: keep highest to the skier's right as you enter the interchange area if you want to make the best link to the
Jandri 2 cable car station (33).
