A Steep Snowy Learning Curve in Le Praz de Lys
Zagan the motorhome hasn’t moved an inch, he’s frozen in place at the aire in Le Praz de Lys (N46.16132, E6.60322). Last night as it turned dark the rain turned to snow and the temperature plummeted. Coupled with gusts of wind that were attempting to merge the 3m high wall of snow behind Zagan with Zagan, this made for a fairly restless night. As the night wore on it got colder and colder in Zagan, finally around 7am Jay spotted the heating had gone off.
Checking the temperature, we were just over 5°C inside Zagan, compared to -5°C outside, Jay leapt up and clad only in his PJ’s went to investigate what was going on. We’d had some gas bottle antics the other day, the auto-switch-over valve flipping over from our main bottle when it wasn’t empty, so we’d left the small bottle shut. Now it looked like the big bottle was empty or it was so cold that it wouldn’t burn what was left of the gas (butane doesn’t like the cold but LPG has both butane and propane in it).
The habitation door put up a bit of a fight as it had started to freeze up, but the gas locker door was completely frozen solid and wouldn’t open. After fifteen minutes of breathing on the key and who know what other tricks Jay finally managed to get it open and turn on our reserve bottle. The heating kicked in again and we headed back to bed to await some warmth from the sunrise.
That warmth wasn’t to come as the morning was cloudy and still snowing. All was going well until Jay turned on a tap and the heating unit started to flash a red light. Our manual only referred to it as a ‘fault light’ (helpful), so we hit the internet and discovered that flashing means it hasn’t got enough electricity to run the system – FYI, if it stays red it hasn’t got enough gas. So as beginners to this winter lark we found ourselves with batteries running low (which are needed to run the heating), frozen snow on the solar panel on the roof, no sunshine even if we did shift the snow, -3°c and still snowing, all hook-up points taken and the road was a foot deep in snow over a layer of sheet ice so no chance of escape. Things weren’t looking great.
Zagan feeling amateurish compared to his neighbours
While Jay thought through the situation and what to do, I did what I do best; wander around outside looking lost until someone offers to help. It took ten minutes of wandering over to the electric hook up a few times before someone asked me if I was looking for something. I don’t know his name but he turned out to be our saviour. I used the new phrase I learned before I left Zagan: “J’ai besoin d’electricite”. He started to walk me over to the token dispenser, but I pointed out the problem was nowhere to hook up to. Calling on Jay for linguistic support, between the three of us (mainly our saviour) a neighbouring van was persuaded to let us use his point during the day, and he could have it back at night.
We’ve got power!!!
Soon our batteries were getting the boost they needed and we were able to save some of our now precious gas supply. Fingers crossed we have enough to see us through tonight as tomorrow the forecast is for better weather so we’ll head off the mountain and come back better prepared in a few days.
As we were hooking up the aire was a hive of activity, people scraping snow from around their vans, clearing it off roofs, collecting water, emptying toilet cassettes, heading off skiing etc. We plugged in our electric heater and people-watched for an hour before heading up into town to see what was going on there. Once again a flurry of activity as it seems all the cars have to leave the main car park today so it can be cleared of snow – these cars are seriously snowed in, we even saw people literally shovelling it off their car bonnets. We’d have felt much more smug if we didn’t have to leave tomorrow due to low gas.
To cheer ourselves up, we bought a sledge and spent our walk back to the van getting up as much speed as possible on it. Jay took it to the limit on a very steep slope before the competition was called off – video to follow when we get wifi!
We took Charlie out for a stroll this afternoon and checked out the state of the road back down from the resort, it looks a lot better than the ones in the resort do as it’s has been salted. We’ll probably need our snow chains to get to the edge of the resort, then we’ll be fine from there – exciting and a little worrying, putting them on for the first time in front of all of these experienced winter camping-caristers.
The aire got cleared a bit this afternoon
It’s almost 5pm and time to hand back the power supply to our neighbour. It’s -3°c outside and predicted to be -9°c tonight, I suspect there may be a fight over who gets Charlie to sleep on their feet!
Ju x
Bonus Photo – we got Charlie 8 years ago today, I wonder if he’d have agreed to come with us if he knew where we’d end up taking him!
You both look glowingly well and fresh to boot and I am glad I did say to you both last week to take it easy and have some treats watching films ect before the big push into the mountains…I also said Hot water Bottles and thermal underwear would be a good idea…I would use a hot water bottle wrapped up to lightly press against a frozen gas door …run a key in hot water ect to help a frozen lock…make a Hot curry …hot soup..A small drink of rum at night?…anyways I’m enjoying watching your adventure…all the best..marcus
PS…Yeah just got that about a hot water bottle against a frozen gas door …you can’t get hot water if the gas door is frozen and electric not on but you could ask a next door neighbour or use a still warm bottle from your bed.
Brrrrr!! No ta.😁 I feel cold just looking at ya. 😁
Also…Back to the Genny Idea…Small one for emergencies but I guess using it during day to charge everything and include evening meal then switch off at night so neighbours would not complain.
Hi Marcus, I’ve not looked hard but seen at least one genny running up here. There are nowhere near enough electrical hook-up points to service all the vans, and it looks to me like most of the vans (maybe 30 or 40 of us) are staying for the week, so without a genny your batteries would most likely not cope. It seems the noise etiquette rule doesn’t apply under these kinds of conditions, and if we planned to do this kind of winter camping a lot, I think we’d get a small one to replenish the batteries. Cheers, Jay
Start your engine and leave it running for an hour. You’ll charge up your batteries, it’s better than freeze your watter system. Take care and enjoy the winter time ;)
Thanks BF. We’ve done this in the past, and it certainly works. Puts about 10A into the batteries, so an hour would recharge ’em by about a 10th of their capacity (they were about 160Ah in total when new, but are about 5 years old, so probably much less now). The heater fan uses 2.5A, so that would give us 4 hours of heating, although the heater doesn’t run continually, so would probably get us through a cold night. Thanks again, Jay
Looks like more snow could be heading your way, the U.K. Weather forecast shows the jet stream to the south of the U.K. and dragging all the weather across France. Them Huskies you saw could be useful now, pulling you along to the bar!!. Stay safe and keep warm.
Hi there, all that snow looks pretty awesome – even if it does bring it’s challenges. How do you manage with wet gear and a wet dog? Does it cause a problem with moisture inside Zagan?
Hope everything went smoothly for you today!
Tam
Hi Tam. Good question. Our van’s bathroom is blown air heated, and is a great place to dry gear. Gets a bit full in there, but worked well. Charlie didn’t get too wet but we just towelled him off and let him dry. We were only up there 2 days, but internal condensation wasn’t a problem. If it became one, we’d have to leave the skylight and door open a while, then crank the heating up afterwards! Cheers, Jay