New Year's Day in Les Houches : 1st January 2012
Les Houches

With the wildly varying freezing level in the past few days we have some mixed snow conditions.

Up high there is bottomless blower (think ski movies) powder and down nearer town we have spring like conditions.

My new year’s day was spent gliding around Les Houches. The pistes are nice and forgiving with just a bit of hard surface in the really busy bits.

The off piste, however, down at this low altitude was rain crust on top of two feet of mush – probably best described as unpleasant – and that’s on fat powder skis!

There were crowds on the pistes but these are thinning with the reopening of all the other Chamonix areas post storms and the end of the main holiday period.

Tomorrow the weather forecast looks really good and my plan is to head high for some of that powder! 

Idris Skis design and manufacture environmentally friendly freeride skis in Chamonix.

• Number of pistes open
  20
• Depth of snow on upper slopes
  140
• Highest temperature
  2
• Date of last snowfall
  21/12/2011
• Depth of snow on lower slopes
  40
• Latest Conditions
  mostly cloudy - becoming cloudy with sunny spells during the afternoon. Period of sunshine close to 30%.PRECIPITATION : possible scattered snowflurries in the morning.WIND - ground level : variable light.WIND - mid mountain : NW light to moderate.WIND - high mountain : N strong.TEMPERATURE : low 0

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