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Chamonix Snow Report: 7th April 2014

A warm weekend of riding slush & birthday shenanigans

featured in Snow report Author Ellie Mahoney, Chamonix Editor Updated

There aren't many places left in the valley where you can do a home run back to the bottom of the lifts now. Spring is well and truly here and the afternoon conditions are pretty soft and slushy.

On Saturday Megan went up to Grands Montets for the afternoon for a bit of boarding on the pistes, which by all accounts were in really good shape. The off-piste wasn't really worth tackling, especially since she's normally a skier! The home run there is getting pretty obliterated in places which meant a lot of people opted for the gondola download instead of mud-dodging on the way back down.

I opted for my now weekly Sunday snowboard, sacking off Saturday all together. We headed up to Le Tour en masse for a birthday picnic for Megan near the Possettes button lift. We weren't expecting to do a lot of snowboarding, but some of the gang had built a kicker which a few people jumped, athough the slushy conditions meant it got half demolished when one of the lads went over it...

Me & my best buddy got stuck into a lot of building with our shovels instead of trying the jump.. so the birthday girl ended up with a snow-cake, a throne to admire it from, a snow pony and almost a sphynx, but the piste patrol put an end to the sphynx construction at around 4.30.. then we all rode down to the car park (the only real bit of boarding I'd done all day, bar 1 run off the drag on the other side of the valley..) Not that I mind.. this time of year for me is all about sunbathing & chilling out instead of endless leg-burning powder laps.

Even Lorne gave up on ski touring in favour of hitting the airbag at Brevent :-)

Next Saturday I'll be getting involved in the Girls Zone session which takes place at GM where there will be slalom, boardercross, park sessions, avalanche rescue training, first aid courses, a Dynastar ski test centre, snow games and other things going on. So girls if you've not signed up already get on it!

For other events this week take a look at our What's On Calendar.

The weather outlook for this week is patchy sunshine, with a few light dustings of snow tomorrow & on Friday night. Wednesday & Thursday should be perfect for an early morning ski and the afternoons deck-chair bound sunbathing :-)