A person standing on top of a snow covered mountain

Two people skiing down a snowy slope with mountains in the background

A shadow of a person is cast on a snowy mountain

A person sitting on top of a snow covered mountain

A group of people skiing down a snow covered slope

Chamonix Snow Report: 10th April 2007

featured in Snow report Author Kevin Knox, Updated 26 May 2016

With ski touring season in full season swing, this week I am doing a McNab Backcountry snowboarding course to brush up my backcountry safety skills and to learn some new routes. (I am not your usual snow reporter: with the weather so good he is spending a few days training on his bike.) This involves six days with a guide, touring and learning backcountry safety and access techniques, and after a getting-to-know-you day with our guide on Sunday at Le Tour, seeking out cheeky quiet spots not too far from the lifts (not many were found rather predictably!) and learning how to use avalanche transceivers, the course started in earnest yesterday and today.

On Monday morning we dashed up to Grands Montets with a view to having a few laps off-piste off the top lift. Unfortunately, lots of other people had the same idea and getting reservations (even with a guide, which I always thought gave you priority!) proved to be a problem. The theme of our day was to be glacier travel and after one run skier's right out onto the Glacier des Rognon learning where crevasses congregate and how to spot them lurking, we decamped to the Aiguille du Midi. Amazingly, we walked straight on the lift at around 11am, with only foot passengers for company. The arête was spookily quiet and we headed out onto the Envers du Plan (a slightly steeper, more direct and hence snowboarder friendly route than the Classic Vallee Blanche, which is a bit flat for my kind). The Envers du Plan was nicely slushy by the time we arrived, and with so much snow high up this season it seemed relatively filled in. I have never been that way before and had built it up in my mind to be an unfriendly maze of open, man-eating holes. No doubt it is underneath, but we rode down with wide swooping turns, with only the occasional section where we had to noodle through open crevasses (a guide for these routes is nevertheless strongly recommended as this is serious high mountain terrain and you can get into a lot of trouble). We rejoined the Classic Vallee Blanche just skier's right of the Requin Hut and finished the day with the long, flat conveyor belt run out to the lift station (which was busy, in spite of the apparent lack of people at the Midi).

Today started early again, at Grands Montets once more. This time our guide's plan was to ride the top lift up and head out skier's right across the Glacier des Rognons, and snowshoe over the Argentiere Glacier to begin the ascent to the Col de Tour Noir over the Amethystes Glacier. After 3 and half hours of steady snowshoeing we made it to the col, which forms the border with Switzerland. The hike is great for beginner tourers (again, preferably with a guide because it is on glacier all the way), because as long as the home run down to the valley is open from Grands Montets, there is no time pressure on this route. You ride or ski back down roughly the same way you went up, so if you look like running out of time or you get tired, you can simply turn round and head back down via the Argentiere Glacier, where you rejoin the Point de Vue piste. If you are feeling really adventurous, you could stay overnight at the Argentiere Hut and get up to the col first thing in the morning. The ratio of time spent going up to time spent coming down is 5:1, but the views from the top into Switzerland are incredible and the ride down, with its mellow (and today in places still untracked) spring snow more than compensated for the toil. Needless to say, I'm feeling pretty virtuous now! So much so that I am going to reward myself with some heliboarding tomorrow…

Useful Information
Cross-country skiing is Closed
Piste Maps for Chamonix (pdf format), Les Houches (jpg format), Cross-country skiing (pdf format), and Mountain-bike trails (pdf format)
Current status for opening of Pistes & Lifts
Chamonix Webcam Index

We will be keeping this Chamonix snow report updated often during the season, but if you want even more up-to-date news on the ski conditions, why not sign up for our Dump Alert? We'll email you each time it snows enough to significantly change the skiing conditions. It's great to know that the snow is falling in the run-up to your holiday, and it might even allow you to book a last-minute weekend when the snow is particularly good. The service is free, and you can unsubscribe whenever you like.

Useful Links
Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research
French Avalanche Research Institute
Meteo France - Mountain weather and avalanche conditions bulletins (in French)
Henry's Avalanche Talk - popular avalanche training sessions based in French Alps as well as translation of current avalanche conditions
PisteHors.com - Backcountry Skiing and Snowboarding News in English for the French Alps. Excellent coverage of avalanche safety and advice

Additional snow and weather information provided, with thanks, by meteo.chamonix.com and the Tourist Office