Chamonix Snow Report: 12th January 2006

Wednesday was spent at Le Tour. We headed up for the afternoon; ticket prices are reduced after 12:30 so you can save a few euros that way. It's usually warmer and the snow softer in the afternoon, which makes learning that little bit easier. There are some wide-open slopes at La Vormaine, located to the right of the main gondola that leads up to Charamillon. By the afternoon the sun was warm, in fact so warm we had to shed a layer. The pistes were in great shape, well-groomed, wide and gentle, perfect for the second day of boarding and practising linking turns before heading up to something more challenging. And it wasn't long before we took the gondola up to ride up the Autannes chairlift. It was cooler up there, and the snow was more packed on the piste than at La Vormaine. First we tried Arve, the blue run skier's right of the chair; it was a good run to try first as it's wide, steeper than La Vormaine and steps up the difficulty a little without being too intimidating. The snow was fairly good, although I noticed a few patches of grass starting to poke through here and there: nothing serious but a sign that some fresh snow sometime soon wouldn't go amiss. It wasn't long before we tried Ecuries, the red run skier's left of the Autannes chair. Again there were some bits and pieces of grass coming through, and I even clipped stones here and there that were just starting to come through. In general though the snow was reasonably good, hard-packed but not icy. The snow at the sides of the piste was pretty crusty and wind-blown, a long way from the powder of last week!

Today (Thursday) saw us up the learning ante a little bit more by spending the afternoon boarding at La Flegere. The four-man chair, La Trappe, serves a couple of easy green runs that went down pretty well with the beginner amongst us. The snow cover was good (the snow plot showed 140cm). The worst section was at the top of the chair, just as you get off. It was a little icy today, but there were enough piles of loose snow to use that it wasn't so bad, and overall the cover was better than Le Tour. After a few runs on Trappe, confidence was rising so we headed up the Chavannes chair, which serves the blue run also called Chavannes. The snow cover was again very good, but a little more hard-packed than Trappe making it a little harder to get an edge to hold. As the afternoon wore on and the shadows grew longer it started to cool down quickly up there, enough time for a ride up the Index we thought. We started on the blue, Index, wide at the top with a short section on a cat track, the narrowness a good test for our learner. It was quite icy in places but nothing was intimidating him so we switched onto the red Pylones, steeper and narrower, good fun for jumping off the side of the cat tracks when it's powdery, but today the off piste was hard, icy and not a good idea. The Praz run down to Les Praz was closed, with a ‘Pierres' sign warning of stones, so instead we downloaded on the cable car. What looked to be a long queue, out of the building, in fact only took 10-15 minutes: a small price to pay for keeping the base of my board intact.

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