Chamonix Snow Report: 13th April 2006
Spring conditions are in full swing here in Chamonix complete with surprise snow showers topping up the already great base on the upper mountain. Yesterday we were forecast a cloudy start with the weather brightening up in the afternoon. The reality was a cloudy start with increasing cloud and some fairly heavy snowfall up at Grands Montets. The snowfall started off lightly enough but rapidly gained momentum and was putting down quite a few centimetres of depth, enough to cover the hard snow below and make it start to feel softer and almost properly powdery. Visibility wasn't great and it worsened through the day but not enough to put us off taking a ride to the very top on the cable car (top ticket is 5 euros on top of the standard lift pass). It was cold enough up there to freeze my sodden spring gloves solid and start to make my fingers feel a tad chilly. The snow was deeper than on the Herse below, probably 20-30 cm of fresh with deeper patches where you couldn't feel the old snow below. The only catch was the fact that for half of our run down the Point de Vue we couldn't see more than 20-30m in front of us. As soon as the fog cleared we were able to spot the untracked areas at the sides of the marked run and exploit it more fully. There are quite a few rocks to watch out for on the lower part of the Point de Vue when you head off to the sides of the piste, I managed to catch one or two but the light powder made up for it.
This morning I took a drive through the Mont-Blanc tunnel to Courmayeur to use up my last remaining free ticket for the Aosta valley. Often the weather in Courmayeur is very different to Chamonix's even though the two resorts are so close. Today was no exception with it being far sunnier and warmer in Courmayeur. The pistes were very quiet at Courmayeur and there's more of a family feel to the resort than you find in Chamonix, which tends to cater more to the extreme ski crowd. However, Courmayeur has some great off piste which was one of the reasons we had gone there.
Our first run was from the Cresta D'Arp at the very top of Courmayeur, the lift attendant made us leave our name and telephone number in a book in case of emergency, which gives you a reminder that there are no marked runs from this lift. Our route was to follow the dotted red line on the piste map all the way down to Dolonne. I had done the same route earlier in the season with McNab Snowboarding and it was great but this morning the conditions were very different. What looked like barely tracked powder turned out to be frozen crusty snow; the crust was about 3-4cm thick. Not thick enough to support all of your weight but thin enough to break when you apply power on the edge to turn. Needless to say it was a miserable run down, the frozen crust continued for the whole run.
After lunch we headed back up and we found what we were looking for. By traversing right of the Youla piste there was a large area of partially tracked powder, no crust, it was great and it gave us the motivation to head back up the Cresta D'Arp to do the off piste route down to Val Veny. This route had a few tracks in before us but there was plenty of space at the top for us to find some totally fresh lines. It was light snow, only a little crusty after the first main pitch down, definitely the highlight of the day. The big gully to the track at the bottom had a seriously large amount of avalanche debris in it, mainly from wet snow avalanches so it was a tough ride through the lumps and bumps. The warm afternoon temperatures made the snow sticky and heavy especially on the flat track out to Zerotta, which seemed to take forever to skate along. However, all the hard work just made the beer at the restaurant taste all the better.
If you're driving through from Chamonix, it's worth noting that the Entreves cable car up is only open at weekends now, so we had to take the main cable car up from Courmayeur.
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
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
Stats
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Level 2
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0
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Total Pistes: 80
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Alt. Resort: 2000
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Alt. Summit: 3000
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Alt. Last Snow: 2000
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High Temp.: 14
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Alt. High Temp.: 1050
