Chamonix Snow Report: 13th March 2005
The sunny weather continues, although there was a very light dusting of snow overnight. We appear to be having a bit of a heat wave (+5?C on our balcony at 9.30 this morning). The warm temperatures are taking their toll in town and our snow gauge is showing that we are down to 50cm in the garden. However, up the mountain thankfully it's still very good, with the snow coverage excellent and few bare patches appearing so far, at least where we have been today (having said that, looking up the Crochues run that comes down from the Floria drag lift at Flegere we could see the beginnings of patchiness).
With warm temperatures in the day and a freeze at night we like to avoid going out too early (this sounds like a pretty lame excuse for laziness I know). The prospect of bullet-proof pistes in the morning is not too attractive and by now we are getting pretty fussy. We got up to Brevent at around midday today. There was no lift queue to speak of but the line for tickets was long (worse than a Post Office on pension day) and it took some visiting friends half an hour to get passes.
Once up we took the Cornu chair and after a ride down the excellent Cornu run, we made our way over to Flegere as our friends had never been there and on a sunny day, assuming you like slush, it can be excellent fun. Today was no exception. The areas in full sun (the lower two-thirds of the runs off the Chavanne chair at Flegere, and the bottom section of Cornu in Brevent for example) had softened up really nicely by early afternoon but not too much that we had to battle through mountains of heavy slush by the end of the day. There is still a firm base not too far underneath. If you don't like slush at all, Brevent and Flegere are a good bet for the morning, followed by Grand Montets in the afternoon.
We took two rides up the Index followed by a quick beer at the hut at the bottom of the lift. The queue at the Index was big enough to make us switch to the Chavanne chair. This one doesn't go as far but there is often little or no queue and it accesses some excellent terrain, including gullies/natural half pipes around the lower part of the Floria piste. We stayed up until around 4pm, when the sun began to go down behind the ridge. One of the advantages of spring weather is that you can shed some layers but as the temperatures drop really quickly once the sun has gone in you can feel the chill. (The pistes began to harden up quickly once in the shade too.)
The runs from Brevent and Flegere down to the bottom are now shut, and this always results in queues for the lifts at the end of a busy day so you have to get strategic. (No point grumbling though as both these runs have been open much longer this year than in the last two winters.) We wanted to avoid catching the bus home from the bottom of the Flegere cable car as they are usually stuffed with people from Le Tour and Grand Montets so we opted for a dash back over to Brevent (the last trip on the Liaison cable car is at 4.30) and a ride down in the Chamonix-Planpraz gondola. We arrived there to find a big queue, but it moved pretty quickly and we only waited for about 15 minutes.
The spring conditions are set to continue, and we are forecast more sun and increasingly warm temperatures this week.
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
Additional snow and weather information provided, with thanks, by meteo.chamonix.com and the Tourist Office
Stats
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Level 3
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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: 1042
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High Temp.: 6
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Alt. High Temp.: 1042