Chamonix Snow Report: 14th January 2005
Last Tuesday night and Wednesday morning brought cloud and a little snow to the valley; although when I say a little I mean less than a centimetre. So our prayers haven't been answered yet and the drought continues with more sunshine and blue skies. Temperatures in the afternoons haven't been quite as high as a few days ago, but the snow doesn't soften up until well into the afternoon. Overnight temperatures have been low with any softer snow freezing solid overnight into the kind of lumpy hard snow that isn't good to fall on!
Over the last couple of days the consensus in our house has been that Le Tour is the best place to ride because of it having the best snow coverage and the least amount of rocks showing through. The front, sunnier side offers the best conditions. A trip around to the Vallorcine side on the Liaison Balme (a long traversing run, which viewed from the Autannes Chair appears to go uphill) was enough to convince us that the front side is the area to stick to. Liaison Balme is not too bad but Esserts from just past the top of the Vallorcine gondola is very hard and icy, with worn patches, and quite a few large stones getting knocked around on the piste; however, there are patches of soft snow scraped from the ice to turn on. The pisteurs have been pushing quite a lot of snow from off piste here to cover it, leaving the sides of the piste uneven, and tricky to ride. After the top steeper section it's less stony but because it's shady is still hard and thinly covered all the way to the Tete de Balme chairlift. Bechat, the blue run down from the Tete de Balme, is looking very thin on the parts that are most exposed to sun. There are barely any rocks here but there are some large grassy patches, one of which I tested. It was a fairly slidey surface and not too bad at all to snowboard on, almost as good as snow and better than the plastic stuff in England.
Back on the front of Le Tour things were starting to soften up nicely by mid afternoon. We mostly rode the Ecuries red run, which had an easy-to-turn-on covering of soft scraped snow piled into small lumps. It's getting gradually thinner here day by day, with bits and pieces of grass and bush sticking through in many places as the base gets scraped away. These aren't too much of a problem as they are generally soft and don't seem to damage ptex that much. There are a few nasty bits at the sides of piste where the piste bashers have been moving snow; these are generally rock hard and best avoided if you don't want to get hurt. There are a lot of people using the jumps that have evolved at the sides of the piste, most of which have hard flat landings or no snow at all so take care on them and check the landings first. I managed to twang my ankle on one.
The home run, Caisets, is holding out well, with its artificial snow cover doing the job of keeping the vegetation buried. There's lots of soft snow here scraped into piles to have fun on, but a few hard patches in between to be careful of. By late afternoon when everyone heads down it gets busier on this run, but at the moment it's still quiet enough to choose whichever line you want down.
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 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: 2500
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Alt. Last Snow: 1042
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High Temp.: 6
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Alt. High Temp.: 1042
