Chamonix Snow Report: 15th December 2011

Grand Montet and Les Houches opened part of their pistes last Saturday, 10th December, and the game was on. With a lot of snowfall in the week leading up to opening, both pistes were in good condition and there was fresh snow both on and off piste.

Saturday at Grand Montet was fantastic for an opening day, with the sun out and snow on the ground. The turn out was reasonable, but not quite as busy as many predicted. Off piste was quite good, but there were definitely still rocks hiding, as my friend found out when he tore his board to the core...

As there had been no new snowfall overnight, the snow was firmer packed on Sunday with some hard patches on the slopes, and it began to get a little tracked out.

It started snowing again on Monday, and Tuesday morning was fantastic with over a metre of snow and fresh powder everywhere. The off piste conditions were even better due to a base layer now having formed. Bouchard was open in the morning, and alot of people were hitting the bowl, though it closed after noon, when the weather took a turn for the worse.

It began slushing and raining up to the mid-station, and as the winds picked up there was almost a total white out. I stuck to the tree runs lower down, where there was still some powder to be found, and much better visibility. By the end of the day I was crouched on the lifts hiding from the snow storm firing at my goggles, and ended up with some very soggy gloves. As we started down on the home-run, the snow got wetter and wetter until we were getting rained on in the carpark.

Grands Montets has been closed now ever since Tuesday afternoon due to this bad weather and high winds.

Yesterday was a day of rain here down in the valley, though today I woke up again to snow dumping. So now we await the reopening of the lifts, and no doubt some amazing powder runs.

All resort lifts are scheduled to open this Saturday. However, as there is a large storm continuing and the avalanche risk has been upgraded to very high, we will have to stay tuned to see which lifts will be opening, and when, on Saturday. Click here for more information on lift openings.