Chamonix Snow Report: 15th March 2005
Things are hotting up here in Chamonix as temperatures soar and spring snow takes over. Last night it actually rained; I know this is probably not what you want to hear but it does mean there will be snow higher up, I hope! This morning saw a low of +2ºc at the house; the snow is rapidly melting from our drive and the lower southerly sides of the valley are getting a roasting from the sun and there the snow is melting very quickly. (We do still have about 50cm in our garden, which is pretty good for this time of year.) It's not all doom and gloom though as the onset of spring means snowboarding and skiing in sweatshirts. Spring slush is great fun to ride in too – almost as much fun as powder; it's also an especially good time to learn new things as falling on slush is just about as forgiving as it gets.
It was on that basis that we headed up to Flegere for the afternoon today, as we reckoned the predicted +17ºc would make for some good slush. As we headed over to Flegere from Brevent things had certainly softened up. From the Sources chair we noticed some snow was sliding onto the Sources cat track. It was a fairly slow, wet slide caused by the high temperatures but as previous slides had already deposited quite a lot of snow on the piste, a pisteur was stopping skiers from using it. When we returned at the end of the day the slide must have stopped because the run was open, but the piles of snow had not been cleared, which created a bit of a bottle neck.
Last night's rain in town had indeed dumped a little fresh snow up on the mountains – there was about 5cm. This really didn't seem to make much difference to the riding conditions as the fresh had turned to slush and was barely different to the snow below. We spent the whole afternoon riding the Index, which had reasonably large queues to start with, but they reduced in length as the afternoon wore on, until the end of the day when we were able to walk straight on. Snowboarders seemed to be taking advantage of the slush to the full and riding up the Index we saw every variation of spin off the cat track right up to 720s. This was motivating stuff and got us trying out our back- and frontside spins all afternoon – some were landed and some resulted in crashes into the soft stuff. By about 4pm things had started to cool down a little and harden up. So, tomorrow with a predicted high of +19ºc we'll be back here to play again but only once the sun has done its work on the snow.
Apologies, but a flat camera battery has meant no photos from the mountain today. However I can show you a photo from our house of the Aiguille du Midi taken late this afternoon.
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
