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Chamonix Snow Report: 16th February 2006

featured in Snow report Author Ellie Mahoney, Chamonix Editor Updated

The long awaited big snowfall has finally happened. It started yesterday, continued through the night and finally petered out late this afternoon. It's warmed up over the last twenty-four hours too, and the new snow is quite dense and wet: perfect for covering rocks and other hazards but heavy to ride and ski.

There were queues at the lifts this morning as you'd expect on the first real powder day in weeks. The Compagnie du Mont-Blanc website was saying that the opening would be delayed until 10:00am, not too bad I thought, chance for a little lie in. When I got to Grands Montets at 9:30 the queue was already well out of the building. An announcement at 10:00am shifted the opening back to 10:30 while the ski area was still being made safe. After the breakdown of the Plan Joran chair, which left some of our earlier rising friends stuck suspended for an hour, we finally made it up to Lognan on the cable car for 12:00. Strangely though, when we were on the mountain the queues were minimal. I think the snowy weather must have had the effect of sending people back down after only a few runs. Apparently the Chamonix swimming pool was busy and full of kids, I guess folks decided that if they were going to get wet today they'd do it properly!

Up at Grands Montets the big lifts like Herse and Bochard were never going to open today with all the fresh snow, so our choices were limited to runs from Marmottons, Tabe and Plan Roujon chairs. There weren't many people on the pistes; instead the ridges and bowls from Tabe and Plan Roujon were the obvious choice. The snow was heavy and wet: making my legs work hard. It was also the kind of snow that is expert at removing skis from their owners, one of whom seemed to spend the whole afternoon looking for her ski underneath the Tabe Chair. Some of the chop was pretty bumpy where it had been compressed but it was still good if you could find untracked sections, which were harder and harder to find as the day went on. In fact the heavy snow wasn't really powder at all, too wet to be described as that, in fact the perfect base was forming as the snow compressed down into a very solid covering for a lot of the rocks that had been around. The bare patches and artificial snow have been buried under the new stuff; just from looking around I guess there must have been 50cm of new snow and it was much deeper in the drifts.

For almost all the day it was snowing to varying degrees: sometimes heavily. Towards the end of the day the wind seemed to pick up and the temperature dropped, and the snow started to feel like it was drying out a little. The wind was whipping the snow up off of the ridges too, leaving a few bare patches, and cornices were starting to form. On the pistes the snow compressed down into something really slippery and hard, the kind of snow that is really easy to catch and edge on. I spent most of my time avoiding the pistes for that reason. The trees skier's left of Plan Roujon were well tracked by the afternoon with the snow further left still good, but the fact that Retour Pendant chair wasn't running meant traversing too far left resulted in a long walk out back to Plan Roujon chair.

The Pierre a Ric was predictably busy at the end of the day, and the snow on it was soft and wet. About halfway down it looked like one of the chutes skier's left had avalanched, leaving its debris on the piste. During the day it had apparently been raining lower down in Argentiere. All in all it was a good day up on the hill albeit it wet and windy, but we stayed up until the lifts closed making the most of the new snow. I'm glad to see the back of the hard pack that we've had for so long.

Useful Information
Cross-country skiing is Open
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

We will be keeping this Chamonix snow report updated often during the season, but if you want even more up-to-date news on the ski conditions, why not sign up for our Dump Alert? We'll email you each time it snows enough to significantly change the skiing conditions. It's great to know that the snow is falling in the run-up to your holiday, and it might even allow you to book a last-minute weekend when the snow is particularly good. The service is free, and you can unsubscribe whenever you like.

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

Avalanche Risk
  • Level 4

Snow Report
  • 0

  • Total Pistes: 80

  • Alt. Resort: 1050

  • Alt. Summit: 3000

  • Alt. Last Snow: 1250

  • 0

  • Alt. High Temp.: 1050