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Chamonix Snow Report: 16th February 2010

featured in Snow report Author Kieran Sharp, Updated

We've had some brilliant sunny days here in Chamonix. The pistes are buzzing with activity as people head off on tours in search of fresh snow whilst others are hitting up the parks or cruising around the pistes sipping hot wine in some of the many cafes on the mountain. It's great to enjoy the sun but we are in need of a fresh dump soon, so if every one could say a little prayer I'm sure everyone in Chamonix would greatly appreciate it! Even when there isn't a fresh dump there is always a way you can enjoy riding mountains, either by getting up early and riding some fresh corduroy, heading quite far in to the backcountry to get some fresh and enjoy some epic views, or getting in the park.

There are now 3 parks available on the Mont Blanc unlimited season pass; a fairly large new park in the Les Houches ski area with plenty of obstacles, boxes, and jumps to suit most levels of park riders and jibbers. The usual park is available in the Grands Montets area where the jumps this year are looking particularly good as some key problems from previous seasons have been ironed out . Also on the unlimited pass you can now ride the whole of Verbier and the Four Valleys. If you go to Verbier during your stay here you will find a pretty good rail and jump park and also a large air bag where you can try some rotations or whatever you like that might normally hurt when you go wrong! With all these options the extend of terrain is amazing this season, although one thing the area is still lacking is a half pipe, but there is a petition to have one put in the valley so hopefully there will be one in the future.

Today we made our way over to Verbier to explore a different area for the day and also to hit the air bag and get a few different styles of rotation right in our minds. Traffic dependent, Verbier is only an hour's drive from Chamonix, or you can grab a train from anywhere in the valley and benefit from half price train tickets to Martigny with your unlimited pass. At Martigny, you need change train and head to Le Chable where the gondola will take you the remaining distance up to resort - taskes about 2 hours in total.

We didn't get up to early as it was fairly cold in the morning, so we made our way over in a fairly chilled manor, grabbing coffee and pain au chocolats on the way over. Once up in the ski area we headed up to do a few piste runs to warm our legs up before hitting the park. We hit some of the smaller jumps first which where quite small and good for beginners, but you do have to be careful not to over cook it and land on the flats, so we hit the larger jumps to get a bit more air time. The air bag is open between 0930 and 1200 then 1330 till 1545 so we just missed the morning session and continued to hit the bigger jumps and some of the many different rails available. There were rainbows, C boxes, S rails and many, many others so we spent a good few runs hurting ourselves and trying hard to have fun! Once the air bag finally opened we spent the rest of the day hitting this up, trying for back flips, and lots of different types of rotations. It was great to have a go at stuff you don't normally try and we all got a better idea for things that we might be throwing down in the park in the future. There was a really good vibe on the run in to the bag, everyone cheering each other on, and people from young to old were all giving it a go. As much as we didn't want to leave we had to get down and back to Cham, so we headed back down the busy home run, hopped into the car and back to Chamonix, stopping at the Office Bar in Argentiere for a quick one while we waited for the traffic to chill!


Check out what to do around town once the lifts have closed with our Apres Ski Report - a weekly round up of what's hot and where to party in Chamonix!

Stats

Avalanche Risk
  • Level 2

Snow Report
  • 1

  • Total Pistes: 75

  • Alt. Resort: 1972

  • Alt. Summit: 3233

  • Alt. Last Snow: 1500

  • High Temp.: -1

  • Alt. High Temp.: 1050