Chamonix Snow Report: 16th February 2013

The beginning of this week we had grey skies and flat light and a little bit of snow, now don’t get me wrong I never complain about the snow falling but I was starting to wonder when the sun would peer over the cloud and light up the mountain and… finally on Wednesday it did! Waking up and seeing the low clouds left me wondering if the forecast was right but by about 9.30am the clouds had cleared and it became one of those precious bluebird days.

With the sun shining and the great snow conditions we decided to head up Grand Montets. On the way we had a minor dilemma with the petrol cap, but I won’t go into those details… nothing was going to stop us enjoying the sun on a glorious day. We parked up and headed to the chairlift Plan Joran as the queue for the Grand Montets cable car was starting to creep out of the door and we were just itching to get up there and play in the snow.

Once we got up, the pistes were looking a little busy so we headed up the Tabe chairlift and decided we would tackle some of the off piste mini gullies/couloirs that are either side and in between Tabe and Plan Roujon. For a warm up we headed down one with moguls…. Not our typical first run, but it got the legs going and it is always good to start off with a challenge. The snow on the moguls was perfect, not too deep, not icy and with a thin layer of fresh snow surrounding some of them they were in just the right condition to practice those mogul turns.

After a bit of mogul fun our minds started to wonder if there would be any fresh tracks or snow to be had in the trees next to the Plan Roujon so we darted that way to have a play there. We wiggled our way into the forested area and found some great fresh snow – a few tracks here and there but that perfect icing sugar snow that you just don’t find too often and with the trees, the snow and the sun it was quite simply blissful and huge amounts of fun. We thought it was definitely worthy of a few laps!

With tired legs we thought we would head up the Bochard and do some cruisey runs down the pistes. Flying down the red Bochard piste the snow was packed but still had a bit of softness and give, it was the kind of snow that makes piste skiing a true delight! After a bite to eat and a coffee at the mid station we decided to do a few more pistes as the weather, snow and company were proving to make an awesome day so far. Popping up the Herse and taking the red down we saw that the snow on this side was just as good as it had been on the Bochard. All in all an excellent day in the sunshine!

I hear the good weather is meant to return for the weekend and with the recent dump of snow we have had you definitely won’t struggle to find some amazing runs in the white stuff!