Chamonix Snow Report: 19th March 2005
This week has been the hottest of the season so far, with temperatures again reaching +22ºc today. The snow is holding out, but only just. Patches are starting to appear on some slopes in places where there's a lot of traffic or direct sun for most of the day. We've also seen more avalanches within the Brevent/Flegere ski area during the past few days. Some, like ones we saw today, were triggered by pisteurs on their skis; others were apparently natural, and yesterday we saw a large slide from the Liaison Brevent-Flegere cablecar. It was moving fairly quickly and flowed down the chutes in the off-piste area below the cable car.
We headed up to Brevent a little earlier than normal today, in an effort to catch the snow before it turned to slush; however, after days of afternoon snowboarding this wasn't so easy, so we didn't actually get up on the mountain until 11am. No surprises – even at the top of Brevent the snow had softened up to a slushy consistency and reports that it was slushy even at 9am are quite easy to believe. We headed down Charles Bozon, which had good snow, slushy on top but firm underneath. However, we were halted halfway down by a pisteur. Another pisteur was setting off avalanches in the chutes above, in an attempt to dislodge the heavy, wet snow. After a few minutes we were allowed to carry on. No big slides today but there was a lot of debris off piste above the run from the days before. From the Parsa chair we could see a few patches appearing in the snow on Vioz piste, some fairly large. A drop in temperatures and a bit of fresh snow wouldn't go amiss especially here. Col Cornu was closed late this morning, for avalanche control. There was more debris from large slides crossing the Col Cornu piste, and obviously it was still an unsafe area. We headed over to Flegere via the Sources chair, which is a quicker route via easier pistes than the Cornu chair.
Some of the pistes at Flegere are also suffering from the high temperatures. Evettes, particularly just above the Liaison chair, is looking pretty brown and thin, and other parts of this run are getting patchy too. The upper section of Floria down to about the top of the Chavanne chair is in excellent condition – well covered and soft with a firm base below. The lower section of Crochues isn't so good and has some very slushy snow, and patches are emerging with rocks and grass showing through. Tempted by the apparently better snow off to the side of the run I gave it a go. Wrong choice, as it felt like snowboarding on glue; looks can be so deceiving. The Chavanne chair was closed; avalanche debris on the Chavanne piste was the likely cause as well as the fact the pisteurs were setting off more slides a little further up above the piste. We rode Pylones off the Index a few times; it's looking reasonably good considering the weather, however the last steep section is patchy albeit easily avoided by following the cat track around to the skier's right. Whilst we were there, another slide happened . This time it was a naturally triggered one I think, onto the Pylones cat track. The pisteurs were onto the case quickly, sending people around the debris, and luckily it seemed that no one was caught in it.
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
-
Level 3
-
0
-
Total Pistes: 80
-
Alt. Resort: 2000
-
Alt. Summit: 3000
-
Alt. Last Snow: 1042
-
High Temp.: 21
-
Alt. High Temp.: 1042
