A snowy landscape with a ski lift in the background

A person skiing down a snow covered slope with a mountain in the background

A snowy mountain with a lot of snow on it

A snowy mountain with a valley in the background

Chamonix Snow Report: 1st April 2010

featured in Snow report Author Kieran Sharp, Updated 24 October 2014

I probably shouldn't but I'm going to say it anyway…..I told you so! Many believed that the season was over as for most of March it didn't snow. We had around 4 weeks without any new snow fall at all, although there were some accessible stashes dotted about here and far away. However as March ends a new month begins, so comes powder day after powder day and the past week we have had some serious dumps of snow which has made it great for enjoying some fresh powder faces and hitting the many features available for spinning, flipping or making crazy off of! As I write this now the forecasters are predicting more snow coming through and if you didn't know it already, April is one of the best months to come out for. Maybe not so amazing for the lower slopes but here in Chamonix we have access to some of the highest lifts available in Europe, so if you think the season is over, think again! There is still plenty opportunity to book another cheeky trip out here and enjoy some tranquil powder days before the season really does draw to a close on May 9th!

I have been pretty much riding Grands Montets every day for the past week, as I live right next to the lift and I can always get first bins up. Also the sheer size of the mountain, the amount of terrain and altitude of this hill make it one of my favourites. I will go and enjoy another mountain tomorrow aiming for a first bin at Flegere with an 80% chance of sunshine forecast, it should be pretty good! So the main runs we have been doing have been trying to get as many top bins in as possible and if that hasn't happened then we have been hitting mainly the L'avancher bowl with its many possibilities of fresh and massive terrain, so it takes a long time before it becomes tracked out and we even got some today on our last run at around 4pm!

The top gondola in Grands Montets has some amazing routes down from it - you can have a perfectly open face with a constant gradient down the front, directly underneath the gondola where you can get some crazy fast turns in without worrying about hitting any rocks as most of the face is featureless. Or you could head off on an adventure back to Chamonix making sure you have the right equipment and even a guide to help you find the route down one of the couloirs. One of the best known ones on this side is the pas de chevre which drops you out on to the Mer De Glace at the bottom, from where you can either traverse across to get the train down or hike up and take the footpath back to Planards in town. Yesterday we got the very first bin up to the top so we had many options available to us, but even the pisted route down was untracked so we headed in that direction but keeping left just off the piste to get some steeper descents and find some cliffs and rocks to drop off. We managed to just about get a window of fairly clear weather so we hucked ourselves down as fast as we could to make the most of it followed by a few Herse lift runs getting in to the bowls before the weather really came in to drop more snow on top of our tracks.

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!