Chamonix Snow Report: 1st December 2008

The Grands Montets resort, above Argentière, was just open for the two weekend days - it's shut now. It's as if the Compagnie du Mont Blanc were teasing us with all of the fresh snow that was up there.

The snow, of course, is what you want to hear about. As you can see from the pics, it certainly looked like winter all the way to the top of the Boachard at 2600m. The pistes were in great shape, nicely groomed and pretty soft, although as the day went on it got a little more chopped up and icey. This is not Utah's Deer Valley, where so much as a misshapen mogul is enough to cordon off the run and dispatch an emergency piste-basher to discretely erase it from existence.

Off-piste was where the money was this weekend. The Herse chair was closed, although there were plenty of people traversing over, beneath the front face, to get the goods over there. And the highlight of the day was without doubt a brace of runs through the rock-littered but completely untracked Lavancher Bowl. The high winds above 2000m had moved the snow around quite a lot, packing the snow into gullies with the bone-dry texture of chalk dust - perfect for slashes. Remember that the wind loading is going to have consequences for avalanche danger on the open, lee-side slopes over the course of this week, so heads up if you're off hiking up there.

The Grands Montets lifts will be open next weekend for the whole season - including the cable car to the top. However, in the meantime, if you're planning on taking the free SAT bus service to Courmayeur (free with the MBU lift pass), the CdMB has just announced that the service doesn't actually start until 20th December. The good news is that the cheap Mont Blanc tunnel passes are now on sale at the Montenvers ticket office, as of today (1/12) (which didn't help me when I popped over to Courmayeur yesterday.......I got stung full whack leaving me 40€ lighter!) Along with last week's final ruling that Les Houches access would not be included in the Mont Blanc Unlimited pass - it's been a bit of a week. We're hoping that the CdMB's mountain & lift ops teams will make swift amends with plenty of on-time openings and effective avalanche control this winter.

Meanwhile, I'm going to get my gear together for another visit - this time with my snowboard - to Courmayeur in the morning.

Tune back in soon - Chamonet's snow reports are bumping up to thrice weekly to ensure you get the latest snow conditions and resort gossip straight to your desktop.

Tom