Chamonix Snow Report: 21st February 2006
Yesterday and today have seen the weather finally settle down: the snow has stopped falling and the wind has dropped away. All the lifts are open again now after the recent snowfall.
Yesterday the Index chairlift at Flegere, which allows access to the best runs there, reopened and today saw the very top drag lift, the Floria, also open. As always when Flegere opens after a big snowfall, you have to get there early; we arrived at 8:30 and were on the second cable car up. The Index chair didn't open straight away, so whilst others queued for it, we had a few runs on the Evettes chair. The snow was superb, cold, and powdery, and a good warm-up for what was to come. The Index opened at around 10:00 so we took it up, no queue for us as everyone waiting had gone up by the time we got there. To our disappointment Combe Lachenal was closed, but we went in anyway deciding that the risk would be worth it. The powder was light and bottomless. We had a few goes through, headed out far left and then right to get to the fresh stuff, and in fact the piste itself hadn't been bashed and had plenty of powder on it too. The marker poles hadn't been moved so looked pretty short in the fresh snow. As the afternoon wore on the temperature rose and some cloud started to move in making it pretty difficult to see where we were going higher up, especially off piste where there are no poles to help with route finding. The snow became heavy by afternoon, and on the return run to Les Praz it became sticky and felt like glue it was so warm.
Today started with clear blue skies, perfect weather for touring as people start to look further a field for fresh snow now that within the lift areas things are mostly tracked out. I headed up Grands Montets as I heard that yesterday the top cable car opened again: it was all looking pretty tracked by midday today when I got there with lots of lines down the face and the Pylones piste. Since the last snowfall things have seriously improved up there: where before there was plenty of glacial ice visible it now looks much more like it should, with a thick coating of powder on most of the glacier. We took the Point de Vue route down from the top. It's not actually open at the moment, normally it's marked with poles but not groomed so it gives people a taste of off piste. It was pretty easy to see the route to take as plenty of people had been down already and I'm sure they'll be marking the route soon as it seemed to me to be as good as it was any time last year. Be careful if you don't know where you are going as there are large crevasses on the glacier sometimes hidden by thin snow bridges and so they present a serious danger. The snow itself was mostly chopped up but still light and easy to ride. Back on the pistes at Grands Montets things are excellent, the snow still cold and not at all icy. There are moguls and bumps but mostly they are soft too, so all is good.
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
Useful Links
Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research
French Avalanche Research Institute
Meteo France - Mountain weather and avalanche conditions bulletins (in French)
Henry's Avalanche Talk - popular avalanche training sessions based in French Alps as well as translation of current avalanche conditions
PisteHors.com - Backcountry Skiing and Snowboarding News in English for the French Alps. Excellent coverage of avalanche safety and advice
Additional snow and weather information provided, with thanks, by meteo.chamonix.com and the Tourist Office
Stats
-
Level 4
-
0
-
Total Pistes: 80
-
Alt. Resort: 1050
-
Alt. Summit: 3000
-
Alt. Last Snow: 1250
-
High Temp.: 5
-
Alt. High Temp.: 1050
