Chamonix Snow Report: 25th March 2005
It started raining at around 4pm yesterday afternoon and kept it up until about 11pm. In the hope that this would mean good things up on the mountain, we hatched a plan for today that involved meeting friends at 9am at the bottom of the Argentiere-Lognan cable car at Grands Montets. The plan also involved paying our 5 euros each and going straight up to the top of Grands Montets to take advantage of the powder we were sure would be there. We got to an already-quite-full Grands Montets car park at 9am this morning. On the way up we passed several buses that were rammed and sure enough on arrival we were greeted by a queue right out the lift station doors and past the big piste map/sign and our hearts sank. The wait turned out to be shorter than expected though and we were on the Plan Joran chair by 9.30.
Intent on heading for the Lognan-Grands Montets cable car, we took a ride up the Tabe chair followed by a run down Marmottons. Just where you need to straightline to have any hope of getting up the gentle rise to Lognan, Marmottons, which hadn't had a chance to soften up very much at all, became absolutely bullet-proof corduroy – a good test of the nerves first thing in the morning! On seeing that the top ticket lift queue was enormous (it had already stretched outside the building, signalling a wait of over an hour), we decided to take the Bochard gondola. This proved to be a good idea because where we traversed immediately under the lift line there was 20-25cm of fresh to be had just to the side of the piste. We then rode back across the piste on the first corner and followed the service cat track round skier's left to pick up a sneaky ridge for some more powder. Unexpectedly light and fluffy it was a great, if short, run.
Back at the bottom we agonised about whether to get in the top ticket queue, which had not got any smaller. We could see lots of untracked fresh from the top on the Pylones run but we eventually decided against the lengthy wait and took the Bochard again, this time for a ride down through Combe de la Pendant. The signs said that due to lack of snow on Arolles and De La Remuaz, the Retour Pendant chair was shut. So, we decided to head for the tunnel under Arolles piste (which leads back to Plan Roujon chair) and ride off piste in the large area between the Chamois piste in Pendant and the ridge that separates it from the Bochard. The snow was fairly deep here, only the very tops of the moguls were visible. The run down was good fun, if a little technical, but knowing that there are rocks lurking everywhere here we were a little cautious and didn't really let rip. (When we got to the bottom we could see that Retour Pendant was running after all, and it had people on it!)
We went to La Herse next but just as we were getting to the ticket barriers it broke down so we went for a coffee instead. By the time we were finished half an hour later La Herse was only just starting up, the Bochard lift queue had grown off-puttingly long and there were tracks all over the face beneath the top station of the cable car so we opted for a trip to Le Tour in an attempt to avoid the crowds.
A slushy Le Tour (accessed via the Vallorcine gondola because we thought we'd have more chance of parking there than at the front – we were right, for once) was great fun for the afternoon. We mainly stayed round the back riding the Tete de Balme chair, which, amazingly, had no queues, because we suspected the shadiness there would make for better snow conditions. One tentative visit to the front revealed a very brown and wet Solonges piste but surprisingly few people (reports from Flegere/Brevent indicate that it was also very quiet up there today). Again, hardly any queues, this time on the Autannes chair. We attempted a few off piste runs in apparently untracked fresh but quickly found that everything had turned to glue, which required the kind of tail-down-nose-up riding that your back leg can only take so much of.
We reluctantly headed down at around 3.30pm in the hope of avoiding the monster traffic jams that always seem to appear around Easter. We succeeded and felt very smug as we drove past Grands Montets and saw that there were cars parked almost as far down as Grassonets.
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
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Level 3
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0
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Total Pistes: 80
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Alt. Resort: 2000
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Alt. Summit: 3000
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Alt. Last Snow: 1042
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High Temp.: 17
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Alt. High Temp.: 1042
