A person riding a snowboard down a snow covered slope

People skiing down a snow covered slope with a skier in the background

A person skiing down a snow covered mountain

A man in a blue jacket stands next to a woman in purple pants

A snowy mountain with a few clouds in the sky

Chamonix Snow Report: 26th January 2009

featured in Snow report Author Tom Wilson-North, Updated 24 October 2014

This week's been a turbulent one, in the truest sense of the word. Storms day after day, nearly 100cm of fresh snow at altitude, flat light and yellow lenses, finally culminating in blue skies breaking all over the valley yesterday (Sunday). We shut up shop early and went to check out conditions, and were happy with what we found.

The entire resort had between fifty and sixty centimetres of fresh snow all over it. The higher you went, the lighter and deeper it got, although we were happy riding the lines between 2000m and 2500m. The powder here, whilst still plenty deep, was slightly gloopy after being baked in the sun all morning.

Don't forget that Brevent and Flegere are both south-facing resorts, so whilst they enjoy some of the most comfortable and sunny skiing in the valley, the snow is changed very fast over the course of the day, and freezes overnight resulting in often brittle and hard conditions in the early mornings. Equally, in fresh snow (like we've had over the course of this week), melting can easily trigger 'point release' avalanches on most aspects. When you're off-piste and traversing under steep terrain, take care to keep an eye on the snow above you so as not to get caught out.

We took particular care while getting into a well-known off-piste area at Brevent called the Chamois. It's accessed off the Col Cornu six-man chair. Just follow the piste around under the lift and traverse high and to skier's right until you get to the small arete, which you'll need to climb up. If you're on a board, click out and up you go. Skiers can sidestep up no problem. One you're up, drop down the other side of the arete and traverse out into the bowl until you see your line down back to the piste.

Although the Chamois (named after the mountain goats which frequent this area in the summer) is a fairly mellow, open, cliff-free, off-piste itinerary, and thus a great off-piste line for those making their first forays into to the backcountry, it's dominated by three enormous couloirs above the traverse which can avalanche at any point. So make sure you are aware of them, and take your backcountry gear (transceiver, shovel, probe) and enough knowledge of how to use them if you're heading off that way.

After lapping the Chamois a couple of times, we started hitting some of the cat-track drops off the Cornu chair. As Chamonix is so steep, the flattish pistes are literally dug into the side of the hill, which leaves huge perpendicular drops off of the side of them, normally into fresh snow. They are far less intimidating than man-made kickers of the sort found at the park in Les Grands Montets, and have much softer landings! Chamonix is one of the best resorts I've ridden for cat-track drops, and we spent a good few hours hitting them yesterday - open-jacketed as it was so warm - before making our way down the Les Nants homerun, which is in excellent condition, back to the Savoy beginner slope in town.

See you out there!

Tom

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