Chamonix Snow Report: 27th December 2012

Christmas day dawned, well, a lot like Christmas day in the UK actually – a bit grey, overcast and not terribly inspiring.  But on Christmas day it is obligatory to at least go up for a few runs, whatever the weather, and so we popped up Brevent.  I won’t gloss it up – it was grim. Flat, flat light, lumpy bumpy snow and even taking into account our slightly hungover legs, it really wasn’t much fun.  Quick run up the Cornu and Plan B kicked in – head to Flegere for hot chocolate (with optional shot of rum!) and see if it was any better over there.  It wasn’t.  With hindsight, I think Les Houches would probably have been a better choice because although the cloud base was up around 3000m the light was just so flat that you couldn’t see any of the lips and dips that catch those edges and there were quite a few around.  In the trees it would no doubt have been much more enjoyable.  However, at the Adrets cafe at the top of the Flegere cable car, we had a prime spot to watch all the weird and wonderful sights that Christmas day on the mountain usually brings.  Santa and Rudolph were both enjoying a leisurely post present delivering ski and I later saw them both catching some air on the freestyle air bag that is open for business again over on the Brevent side.  The Dark Lord – Darth Vader himself had also chosen to Christmas in Chamonix this year and was attracting quite a crowd of admirers when he popped into the cafe for a warm up.  Truth be told, we didn’t board very much on Tuesday but it was Christmas and has to be done and it’s always worth going up for a look.

But Boxing Day – now that’s a different story.  Whilst there was quite a lot of cloud down in the valley, going up the lift you emerged through it into perfect blue skies and sunshine.  We headed back up Brevent again to give it a chance to redeem itself after the previous day.  Well, what a difference a day makes - it was beautiful up there.  We’d had around 20cms of fresh snow overnight and the bashers had been out in force so the pistes were slightly powdery corduroy - just heavenly. All of the lifts were open, including the top cabin, but only pedestrians could take this lift right to the top of Brevent.  At the top of the Cornu, the run back underneath the chair was open but the runs over the back were closed due to avalanche danger and you could see just beyond the barrier slight slab breakaways just above the piste.  Arriving at Plan Praz it felt really warm and the temperature on the information sign showed 13 degrees!  In the 5 minutes that I waited there for my friends, I watched it go up another 2 degrees but then it is in full on sunshine all day.  It didn’t feel anything like that warm once you got going but there wasn’t any wind and it certainly wasn’t cold.  The snow just off piste is much wetter that it was last week but it’s still fun to bounce some turns through. Even just ducking off the piste a little way though and it was feeling quite slabby in places so it’s completely understandable why the pisteurs are holding off opening some of the higher runs that give access to the majority of the off piste.

Today has been another complete turnaround in weather.  The rain snow limit has been lurking around the level of the town and we had large wet flakes falling for most of the morning.  That soon turned to rain though and for the rest of the day it has not been pleasant at all in town – sloshing through huge puddles of slush as the rain teams down.  I didn’t go up today but from those that did I hear it was snowing quite a lot at altitude, heavy flakes but accompanied by gale force winds.  Overnight we’re expecting 10-20cms of windblown snowfall at 1500m and the wind is likely to still be strong in the morning.  That pesky Fohn wind is still hanging around for the weekend too making it feel unseasonably warm for December. But the one good thing about the Fohn wind, once it goes, the snow storms usually follow hot on its tail :O)