Chamonix Snow Report: 28th November 2008

There's nothing quite like the first day of the winter - especially when it has snowed this much. I can almost feel it already. Setting out your outerwear and checking your gear the night before. Making sure there's enough fuel in the car. Having trouble getting to sleep, then feeling like your alarm goes off ten minutes after you've dropped off. Getting up early, sometimes when it's still dark. Picking up your friend on the way to the mountain.

Gearing up in the car park. Hopping around with only one boot on. Getting into the line before the lift starts turning. Knowing glances to other people in the queue, who suffer from the same addiction as you, who have also allowed this moment to dictate the events of the last few days of their lives. Beeping your pass and getting straight on the lift. Checking out the lines through the windows as you climb, looking at what aspects look like they're in best shape, looking to see if there are many rocks poking through.

Running from the Lognan midstation to the Bochard gondola as fast as you can - and getting straight on with whoever kept up with you.

Walking out onto the Bochard snowfront, strapping in as fast as you can and dropping in. Airing off the first crest; sharp right, round to the left at the big corner below the glacier. Air off the edge, then off the cat-track, then flat out down the schuss. Up the hill, the left into another big straightline, jumping off the piste into the untracked stuff off at skiers' right. Faceshots and powder coughs. Back on, fork right, down and toward the Marmottons blue. Then, really pointing it this time, flying past the park, keeping enough speed to get you back to Lognan in mere minutes from the top, just as the second cable car pulls in.

Grinning inanely at fifty jealous souls who are wishing that you left them some fresh up there. Wiping your goggles off, clicking out and jumping back on the Boachard for another brilliant lap.

You know that it'll be tracked out next run, and that you'll have to put a bit more thought into where to go; that secret spot you got shown by a French guy last season; that shot as far left in the Magic Forest as you dare to go; that couloir that you saw Plake skiing in Powder magazine that you've thought about all summer.

We've got all of this to come in less than twelve hours. Bring it on. I'll see you in the lineup!

Tom