Chamonix Snow Report: 29th December 2004
It started snowing late yesterday afternoon while we were up at La Flegere and we got the feeling that it could be great today. The snow kept on falling through the night back at the house so we set our alarms early for an attempt at getting the first lift. This morning dawned with a blue sky and as we got up the moon was setting behind Le Brevent. Les Grands Montets is incredible on a powder day, but you have to get there very early to be at the front of the queue. As we live only five minutes' walk from Le Brevent we thought we'd keep it local this morning.
We arrived at 8:50am at the Chamonix-Planpraz gondola and after virtually no queuing we were on our way to fresh tracks in powder. First was the deserted Vioz, an immaculately groomed blue piste of perfect corduroy, where we made long, sweeping turns down to the Col Cornu chairlift. We originally planned to head straight to La Flegere but the ride up the chairlift revealed so much untracked powder and so few people that we got distracted and took some lines skier's right of the Chamois red piste. The powder was awesome - incredibly dry and light.
We spent the rest of the morning off-piste in Flegere, mainly off the Index chairlift, heading skier's left and taking various routes to the bottom of the Trappe chairlift. (The Floria poma was shut all day so there'll be more powder to be had when that opens.) The snow here was more windblown than over in Brevent, which meant bigger drifts and cornices to play in. It was a bit slabby in places and there's a crusty base below the fresh snow. There was a strong Northerly wind at the top of the Index and we set off a few small slides but nothing big enough to worry about. The blue sky and sun made route finding easy, and the terrain in Flegere is awesome on a day like today, with rocks and small cliffs to jump off, wind lips to slash, and open powder fields to really let rip on. Just be careful where you go, as there are some seriously big cliffs that can be tricky to spot from above.
It seems many of the rocks and stones from early in the season are now history in Flegere. When we came down from Flegere by cable car at about 2:30pm there was a fairly large queue waiting at the station to go up, I didn't want to tell them that we had taken the best of the powder! So if you want to avoid this, get there early. No queues and first tracks in powder - what more could you ask for?
Current status for opening of Pistes & Lifts
Webcams Index
Additional snow and weather information provided, with thanks, by meteo.chamonix.com and the Tourist Office
Stats
-
Level 3
-
0
-
Total Pistes: 80
-
Alt. Resort: 2000
-
Alt. Summit: 2500
-
Alt. Last Snow: 1042
-
High Temp.: -3
-
Alt. High Temp.: 1042
