Chamonix Snow Report: 3rd January 2013

Courmayeur is, of course, still included on the Mont Blanc Unlimited lift pass and once you’ve validated your pass at the cash desk the first visit, you can go straight onto the lifts on any subsequent trips. One change to the Chamonix/Courmayeur arrangement this year is that the shuttle buses that run between the two resorts are no longer free. This winter you have to pay €14 for a return trip and you can book your bus at the little wooden hut beside the railway station. If you’re here in your own wheels, then the MBU pass still entitles you to significant discount on the price of the Mont Blanc Tunnel ticket (€13 each way instead of €51 for a return!!) but remember to swing by the Montenvers cash desk to buy a voucher BEFORE you go; you can’t just waft your pass at the man in the booth at the tunnel entrance and get the same discount. Random aside, but I thought quite interesting, a return trip through the tunnel for an HGV truck costs €495.70!!!! Doesn’t take a mathematical genius to work out an approximation of a day’s taking when you think how many lorries trek up and down this valley every day!

Obviously at this time of year, everywhere is choc-a-bloc and the car park at the Val Veny cable car was no exception. Luck was on our side though as we managed to secure a great parking spot immediately. This was where my luck promptly ran out having realised that I’d changed my jacket and therefore had forgotten my lift pass....... So I can now reliably inform you that a 3hr pass is €36, 4hrs costs €40 or a full day will set you back €44 should you decide to go there anyway even if you don’t have the MBU pass. Ouch. Not a good start. But Courmayeur is always worth a visit – it really was a fabulous addition to the Chamonix area pass a few years back and I try and get there as often as I can.

From the top of the Val Veny cable we always head straight down to the Zerotta 4-man chair. It seemed that most of the resort had had the same idea though and we were braced for a day spent battling through lift queues, but this didn’t turn out to be the case in the end. A bit of successful “queue ferreting” (always try to hang to one side or the other) and if you can bear to be parted from your skiing buddies for the duration of a lift ride, you’ll find that you get a lot more skiing in if you fill up the gaps on the chairs – we didn’t really wait more than 2-3 minutes at any lift all day.

From the top of Zerotta we headed down to Plan Checrouit, the main hub of the ski area and it really was a case of running the gauntlet. There were people flying everywhere and because you pass through the main beginners area via Pra Neyron, many of these were somewhat lacking in control so you needed to properly rein it in and have eyes in the back of your head to avoid a collision. As it was a beautiful day, we took the Pra Neyron chair back up from where we could cut across to the Aretu chair up to Col Checruit (avoiding the queues at the Plan Checrout gondola) and get over to Plan de la Gabba, my favourite part of the area. And what a difference crossing back onto the shadier Val Veny side made – the pistes cleared, the queues disappeared and you could easily forget that it was one of the busiest weeks of the season. Those Italians do like skiing in the sunshine! Off to the right at the top of Plan de la Gabba chair are 2 reds that nine times out of ten are completely deserted. These runs are really wide, normally perfectly groomed and crying out for you to let rip at warp factor 9. We did just that.....several times! Being shadier, the snow was much better on the Val Veny side and we hardly hit any sneaky patches of ice unlike on the busier Plan Checrout side.

I was very impressed on this visit as to how much investment into the area has happened since last winter. Underneath the Aretu chair we saw the brand new snow park complete with airbag looking almost ready for action; there has been quite a bit of piste remodelling underneath the Zerotta chair to ease some of the icy bottle necks that used to form; and best of all, the cranky old 2-man Bertolini chair lift has been replaced with a fabulous new 4-man! Fantastic!! Team all this with the fabulous choice of restaurants in the area, the fact that you can get a pizza and a coffee for a tenner and the stack of amazing tree skiing and off-piste there is after a powder dump – Courmayeur has gone even higher in my estimation. Definitely get a trip in when you are here.

Back in the Chamonix valley and we’re currently bathed in sunshine having had a nice little top up of fresh snow yesterday morning. The Fohn wind has gone, the temperature has dropped right back down again (low of -8 today) and on the run up to the weekend we’re meant to be experiencing more sunshine and temperature inversions so you may even get a bit of deckchair action come the afternoon. What a great start to 2013 and once the crowds leave this weekend, we’re eagerly awaiting the remainder of January :O)