Chamonix Snow Report: 5th February 2006
This weekend has finally seen a change in the weather here. Gone are the Foehn winds and warm temperatures to be replaced by colder weather with temperature inversions causing fog in the valley. As yet there's no new snow. The fog even caused the Kandahar World Cup Downhill ski race to be cancelled yesterday at Les Houches. All very frustrating, not to mention cold, for those of us standing around in the hope that the fog would lift and we'd get to see a race. Eventually the fog did lift but only once it had been cancelled.
Today started without any fog, and this afternoon I headed up to Le Tour. The was no wind in the valley but as is often the case at Le Tour there was a bitterly cold wind blowing higher up. The wind appeared to have blown most of the loose soft snow away, leaving the pistes thinly covered with a hard icy base. Most badly affected was Ecuries, the main piste at the front under the Autannes chair. It had quite a few bare patches where grass was showing through; it looked less like a case of melting and more a case of it being worn down (it's usually one of the busiest pistes at Le Tour). Today, though, people seemed to be giving it a miss and heading around to the backside of Le Tour. Esserts, the blue run that leads to the back, was in better shape, no grassy patches and less icy, although it was much, much busier. The Tete de Balme chairlift had the longest queue that I've seen so far this season. It was late in the afternoon and we had to wait about ten minutes to get onto the lift. According to my friend, the queues there weren't so bad in the morning. I should have expected queues, as when I arrived I noticed that for the first time this season the car park was full at Le Tour. Cars were parking along the road back down towards Montroc. If you drive the extra distance to Vallorcine you can often save on queuing time by heading up the Vallorcine gondola.
As the back was so busy I headed round to the front again and decided to brave the bullet-proof ice; it seemed like a fair trade off, as there was practically no queue for the Autannes chair. The traverse out skier's left on what is normally the Chatelet piste was hard and windblown (the piste is yet to be marked with poles). The route cuts through some fairly large avalanche debris from the ridge above. The gullies were mogulled and were a mixed bag: soft windblown snow caught between the bumps made for some surprisingly smooth turns, some frozen wet snow that had set like concrete and some grassy patches to avoid. As the afternoon wore on you could see the fog in the valley accumulating and slowly rising higher up the mountainside, it looked fantastic. The last lift was at 4:45pm at which point the fog had made it to just below Charamillon. After the first turn on Caisets down to Le Tour I was in the fog and the visibility was gone, which was probably a good thing as it was slowing people down on this run which is one of the scariest runs in the valley at the end of the day when everyone races back to the car park. There was a warning sign saying ‘Neige Dure' at the top and it was hard, but no more so than any of the other runs today at Le Tour. In fact there was plenty of soft snow at the sides of the piste to ride to avoid the ice. Visibility improved a little lower down, but it was noticeably colder out of the sun and it felt like stepping back into winter, especially after the spring like conditions of last week. As I write it's 6:30pm here and -6ºC on our balcony.
Piste Maps for Chamonix (pdf format), Les Houches (jpg format), Cross-country skiing (pdf format), and Mountain-bike trails (pdf format)
Current status for opening of Pistes & Lifts
Chamonix Webcam Index
Useful Links
Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research
French Avalanche Research Institute
Meteo France - Mountain weather and avalanche conditions bulletins (in French)
Henry's Avalanche Talk - popular avalanche training sessions based in French Alps as well as translation of current avalanche conditions
PisteHors.com - Backcountry Skiing and Snowboarding News in English for the French Alps. Excellent coverage of avalanche safety and advice
Additional snow and weather information provided, with thanks, by meteo.chamonix.com and the Tourist Office
Stats
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Level 2
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0
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Total Pistes: 80
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Alt. Resort: 1050
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Alt. Summit: 3000
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Alt. Last Snow: 1250
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0
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Alt. High Temp.: 1050
