Chamonix Snow Report: 7th April 2012

We were definitely in need of it – I popped my head up to Grands Montets yesterday morning quite early to find that some of the pistes were harder than concrete in places, especially the top section of the Herse which was just impossible to get an edge in. I sacked that off quicker than I was careering over the ice, jumped back in the car and carried on up to Le Tour where the sun had already started doing a splendid job softening up the slopes.

Yesterday was beautiful, the clouds had cleared and it was another perfect blue sky day that we have become so used to although, as anticipated, the slopes are noticeably busier than they have been in recent weeks. There was a bit of a queue at the Autannes chairlift to begin with where it sometimes bottle necks before people get up and spread out across the area. From the top, we caught a few laps of the Stade blue run so we could check out what the large group of boarders were up to on the Arve piste that runs parallel. You couldn’t miss them – there were hoards of ‘em! It looked like the ESF were holding a bit of an end of week slalom competition for their snowboarding classes which looked like fun so we had a little shot on that as well once the ski school had packed up and moved on. The runs over the back had already softened up a lot when we ducked over that side and were really quite sticky on the long flattish section as you near the base of the Tete de Balme chair. In the short time we spent over that side, when we came back down the front via the Solonges piste, it was heavy piles of wet slush and hard work. The Caisets red that takes you back down to the car park is now closed although I met a couple of friends who hadn’t paid attention on the way up the gondola and thought that it might still be skiable. It isn’t – there’s now a huge expanse of grass about two thirds of the way down so they were walking!

It was a rainy night in Chamonix last night and the temperature has noticeably dropped which meant that there was about 5cms of (pretty wet) snow when we arrived at Lognan again today. However, even that small amount had made a huge difference to the top of the Herse (as in it was at least rideable today!) but you were still switching between heavy new snow that rapidly piled up into bumps and icy patches in between. Although the sky has been overcast all day, the visibility was OK to begin with and the sun even appeared to be trying to break through at some points, but flat light won out and then the clouds came right in. Stepping out at the top of the Bochard, you could barely see 5m ahead and it was snowing lightly up there too. As we set off down the run, visibility went from rubbish to non-existent and the snow was hitting your face like needles. It was like being pebble dashed whilst skiing with your eyes shut! Awesome. That was our sign to go home which was confirmed as we rode down the Pierre a Ric through the rain. On a positive note though, cover was still good until about three quarters of the way down but I’m afraid I don’t persevere in conditions like that, especially when there’s chocolate to eat in the fridge at home – Happy Easter everyone!