Chamonix Snow Report: 8th April 2005

As predicted by weather forecasters, we woke to persistent, heavy rain yesterday morning. Once again, we took our visitors to La Vormaine. This decision was made in the hope that the rain would be falling as snow there, but no such luck (rain turned to snow just above the final straight run out of the Le Tour home run, Caisets). Rain/snow has continued to fall into today and we returned to Le Tour. Temperatures there were about 4ºc lower than yesterday and consequently snow was falling at least down to the level of the car park. Whilst our friends practised their turns on the nursery slopes, we spent a few hours up the top at Le Tour.

Visibility was not good but stopped short of a total whiteout. The Compagnie du Mont Blanc website was claiming 15cm of fresh at Balme but in many places it seemed more like 40-50cm. Our first run, off piste skier's right of the blue run Stade, revealed the extent of the snowfall as we almost immediately got stuck! On the whole, Le Tour is not very steep and this in combination with the surprisingly deep new snow made for a strenuous first run. We took a few more runs off the Autannes chair but then headed over to the back via the Liasion Balme piste in search of better visibility. The trees round there didn't fail us and it was much easier to see on and around the blue Esserts piste. The Variante Esserts (the detour skier's left of the Vallorcine gondola) is officially closed but a quick trip around there revealed totally untracked powder and given the relatively good visibility there this soon turned out to be the favourite run of the day. We took the Tete de Balme chair a couple of times but the wind was howling a gale on the ride up and the visibility was no better away from the trees than at the front, for example on the Bechat-Esserts piste, so we soon headed back down to meet our friends at the bottom. The Caisets run down to the car park was not much fun, as the snow there was heavy and wet so tough on the legs.

Le Tour will be stunning when the cloud clears. The new snow there was a little wet and heavy in places but at this stage of the season we are not really complaining. The poor visibility today was keeping people away and we had it pretty much to ourselves. Reports of Grands Montets were very good today too: our housemates told of knee-deep powder at the very top.

A slight drop in temperature is forecast along with another 20-40cm overnight and on Saturday so the weekend is looking very promising indeed!

Useful Links
Cross-country skiing is Closed
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

We will be keeping this Chamonix snow report updated often during the season, but if you want even more up-to-date news on the ski conditions, why not sign up for our Dump Alert? We'll email you each time it snows enough to significantly change the skiing conditions. It's great to know that the snow is falling in the run-up to your holiday, and it might even allow you to book a last-minute weekend when the snow is particularly good. The service is free, and you can unsubscribe whenever you like.

Additional snow and weather information provided, with thanks, by meteo.chamonix.com and the Tourist Office