Chamonix Snow Report: 8th February 2006
Today has seen the long dry spell come to an end, although I'm refusing to get too excited as I know I'll only be disappointed if it doesn't amount to much. (I'm keeping my fingers crossed though.) Nevertheless, it's the first snow we've seen falling for a couple of weeks so anything right now is better than nothing. It's -3ºC on our balcony and it's been snowing lightly but constantly for the past hour: it started as granular snow but has been falling for the last half hour as the usual kind of snow flake, albeit small in size. It's forecast to snow all night and leave 15-25cm at 1800m. I hope that's a conservative estimate.
On the hill conditions have been holding up reasonably when you take into consideration how long it's been since the last snowfall. However, for the hardened seasonaire things could be better as we're a pretty fussy species when it comes to snow. Brevent and Flegere were the ski areas of choice today and there was plenty of evidence of the need for fresh snow. Almost all the runs I rode today to a greater or lesser extent had some patchy sections to watch out for.
I headed up the cable car from Les Praz to Flegere first and the patches on the now-closed home run are growing; it'll take a fair bit of snow for it to reopen, at least 30cm I guess. It wasn't all that cloudy this morning, just some thin high cirrus and a little mist in the valley, so it wasn't looking good for snow in the afternoon. I headed up the Index chair, no queue, in fact it was very quiet on the hill all day, so much for it being busy because of the holidays. Lachenal was the first run today, not bad for a warm up, although a little too much for my friend, who lost a ski near the top and slid about 300m before coming to a stop. It has a very firm base, almost icy, the loose 1cm of snow making it carvable. Lower down the run there were rocks coming through the piste. It didn't seem that the Floria drag lift was running. Pylones piste was looking kind of beige as the snow had been mixed in with dirt by the piste bashers desperately trying to spread the snow further. All combined to make me head over to Brevent via the Liaison cable car.
By midday the cloud had started to build up, both in the valley and higher above the mountain peaks, leaving a clear section at mid mountain. The best snow at Brevent was on the Bozon piste, which, like Lachenal, was very firm but had a few centimetres of loose stuff on top to help get an edge on. There weren't too many rocks to look out for on the piste, unless you were crazy enough to head straight down on the mogul field, where there were plenty. Cornu wasn't bad, the lower cat track section had a few stones kicking around on it and the shortcut of the side of the cat track looked pretty rocky. The light became flatter and flatter as the afternoon wore on, making it difficult to see the surface of the snow. Whenever I tried any of the off piste at the sides of the runs it was set like concrete and I was straight back onto the piste where the soft scrapings were the best option. Late in the afternoon the cloud in the valley rose higher to around 2000m making visibility very poor. I headed back to Flegere and up the Index, the cloud level was halfway up the lift and as I got to the top it started to snow, hooray! One more run through the cloud using just the force to show me the way was more than enough so I downloaded to Les Praz. Since I started writing this report the snow has started to come down more heavily and is falling as medium to large flakes. Come on.
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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High Temp.: 1
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Alt. High Temp.: 1050
