Snow Reports

Lovely weather today although a bit breezier than yesterday. Wall to wall blue sky though and nice snow, including some nice spring snow off piste on Les Posettes at the end of the day.

Nice pic from higher up the mountain today looking down to the Toura area and a different view of La Muzelle and the Ecrins:

Looking down and across to the Toura area from the corner of Serre Palas (Glaciers ?)

Interesting half person effects of moving targets when i did the panorama!!

Firstly, I’m very sorry that I forgot to write the blog last night! I was tired and realised after I’d turned off the computer! Sorry!!

it was a lovely day, and the snow is holding up pretty well considering the drought, but it’s getting warmer and certainly we’ll see some much harder snow on the lower slopes in the next week or so if it doesn’t snow soon.

I took a very unusual shot yesterday from the terrace of the Refuge de la Fee looking up at the actual Fee area. Lovely café, smart loos, but don’t tell everyone! Stayed mostly lower down all day, but that was fine because clearly lots of people went up high!

Looking at the red and black runs on the Fée from the terrace of the Refuge de la Fée

Although it was fairly cold again today, it didn’t touch the depths of the last 3 weeks, and it was fabulously sunny, without much wind at all.

I’ve got a group from the Ski Club of Great Britain this week, and we skied hard all day and pretty much all over. There was very nice snow on the Cretes, the Vallons and the Diable this morning. The red bumps at the Toura were fine once you got off the ridge, and the snow up on the glacier was really nice too. Gosh!

View from the back of the Toura just before lunch

After lunch we went up to the glacier and had a run down the flat part of L’echines next to the Signal, which was very bumpy with huge sustrugi, but nice underfoot in spite of that. Actually we did that twice. Afterwards we skied Hidden Valley (Petit Clot de Chalance) which had big bumps but mostly lovely snow.

Two of my group and sundry others making their way down a pretty tricky spot we've named Zotov's Leap in honor of Nick!

A quick canter down the Grande Pente which wasn’t quite as nice as last week, but still hugely preferable to any of the pistes at the end of the day, and we were back to the hotel for Tea and cakes!

the promised snow yesterday amounted to about 1mm, so some more would be gratefully appreciated!

It’s been lovely today! Sunny, warm, decent snow. Really you could not complain at all!:)

Didn’t do a lot, but the Petite Aiguille run was nice, Cretes and Thuit in very good condition, and Les Posettes not too bad at all, and included a little spring-like soft near the bottom. As I said ….

Looking up the Valentin from the Village chair lift

The lift company are closing the Valentin tomorrow for machine work – no idea what they’re planning but it will be interesting to see!

Ooh good! it’s been warmer again today. Actually it’s been positively tropical, with temps rising to +5 outside my house in the middle of the afternoon (light shade).

This had been created on the nursery slopes today, so I had to photograph it:

A bit smaller than the original, but a good replica

We skied the Vallons which was fine, but a trifle hard in places – no  ice though, and the Gours (Fee 1) which was lovely and warm and sheltered from the lunchtime wind.

I took this pic looking south from the Petite Cretes chairlift:

Lovely views to the South

After work I skied down via La Grande Pente, which was super, and so well skied it was almost like a piste. Moguls were avoidable and the snow was lovely skier-packed powder throughout.

Hmmmm. Well it was warmer today, but  a truly evil wind got up so it seemed just as cold as ever! This is really annoying! However, we live in hope that tomorrow will be warmer and that the wind will drop and we’ll actually get some snow to cover the icy patches that are starting to form in a good few places. We did have the odd snowflake today, but that was about the sum of it.

Luckily, we have so much skiing down in the village, that although it looks pretty terrifying in this picture there’s plenty for all to enjoy:

Towards the end of the morning lessons - one of the ESF meeting places at the bottom of the Champamé

We did go up to the Pied Moutet in the lunchtime session, and I have to say it wasn’t my best ever idea! It was getting very polished by the wind, and most of the pistes were very hard. they were grippy if you could use your edges (which my students could), but were full of people who didn’t appear to know that either their skis or snowboards actually had edges! It was also really foggy at the top. Oh well – I expect it’ll be another 3 or 4 years before I go back over there again!

Off piste on the Jandri side down here was good though and they were running the summer luge chair which is always nice on these sort of days. It doesn’t run often in winter, but there’s a nice (albeit short) blue off it and some good off piste too.

Looking up the Grande Pente from the summer luge chair

Fingers crossed for tomorrow and the weekend

Well, great excitement today as not only has it been sunny all day, but it’s also been a bit warmer. Long may it last! The temperature climbed all the way to 0 degrees outside my house in mid-afternoon.

The snow everywhere we skied was good today, and particularly the Grande Pente which is very nice skier pisted snow with large, round, well-spaced moguls in the trees. Lovely.

I took one photo today, which shows some of our interesting skiing in the village. We had some good fun doing very careful short turns in the off piste between these tightly packed trees! As you can see, we are not exactly talking nursery slopes!

Looking down an small off piste opportunity at the side of the Lutins drag lift

Yippeee! It was a little less cold today. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was pleasant, it was still bitterly cold in the shade and higher up, but not as bad as it has been. The result was that everyone who works on the mountain was smiling and cheerful!

The main problem now, is that with the very busy week we’re experiencing, icy patches are starting to appear where hundreds of people have slid down and scraped the snow off. Hopefully it will continue slightly warmer and will snow again in the next 24-48 hours which will help a lot. the next two weeks will be crazily busy.

the beautiful l'Y (Eegreck) as it used to be called, a wonderful black run which may be ruined by cutting great swathes of it up for a blue run

On the horizon you can see where the old blue/red run La Descente used to come down. For some reason (balchy farmer?) it's not possible to re-instate it

It’s been very cold again today. Sunny again, but nearly 8 hours out in the temps even on the nursery slopes is getting a bit much! Snow was good, but there were some icy patches on the steeper bits of some of the lower slopes. The freezing fog has been hovvering around all day too, but produced some spectacular light effects:

You can just about spot the Pic Blanc at Alpe d'Huez peeping out of the fog

Fabulous light effects late in the day

We are hoping for a slight change in the weather tomorrow, and there’s a chance of a spot of snow tomorrow night. That would mean it was warmer – I’m sure it’s too cold to snow at the moment.

It was definitely a bit colder again today – quite bitter in the brisk wind at the top of the Toura in fact, and everyone had either cold hands or toes. However the snow was still great, and the sun was still shining so really not much to complain about.

Everyone did well, and my class managed the Gours (Fee 1) very well in spite of being a bit afraid to try it (loved it of course as everyone does), then the kids did their first big black off piste run and skied the Grande Pente! That’s a HUGE deal the first time – well done to everyone.  :)

Walking up to work today all the trees were shrouded in white from the freezing fog and looking very beautiful:

The trees almost don't look real all white

and I have to say that Chalance, which I haven’t skied this year, was looking pretty nice too:

A different view of chalance - looking good

All-in-all a very good day but it is bitterly cold again now at 22.00