How's the snow in Gressoney?

A snowHead

anyone got any first hand knowledge?

regards,

Greg

A snowHead

Hi Greg,

We came back from Gressoney last Sun 4th March. Conditons definitley improving. Prob is its very warm. 9c in the village. Was raining Sat in the village but snowing on the mountain. During the week we prob. had about 6" in total. Lower slopes get very slushy (back to Jolanda lift).

Head towards Chompoloc for better slopes, but be wary of the wind, during our week the top lifts were closed more than open.

Cheers Shane.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

thanks Shane,

How was the off piste??

Wind seems to be a common problem with that whole area.

regards,

Greg

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Greg,

Plenty of people skiing off piste from the top of Seehorn lift, either down onto the reds below or following the blue (right off the lift) towards the top of Jolanda lift and down from there. Plenty of Huge rocks to avoid and a fair fw drops off from them..too scary for me.

Good news is the place was empty, often on the piste on my own, no queues either. Have fun. I'm told we were unlucky with the wind, it would stop me going back if it was the norm. We only got to chompoluc once in the week and then got stranded due to lift closures, took roughly 4 hrs to get back to Gressoney, by bus, lift, piste basher (worth the wait wink

) & bus.

Regards Shane.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

kitenski, you probably don't want to know this, but last week was pretty good to fair.

Snow cover off-piste was perfectly adequate with snow quality fairly typical spring conditions (very hard to start with, nice after a few hours of sun, slushy after that). The snow in Olen was mostly really nice, provided you found the right aspects of the ridges to ski down, Balma was OK too, although it was a lot nicer last year. Tuesday we had a heli-drop between Castor and Pollux and skied down into Zermatt, then back down into Champoluc via the Cime Bianchi. Snow at the top was very wind-crusted, but drop down a couple of hundred metres and it got pretty nice - mostly 20cm powder with only a thin crust. Cime Bianchi was also nice but mostly following ski-pisted tracks - snow went down to within 5mins walkout to the cafe where you get the ride down to the chairlift). The snow in the Malfata (on Thursday) was very nice, although I think the abseil was probably a bit longer than usual (although I've not done it myself before). The ski away from it though was fairly deep and heavy so really tested the technique of those of use who haven't done a huge amount of that. It was a long walk back into Alagna though, with no snow at all below the covered bridge (so 20mins walk to the roadhead, then 45 mins to the lifts, unless you get a taxi). The top half of the Bettalina (on Saturday) was probably the best snow we found, mixtures of hard crust, spring snow, and the odd stash of powder where the sun had never shone, but the covering at the bottom was pretty thin, so there was lots of side-stepping and -slipping, with a fair amount of azalea-skiing, followed by about 10 mins walkout to the piste and it took about 90 mins to do in total (each time I've done it has taken over twice the time of the previous run - my first time down it took just 18 mins).

Skiing in Champoluc (on Saturday) seemed pretty limited. Pistes served by the top lifts were OK; we only did one down to the middle lift but that was a bit soft (and queue at the lift sufficiently long we didn't fancy doing it again). Off-piste around middle lifts was pretty patchy (not really skiable under the lift), and that around the upper lifts was pretty hard-rutted, so we didn't stick around long.

The runs down to Jolanda were pretty slushy by the end of each day, but were mostly empty and carving down at high speed was immense fun on the Dynastar Pro Riders I was on. By the end of the week parts were very thin (only a few mm depth) and it was important to adopt a waterski posture to get throught the puddles it wasn't possible to miss. While conditions were perfectly adequate to start the week, they definitely need new snow now. We never found/looked for any off-piste below the Salati midstation, so no tree-skiing report at all I'm afraid. The only disappointment was that the cover was a bit thin to allow some of the more exciting runs to be skied (looking at Oh poo-poo! from the Indren cable showed rather too many exposed rocks to make it safe, and we didn't try the Pylon 19 couloir either). The Eagle and Miners Couloirs were pretty good condition though, provided you picked the time of day right.

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I wish I'd known you were there Graham, I ended up skiing in Cervinia, and skied with some skiers & the SCGB!

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

kitenski, you probably did the right thing. Even if you'd been over in Gressoney we'd not have got to ski together as I was on a (full) Snoworks course. Maybe next season Wink

. We also had an SCGB course in the next-door hotel - an oldies beginners' course.

After all it is free

ah ok!! Did you manage a week without the wind closing down any of the top lifts?

Don't think I felt a breath of wind all week - although I think it had been fairly high on the Sat before we got there. Main danger to health was melting in our gear under the sun in the clear blue skies, and several were skiing in just single layers on Friday (it started to cloud over a bit on the final Sat pm though)....tough job snowHead

.

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

GrahamN, what was the course like?

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

snow reports

off 2mrw any news? Little Angel

Plenty of wind-blown, crust, crud, rocks, more rocks and the occasional patch of softer stuff if you go looking really hard... (off-piste-wise that is - pistes firm but OK)...

You know it makes sense.

wish i hadn't asked

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Hearing great reports (again) from a mate up there this week - so much so that we're off there tonight from here in Serre for a couple of days Cool

A snowHead

Just as long as you weren't basing any decisionson the latest posts from this thread Shocked

A snowHead

@under a new name, like I said, a mate is up there now and has already had a couple of days with a guide this week and texted last night saying it was puking, and has a guide on option for Thurs / Fri so seems rude not to - plus have a mate and two sons here in Serre Che and I'm fast running out of options down here!

He was monitoring the forecasts three or four weeks ago and staying in contact with a guide and scored a good weekend & heli http://www.stylealtitude.com/powder-weekend-warriors.html

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

@Weathercam, I think you missed my point. You've managed to resurrect a thread from Feb 2010... Laughing

There is a more current Monterosa 2015 thread floating around somewhere in the ether. The OH was in Champoluc at the weekend but they had 4 under 3 yr olds with them so skiing was, errr, limited. Snow apparrently fine as viewed from a distance but warming. As one would expect.

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@under a new name, doooooooooooh Embarassed

I did a search for Gressoney in Snow Reports - and did not look at the year rolling eyes

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

From a dry Serre Che was snowing at Montgenevre down to Oulx and then we had heavy rain all the way around Turin and then snow on the lead up to Gressoney where it has been snowing heavy all day, 50+ up top.

Guide tomorrow Cool

Help!!

How's the snow in Gressoney?

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