Les Deux Alpes - Winter 2008-2009

Blue skies and sun prevail. On piste conditions vary from good to very good - and in the case of the Dome (see picture - crowded innit?) and Signal, excellent. There must be powder around, judging by the fat skis I saw being hired this morning - but you sure must have to look for it. OTOH, there is some very skiable off-piste - had a delightful bimble around Petit Diable area yesterday. Loads of SHs in town

thanks everyone for your wishes. Ioda has been shut in since 18.00 today when I got home! I don't want to have to go through that again. As Achilles says it was lovely today and I came down the Grande Pente centre - see photo which had big round wide apart bumps on it. Snow crumbling underfoot ... couldn't be nicer really even though we need some fresh. I hear that there has been some sort of chemical transformation of the 'gobelets' which is making powder out of the old snow. Jutta told me - honest.

Butterfly, Kristof is skiing on his skis and happy with them. He skied the second and third parts of Posettes in his lesson yesterday very comfortably - after he'd told me he'd wait until he was better to try off piste!

And here's a pic of LDA in all its glory from the Super Venosc side. Just gorgeous. Pistes still in good condition - though thin in places. And I did come across a small shoal of pebbles in the snow just as I started to pop down to Les Cretes from 2600. As a mere paysan I was prepared to ski L'Y for my final run home - and I thought it very pleasant, in good condition, with hardly anyone on it. Spent most of the day having a great time with a couple of SHs - can't remember their sH (as opposed to real) names, though.

Disappointed about the Chalence news, though.

But hey - I'm in the Alps, the sun's out and there's good skiing to be had - Ill save the moan for another day.

At La Grave, easiski decides she can bring us all the way down .

I was up on cretes today and popped into the lower part of the combe du thuit. It was fine mostly, but there were a few harder patches around, also the snow on Grande Pente, while still very nice, was a tad harder than the other day. Hopefully the snow will come just in time at the weekend (if the forecasts are true). Pic looking up at l'Y and Diable from the bottom of the Stade. Diable is now open again. achilles apparently skied it - hopefully he'll tell you all about it later.

lampbus wish you could have made it, but glad business is going well.

The weather remains beautiful and sunny, but the runs are beginning to get hard-packed - as easiski notes. Some runs are still delightful - The Dome and Signal spring to mind (indeed the glacier area with the tow bars was really good) - but whilst there is plenty of skiing, quite a bit is firm under ski. I found my self skidding a bit with my Missions at the start of Envers du Signal - and turning on the few small powdery areas of snow.

Diable had a warning notice about thin snow and skiing slowly at the entrance. In practice it was good, fairly well groomed hard pack, and safe to turn on. Despite the speed warning, I was carved up by a boarder - almost face to face. Not on his blind side, he must have seen me from some distance, but did not bother to change his line.

The snow has got so firm that I have put aside my beloved Missions, and hired some Race Tigers for tomorrow. It will be interesting to see if my legs last the day.

Picture is looking up from the Glaciers restaurant at lunchtime.

Gours Bis had a sign saying something like 'little snow'. In practice this meant the steep pitch was heavily mogulled. Poisettes had an area of machine broken snow - maybe there had been some snow farming. Area immeditely beside that was fine to ski down - crisp, but took an edge. Pisteurs doing fantastic work. Here's what the mountain looked like from near the Jandri lifts at lunchtime.

this is what I've just seen on the glacier webcam - stunning