 Poster: A snowHead
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Anyone have any recommendations? I know that if you just go (climb) high enough you can ski all year in the high alps but I am looking for a place friendly to backountry skiing (i.e. relatively low objective hazards and not crazy steep) and reliable snow in the beginning of December...Tips for relatively inexpensive accomodations would also be nice if you have them...Ski in ski out would be preferrable but not necessary (so we don't have to rent a car)...Thanks in advance!
- Dan
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Unless winter gets started very early most off piste won't be accessable in early december due to a lack of base (or snow if it's a repeat of last season), even the glaciers that early may not be that great and even if they are you have to deal with cravasses and other dangers.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| dweiss wrote: |
| Anyone have any recommendations? I know that if you just go (climb) high enough you can ski all year in the high alps |
it is not quite as simple as that, I'm afraid, at least at the start of the season. In the summer if you climb high enough you may just find ice or hardpack that is all but unskiable so it is not just a question of altitude.
Usually some of the best early winter touring is on lower, grass covered pastures. Places like the Aravis or Chablais in France come to mind. Of course as Francium points out, you actually have to have snow in the first place. Higher up in December can be pretty inhospitable with winds, ice, crusty snow and poor visibility. That said, Val Thorens and the surrounding glaciers provide good early season opportunities and are more or less guaranteed to have snow cover. Some big crevasses in places though.
The Southern Alps or Northern Alps right along the Italian border offer some of the best "reliable" early season touring due to the typical autumn weather patterns. There has already been some good touring already this autumn: The Iseran pass is still open (maybe not officially) and I've seen a few nice tours although the snow is a bit crap now. Austria and out east also seem to pick up good early snow for the same reasons (depressions tracking over the Mediterranean sea).
but early December, nothing is that reliable compared to May or even June.
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+1
I'd normally expect to be able to ski offpiste - carefully - and tour for powder in closed resorts in much of Tirol at that time, BUT it's certainly not guaranteed and I wouldn't put money on being able to find enjoyable offpiste snow for a week at that time.
Obviously you have the glaciers, and I normally ski offpiste from about now at Stubai. BUT this year it's crazy ravaged and covered in scary crevasses. I'm sticking to the pistes for now (and some areas I know which aren't actually glaciated anymore), but everything will become even harder when there's enough snow to hide the wholes but not fully bridge them... Unless you really know any of the glaciers well, you'd 100% need a guide this (early)season (if they're all like Stubai anyway).
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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This is the Cime de la Bonnette today if you are tempted
the issue with the lack of base is not only can you wreck your skis but the actual skiing is often variable.
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Funny I was joking with KenX in the Serre thread after the recent snowfall and posted a pic of the Vallons below Cucumelle.
He mentioned that the road cycling season might be coming to an end to which I replied that sort of dovetails with the ski touring season starting, and suggested that he could drive his jeep up beyond the the snow line and summer village of Frejus to hike and get some turns.
And that is what is possible, as the snow might well stay at altitude, and in a few cases you can drive up to say 2100 (Lautaret) and then hike to the snow.
Look what those mad snow starved feckers in Scotland did, this year or was it last year (?), cycling and hiking / camping out to get to the snow!
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@dweiss, in answer to your post Hotel des Glaciers at the Lautaret, but they probably will not be open, or the gite just down the road, but again probably will not be open, but worth a phone call and then that will open up all the Galibier sector and more, but only downside no lifts 
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