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Evasion Mont Blanc (Megeve, Saint Gervais, Les Cotamines etc) 2015/16
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Poster:
A snowHead
Poster:
A snowHead
Back at work after our NY trip. The recent dump will have made my comments on snow conditions a little irrelevant but thought I'd get a season thread started.
We flew out Boxing Day evening and were due to return on Sunday morning. As the snow fall forecast slipped back we decided to come home early on Friday - figured skiing Saturday in poor vis on hard pistes wasn't worth it given we are lucky to have other trips planned.
Overall the skiing was much better than I feared. We only skied Les C/Hauteluce. The mountains were browner than I have seen them in Les C in the ski season (5 years now including the last two closing days of the season). About half the pistes were open. Almost all of those were on the Les C side rather than south facing Hauteluce (I managed to take the family on a little adventure that ended with us trying to link small patches of residual snow on a brown and green hillside for a few 100m - got a few moans but the kids take this stuff in their stride and my wife is resigned to my antics
). Naturally the pistes were hard and the best snow was where it was topped up with snow making before it got scraped off again. Not many sensible off-piste options (not enough snow to fill in hazards) although lightly skied areas near to pistes were preferable to the most scraped pistes. All of that sounds rather grim but I actually had some fun after getting the edges on my stormriders nice and sharp and working on my carving on ice - complete possible as the racers prove. Weather was mostly sunny and although the open pistes were as busy as I have seen Les C there were no real lift queues (just reflects the fact that normally people spread out all over the mountain). Saw ESF jackets from all over EMB and even further afield so assume conditions were significantly worse elsewhere. The benefit of skiing largely over high alpine pasture was brought home by the surprising lack of stones - just don't need much snow to keep the pistes skiable.
All in all we had a nice relaxing week. Skied shorter days than usual but were glad to get out every day. Would have been less philosophical about it had it been my only trip of the season of course.
"On the way" back to GVA we called in on some cousins in Flaine for lunch - conditions there looked similar but perhaps a little better helped by 5-10cm of fresh overnight.
Obviously
A snowHead
isn't a real person
Obviously
A snowHead
isn't a real person
Interesting report,
@jedster
. I'm not surprised that Les C was better than other places in the area. Nor that the Hauteluce side had no snow. We did a pleasant walk down in hauteluce valley the last of the warm sunny days last week and the lack of snow was all too evident. Will be looking very different now but probably more needed to make a big difference to the number of pistes open.
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?
Ski Agricole
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Poster: A snowHead
). Naturally the pistes were hard and the best snow was where it was topped up with snow making before it got scraped off again. Not many sensible off-piste options (not enough snow to fill in hazards) although lightly skied areas near to pistes were preferable to the most scraped pistes. All of that sounds rather grim but I actually had some fun after getting the edges on my stormriders nice and sharp and working on my carving on ice - complete possible as the racers prove. Weather was mostly sunny and although the open pistes were as busy as I have seen Les C there were no real lift queues (just reflects the fact that normally people spread out all over the mountain). Saw ESF jackets from all over EMB and even further afield so assume conditions were significantly worse elsewhere. The benefit of skiing largely over high alpine pasture was brought home by the surprising lack of stones - just don't need much snow to keep the pistes skiable.
