Les Sept Laux

A snowHead

Just got back from the Sept Laux. No overnight refreeze (phone call from Luc in Val d'Isère at the Prarionde? refuge says the same) so off-piste is heavy. It was raining at 2,400 on and off. The piste conditions are very soggy especially below 2000 meters - watch those knees. In short the resort is scheduled to close on the 30th and they will make it, but only just. Conditions are more like May than March.

A snowHead

In spite of all the recent rain the conditions were actually better today than last week. The resort is on two sides of a mountain, east and west facing. I largely skied the east side this morning as the runs on the west were actually frozen. Still you can actually see the water being squeezed out of the pistes as the ratrac passes over like a giant sponge. There was a poor overnight refreeze at 1400 meters... but this is better than non at all and around 5cm of fresh snow above 1800 meters. The skiing was soupy over on the warmer east side but not unpleasant. The resort will actually make the closing date on the 30th with all pistes open and with reasonable snow so not a bad season.

It is interesting to look at their quoted snowdepths:

2400m 80 cm
2000m 100 cm
1350m 50 cm

The snow is better at mid latitudes than higher up, this is kind of worrying for April unless there is better snow at altitude.

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

Well last weeks snow means the figure for 2,400 is now 1 meter. Les 7 Laux (my local ski resort although not quite the nearest to me) was due to close on the 29th March right after easter. They initially extended this to the 3rd of April and now will be open through next week. There is talk of staying open to the 24th of April but we'll see how things go. I post this as a comparison to show that things are maybe not so desperate as they seem.

Anyway off to l'alpe d'Huez today.

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Well despite being scheduled to close on the 30 March my local resort is still going strong. I arrived at about 10,30 this morning. It was a mix of sun and cloud but the snow is much better than a couple of weeks ago. It is sticky below 1600 meters so you need to wax your skis for warm snow, off-piste is a bad idea as several boarders who vanished up to their thighs in slush found out. However on piste the snow was pretty damn good and no bare patches anywhere. Everything is very calm - about 250 people skiing in the who resort and most of the lifties were sitting in deck chairs and not really looking like they were awake. Tomorrow's rain won't help though but certainly conditions in higher altitude resorts should be great still.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

We had about 60cm of snow over the weekend and yesterday it was snowing down to 1300 meters although the snow was very heavy below 2000m. Apart from the learner slope only the big six seater chair was open but this gave 650m of vertical with a round trip time of about 15 minutes. Off piste conditions were very heavy powder below 2000m. Viz was only a few meters due to low cloud.

Last night it was snowing outside my front door at around 400m with an overnight temperature of 8.5C.

Help!!

Les Sept Laux

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