Val d'Isere Snow Report: 12th April 2013

What this phrase doesn’t tell you is that April not only bring showers, but it dumps snow every which way and catches us completely off guard the grand majority of the time. It doesn’t explain why we’ve only been able to catch a ray of sun here or there and haven’t spent our days baking under UV rays like all normal people in Europe. Instead, all we can hope for is that the Génépi flowers got enough water to last them a lifetime and will be ready to be picked to help us deal with next winter.

For the last couple days, we’ve been pleasantly surprised by the mildness of winter, I mean, spring. With the snow melting everywhere, we’ve been kicking back in less layers and more sunscreen. Monday and Tuesday were bleak with heavy wet snow coming down for a solid 48-hours, but it wasn’t enough to get us excited. Considering how warm it’s been, we wouldn’t be waking up to January powder… Or so we thought! To our surprise, temperatures dropped quickly overnight and turned all of the snow coming down in to super light, mid-winter snow. Conditions were sure to be perfect.

It was also announced that Wednesday would be the beginning of our sunny day sessions, the one everyone expects to have in April, and we weren’t disappointed. After missing our chance at getting first tracks on the Table d’Orientation at the top of Bellevarde, worried of what conditions awaited under a heavy cloud cover, we made our way instead over to Solaise.

First on our list was Cugnai but one look at the lift made us realise the risk in the off-piste was high enough to keep the lift closed for a while. Instead, we headed down the Super L in between the L and the Mattis down to the Laisinant, and while it was an incredibly enjoyable run, we were uneasy the entire way down. Earlier that morning, the pisteurs had closed the L off due to avalanches and coming down that way, we quickly understood why.

Slides had taken down the majority of the face, bring rocks and snow chunks the size of our heads to the bottom of the run. Needless to say, we booted it through and promised ourselves to never head down on a close Piste L this late in the season again. We proceeded up the Laisinant lift and nearly fell off the lift from excitement. As though on cue, across the valley, we could see that the Signal button lift had just opened moments ago and was beginning to take people to the top. We headed there immediately, took to skiers left and got some of our most favorite lines in before deciding to move on to Grand Vallon with everybody else.

Sadly, our joy at finding some serious snow late this in the season came to an end with the day as the warmth began to change the conditions dramatically. Thursday, while mild and without snow, proved to be tricky due to visibility but prepared us for another amazing, sunny day.

Nothing like burning to a crisp to remind us that it’s spring skiing!