Val d'Isere Snow Report: 18th December 2012

Thursday and Friday were mellow with pretty flat light, little wind, and warm temperatures. It turns out that we were the last to know that temperatures were so warm that we were looking at the 7-degree range in town. Hanging out in hoodies instead of layering on the facemasks, beanies, and base layers, we rode mostly on-piste in Solaise wondering whether or not the snow was going to start sticking. It turned out that the snow was still amazing and just soft enough to pad our faces after being surprised by changing terrain here and there. Of course, with little wind and no snow falling, the women’s Criterium races were on and pumping all of Friday meaning most pistes in La Daille were inaccessible. The sun even poked its head out for a couple of hours, ensuring a sweet time on race day.

Saturday was an animal of a completely different breed. We woke up to the huge snowflakes we dream of as children, cheering internally at another wave of potential powder sessions. The only folks not pumped on this new turn of weather patterns were the Criterium organizing committee and the athletes. With the same sorts of weather announced for another week, the option of pushing the women’s Super G race was deemed impossible and Val’s Club des Sports was forced to cancel the event. Truth be told though, it seemed that the community in Val was really satisfied with the success of the event. It finally had finally put to rest many rumors of potentially moving the FIS World Cup competition to another resort in the future.

Like most resort based folks, I work on Saturdays so couldn’t take full advantage of the new snow conditions until the next day. On Sunday however, we tore it up but with a whole lot of caution. The more we thought about it, the more we wanted to take our time looking into snow conditions before galavanting around in potentially dangerous off-piste spots. With two avalanches in Tignes over the past two weeks and another slide on a road by the dam, it was pretty clear that we had to start paying more attention to where we were pointing our one or two planks. So Sunday was spent treading around both Val and Tignes carefully, focusing more on side-piste than anything else. We didn’t get the chance to hit up the glacier in Tignes but all pistes in that area were plainly awesome. In any case, it was a great day's riding in the Espace Killy.

The rest of our time is currently spent checking how much snow is coming down. And there’s a fair amount! With another 20 cm announced for today, we'll gladly accept it. Ultimately, we don’t really mind that we’re waking up at 07:30 every morning trying to figure out what will open and where we need to be for first tracks. We’re pretty okay with taking the bus all over Val d’Isere only to find that the lift we were counting on taking has closed the minute we get there due to high winds. We understand that Tommeuse can’t open due to avalanche prevention work in Tignes under the Aeroski. We’re just incredibly happy to be here for the season, getting to know all of the nooks and crannies of this awesome place.

And if we have powder days for the rest of the season? We don’t mind that too much either.