Val d'Isere Snow Report: 22nd April 2013

After the epic season we’ve had, nothing could make our pale faces and tired legs happier than some mellow days hanging out in the sun. In Val d’Isère, April means a bunch of events counting on nice weather to motivate all seasonnaires to host daytime parties and wear crazy costumes daily. It didn’t seem right for the weather to deprive us of this, so it only made sense for the sun to be out for the infamous Monoski World Championships. This contest is unlike anyone has every seen with competitors going head to head down a slalom course, taking each other out until the world’s best two monoskiers are taking each other down for gold. Of course, the fact that this contest is a joke started by Val’s own Kene, founder of The Mountain Echo, just makes it that much more fun! Nothing like sunshine and gaper costumes from the 70s to make you feel alive.

With all of that craziness going on, it was necessary to lap some of our favorite pistes, hit up our beloved on snow spots, and stay very, very far away from anything resembling off-piste. With the sudden heat wave smacking Val d’Isère and Tignes, hitting anything but pistes was asking for some serious problems. Slides were coming down everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. The face over the Santons had been coming down so frequently that the piste itself has been closed for weeks. Further in the valley toward L’Arcelle, the face looks like an icecream Sunday that’s been melting in the sun with rock rubble and snow chunks swirling into each other. There are currently so many avalanches that not only do you wake up to avalanche bombs every morning, hear them in the afternoon, and before going for après, but you also just happen to get stuck in Bourg-st-maurice because one has completely taken out the road. Awesome! So with that, we decided to spend the majority of our time lapping Glacier Express in Solaise, getting some tricks in on the lips created by people passing through or going from the Grande Motte glacier all the way to the Brévières for lunch. Let’s be real though. The great majority of our time was spent in l’Ouillette, really enjoying some rosé in the sun with our goggles on!

And then, all of the sudden, things turned around, literally. All that could be heard during these blissful sunny days was “retour de l’Est!” Even if you can understand French fluently, unless you’ve been a regular in these mountains for a while, you still might not get it. Apparently, a “retour de l’Est” is code for, ‘there is a huge dump on the way’, due to the change in winds and the weather patterns coming in from Italy. Boy, were they right. It figures that the day I leave Val d’Isère, over 60 centimeters have come down in 24 hours with another 40 centimeters on the way. Nothing like 20 centimeters of snow all over the roads to help you get to your bus when you’ve got 3 bags and have 2 minutes to make it.

Hooray for epic departures!