Latest snow improves conditions in Val d'Isere

On Saturday we skinned to the Crete du Genepy and Mont Roup to ski some fabulous powder, and on Sunday we skied some outstanding snow off the Grande Motte in the only place that seemed to have sunshine, as the rest of the resort was under cloud cover. The Grande Motte cable-car was damaged by the wind in an early-season storm and remains closed, but if you’re willing to walk there is still some wonderful skiing to be had off the Motte. As the glacier recedes the landscape changes each season as new gullies and couloirs develop, and we skied some new routes that weren’t there last season.

It was cold all weekend with temperatures around -15C, so all the skiing we did was on south-facing slopes, and it made an enormous difference. This goes for piste skiing as well; when it’s cold, go sunny and stay away from north-facing sectors such as the Fornet. It can make the difference between being comfortable and enjoying yourself, to being miserable and spending a fortune on hot-chocolate. Because of all the wind and early-season rain-crust combined, with track damage we’ve needed to do a lot of skinning to find good virgin snow.

You’ll notice from the photos that we keep our tracks close together, which helps to conserve snow, and if more people tried a little bit harder to not waste the precious powder we’d all benefit with better skiing for longer periods of time. So on Monday it was another skin to the Glacier Suspendu, which is stunning scenically and the snow was wonderful. It was an hour-and-twenty-minute walk and I had two clients who’d never used skins before, and they did amazingly well as it’s a fairly technical climb in places and fortunately I was forgiven because of the quality of the skiing.

After a tough walk on Monday I took it easy on my clients, and we only skinned for 20 minutes, but it accessed some great snow in the Sachette. On Wednesday the forecast was for overcast skies and light snow starting around 11:00, so I returned to the Sachette where I knew there was still some clean slopes, and it’s one of the easier sectors to deal with off-piste when you can’t see. But it miraculously cleared up and we skied in sunshine for almost the entire morning, and what a bonus that was. It did start to snow on Wednesday afternoon.

With the sunshine beating down almost every day, the piste skiing has been outstanding. The slopes are groomed to perfection every night, the snow is beautiful with some firm but grippy areas lower down, and only the Face du Bellevarde is really icy and should be avoided unless you’re a strong skier with well tuned skis that hold on ice. The Piste M on Solaise can also be tricky towards the end of the day, and if you’re tired or not a particularly strong skier, I’d advise downloading into the village at the end of the day to avoid crowded icy pistes.

Don’t forget to come to Le Petit Danois on Friday evening to watch my colleague Andreas play with Karen. If you like live music, it’s a great gig starting at 17:00 and running until 19:15. The Danois has live music just about every night of the week, and the Baraque has great music every night except Monday’s, starting at 19:30.

For now, the avalanche risk is 2/5 above 2200m, and 1/5 below that altitude.The weekend is forecast to be sunny for Friday and Saturday and there’s a good possibility of snow on Sunday, and then off-and-on during the week ahead. With any luck I’ll be able to post a dump alert or two next week. Fingers crossed as we’re in need of snow now for the off-piste, and look out for another update next Friday.