© Wayne Watson
© Wayne Watson
© Wayne Watson
© Wayne Watson
© Wayne Watson
© Wayne Watson
© Wayne Watson
Val d'Isere Snow Report: 25th January 2016
Great weather and great snow this week in Val'd'Isere
We’ve enjoyed several days in a row of beautiful unbroken sunshine and the skiing has been wonderful. Because of the perfect visibility and the avalanche risk dropping to 2/5, the off-piste has been pretty much tracked-out and we’ve needed to walk with our ‘skins’ for the last three days.
We have however been rewarded for our efforts with total solitude and virgin powder snow! It’s not always necessary to walk a long time to access fresh snow and an example of that was Saturday morning when we ‘skinned’ for only 15-minutes to ski a lovely couloir. On Friday we walked for 45-minutes to ski some fantastic snow on Mont Roup, but on Sunday with options slowly being used up we walked for 90-minutes and had wonderful scenery, ambience and snow.
Unfortunately the wind has been damaging the snow off-piste in certain areas and combined with tracks, our options are drying up and we’ll be in need of some snow and a fresh canvas soon. For the piste skiers is doesn’t really matter if the snow doesn’t fall as the pistes are in fabulous condition and with the wonderful weather everyone is having a brilliant time.
The Leisse Chairlift on the Grande Motte has finally opened and that makes skiing the Grande Motte sector much more interesting. The Manchet Chairlift in the Arcelle sector of Val d’Isere also opened this week as did the Signal Poma at the Fornet. The opening of these three lifts is great news as they open up an enormous amount of skiing on fantastic terrain.
Weather:
- Monday - Sunny -6C/+7C Wind from the S at 5km/h
- Tuesday- Sunny with high thin cloud -4C/+6C Wind from the S at 5km/h
- Wednesday- Sunny -4C/+6C Wind from the S at 5km/h
- Thursday- Partially sunny -2C/+6C Wind from the W at 5km/h
- Friday- Partially sunny -4C/+3C Wind from the E at 5km/h
As you can see we’re in for a warming trend over the next few days and 5km/h of wind seems to be a popular number. If the wind only blew at 5km/h we wouldn’t have so much wind-damaged snow off-piste and would still have powder snow almost everywhere. There is often much stronger wind at altitude so don’t be fooled with this 5km/h business. Remember Radio Val gives a good weather report at 7:30AM and again at 8AM in English with temperatures in the village as well as on the top of Bellevarde, Solaise and the Fornet, and also reports on the wind strength and direction at altitude.
It is all shaping up for another outstanding week. Have fun!
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