Ski Touring Skills Weekend 4th - 7th February

On Friday I joined the first ski day of our Ski Touring Skills Weekend for a ski day in Megeve. We had a group of 12 with Jonny Baird and Klemen Gricar, IFMGA Mountain Guides looking after everyone. With a forecast of heavy snow we headed out of the Hotel Regina in St. Gervais to the ski lift at La Jaillet in Megeve, as we got to the top of the lifts the heavens opened with amazing heavy snow.

Working our way through the lift system and pistes we enjoyed lovely powder on the piste and headed towards the start of our ski tour for the day. Our aim was the Petit Croisse Baulet which stands at 2009m on the side of the Aravis chain of mountains, that splits the Megeve/St. Gervais valley from La Clusaz and Grand Bornand. This is a great little ski tour, especially for our gang of first times tourers, its a gentle walk to start with along a well established path before it slightly steepens and climbs through the trees to the summit; its also great in snowy weather as you have the trees for aided visibility and a good ski down.

The guides ran a session on "how to" put your skins on and adjust to bindings into walk mode and some basic skills on skinning, before we set off. Everyone caught on really quickly and was enjoying the uphill, as the climbed steepened the first uphill kick turns were done with only 1 or 2 fallers the basics of these turns were practised on the rest of the ascent.

At the top everyone had enjoyed the effort of going up, despite not getting a view of the mountains, we took skins off, had a bite to eat and headed off on the ski down. In the time we had walked up somewhere around 40cm of new snow had fallen so there was some good powder to ski between the trees. It got heavy low down and there were a lot of comedy falls and crashes in the snow, lost skis and plenty of giggles! We made it out on to the piste at the Giettaz ski area just in time to catch the last lifts back up to Megeve and home for a welcome cup of tea and hot shower.

No photos from this day due to the snow but Klemen took these great pictures on Sunday when the sun came out and the group headed out for a ski tour from Les Contamines.


Getting ready for the off.


Jonny reads the weather and avalanche forecast for the day


Jonny shows how to adjust your bindings for the uphill


Heading off up the hill


Wonderful views as the sun finally comes out


A quick rest for food and water on the way up


Richard enjoying the skiing back down


The team enjoy a beer and vin chaud at the end of the day

A sigh of relief

What a contrast in just 12hrs, yesterday I was out walking in Chamonix in mild late autumnal weather with a strong southerly wind called the fhone blowing. This morning I awoke to 10cm of beautiful fresh snow outside, the first real snow of the winter is here.

Its has been snowing all morning and there is now around 25 - 30cm outside the Mountain Tracks office, you still can't beat that excitement you get when the first snow of the winter falls. Thoughts drift to ski plans for the weekend or a cheeky early morning ski tour up one of the hills for some fresh turns....

Here are a couple of quick photo's from my snowy drive to work this morning.

We still have places on our Early Season Skills Week if you can't wait for those first turns of the year, Penny and Eric have called this morning to confirm its dumping in Zinal too.

See you out skiing soon.

The snow is arriving, time to go and find my skis!

Snow is falling across a lot of the Alps this week, I returned from the UK yesterday to strong wind and rain at Geneva airport but as I drove back into Chamonix you could see the snowline down to around 1200m.

There were some snow flurries last night and this morning and the view from my office window is one of white snowy mountains (I have a great view straight up to the top of the Grands Montets and the Pas de Chevre) and snow sitting on the trees, combined with the late autumn colours, its really beautiful!

We have a string of warm and cold frontal systems crossing over the Alps this week and the Chamonix meteo http://www.chamonix.com/page.php?page=11&r=meteo_chamonix&ling=en reads of an accumulation of up to 50cm at 2500m over the next 24hrs. The snowline should drop to 1000m, just below the height of Chamonix town from Thursday and the weekend is forecast for further snow falls.

Will it be time to get the skis out soon? Lets hope so, maybe not this weekend but almost certainly the next. Some of the resorts with glacier skiing like Cervinia, Zermatt, Tignes and Saas Fee will be in great condition and it means we will start the season on a high with a good base for the 3rd year in a row.

Here are a couple of photos:

Further snow updates as it fall.

Susie