Good cold weather

The start of the school holidays coincided with the start of the first real settled weather of the winter. The hoilday makers must have been delighted with the perfect conditions. However what is perfect for your piste skier is not good for some one searching fresh tracks. We need constant top ups of fresh snow. The only way to find it is to climb for it , or use a helicopter.

Mark Locke and I did both: On the Sunday we found some fantastic snow skiing the couloirs down to Trient. The only issue was that Mark snapped a ski in half and we ended [or rather he ended] up with a long walk down through knee deep untracked snow.
On the Monday we skinned up from La Flegere and around to the col des Encranax. From where we had a superb run back down to Le Buet.
On Tuesday we met up with Alison Smith and Kate Ferguson and flew to the summit of Petit Combin. We found exceptional snow conditions all the way to the valley.

Wednesday we returned to the world class tree skiing of Giettaz where the descents were as good as ever despite a slight navigational mishap brought on by skiing some incredible snow into a cul-de-sac.
Finally on Thursday we went to La Thuile. The high spot of this was in fact lunch at the Hotel Maison de la Neige. The snow we found was good but tracked and high up the wind had got to it. But all in all a good 5 days.