The best and worse skiing of the season condensed into a week.

 

John Young enjoying one of our many quiet untracked runs of the week.

This week saw some of the best powder skiing I have experinced in years. But it was also interspersed with some truly grotty weather where it rained higher than any where it was feasible to ski. It was bewildering to experince such dramatic changes in the weather in literally a blink of an eye.

On our first day, as I picked John Young up from his hotel - it was sleeting, [the previous day Grands Montets had closed down while I was skiing there.] The day had "forboding" written all over it.

Yet we headed to Grands Montets - the lifts started to open , the sun came out and there was 50 cm of light fluffy un tracked  powder everywhere.

The quality of the skiing was exceptional and there was hardly anyone about.  What had threatned to be an inauspicious day turned out to be truely exceptional one.  The sort of day you could go through a whole life time of ski holidays and never enjoy.

The next day we headed to Le Tour.  This time not only was the snow sublime , but there was a cloudless sky.  The skiing was "other -worldly."  lunch was good too : At the Alpage de Balme.  In the afternoon we skied off the back of Le Tour, briefly using the skins in order to access yet more untracked powder down through the widely spaced trees of Les Jeurs.

Then ugh; the weather changed.  Although we could still see, the temperature shot up and it instantly ruined all the wonderful snow we had skied the day before.  We made the most of it while skiing on the piste around La Flegere and Le Brevent while watching incrediously at other groups trying to go touring and taking huge risks with large wet soggy cornices.

A big cornice?

Still we got some good sking.

Thursday the weather was challanging, especially if you were in a resort that didn't tip the 2500meters  mark.  John and I headed to Les Grands Montets, We then took the Bochard liftto 2780 meters   We exited the lift to be greeted with light fluffy snow.  We then decided to go even higher.  Due to the continuing no lift saga we stuck our skins on and headed up to the Col du Rachase. There were quite a few other paties with the same idea .  We made it to the col very quickly and decided to continue even higher-but we soon had further weather challanges.  The first was zero visibility and the next was the worrying fizzing sound of static around the hood of my jacket which all of a sudden develpoed into flashes of lightening followed by loud claps of thunder.

Zero Vis!

The descision to turn-tail wasn't difficult.  We "felt" our way back to the col and fiddled our way into the comb de la Rachasse.  The cliffs on our right gave us good definition, which allowed us to do real justice to the untracked powder, which in turn gave us a brilliant descent all the way to a late lunch at the Chalet Lognon.

Friday was a right off.  Awful weather which shut all the lifts .  Nothing else to add.

HOWEVER Saturday was another story. The forecast for Italy was considerably colder and it was snowing  hard.  We headed to Courmayeur.  We arrived to find the car park empty.  This was because the lift was closed.  But then it openend - seemingly just for John & I.   We had the whole resort to our selves, with 20 cm of fresh untouched snow everywhere.  Inevitably as the sun came out and the resort started to fully open there were more people- but we were quite "well skied" by then.  We refuelled on Pizza at the famous Maison Veille - before continuing with more powder skiing .  A great way to finish the week.

Courmayeur powder.

A full set of the weeks photos can be found here https://www.flickr.com/photos/114992191@N02/albums/72177720307229069.