For most of the season the weather systems have not produced the dreaded Foehn
effect which brings miserable grey weather to Chamonix in particular. Yet inevitably this all changed at the beginning of March.
The trick is always to go through the Mt Blanc tunnel to where [ if the Foehn is blowing] Courmayeur and the Aosta valley can be pretty much guaranteed to have cold fresh snow.
This is exactly what Turi and her fellow Icelandic friends and I did. We had very good off piste skiing in Courmayeur and an excellent lunch at the Chaumiere restaurent. The only slight snag and unbeknown to me the off piste track which goes back to the car park via the Val Veni had already been ploughed. This left us with an unwanted muddy walk . The next day the Foehn was still blowing in Chamonix so we headed back through the tunnel , this time to La Thuile. Again the conditions did not disappoint. The snow was superb and the lunch at the Maison de Neige was very memorable.
