Tricky conditions.

Conditions in the Alps continue to follow their familiar pattern of being either slightly too snowy or not nearly snowy enough. Mid February  much of Switzerland, northern Italy and the Rhône Alps has been sitting at a fairly emphatic 4/5 avalanche hazard, with several days reaching a full and uncompromising 5/5.

Then the sun came out and it got very, very hot.  This created various avalanches in the Chamonix area that ended up on the piste:

                                                    sorry about the guy stating the obvious.

My view is you should always wear an avalanche transciever if you are skiing on the piste as well as off piste if the risk is high 3 or 4.

The tricky conditions were however ideal for  teaching snow craft and avalanche avoidance, which I did with four very keen skiers James Luke Will and Kass.

Add good example of hard wind slab

Plus as a result of some unwanted freeze thaw at about 1800meters we got to ski some henious breakable crust.

It was therefore with some intrepidation that I headed out the next day  with Kristoff and his father Staffan.  Yet it turned out to be stunning .  We set off from La Flegere and headed over to Brevent.  We took the cable car to the summit.  Despite it still being the French school holidays [zone Paris] and blue sky  there were few people around.  We skied off down the Charles Boson  piste and then cut off it and headed over to the Col du Brevent.  

We dropped off onto north facing slopes where we found perfection

We skied down until the altimeter read 2000 meters.  Here we put on our skins and climbed up to lac Cornu.

Then across the lake where we stopped for lunch, before making the final climb to the Col de La Glieres.

We then skied back down the Combe de la Gliere, where we joined the Lachenal piste.  Stunning day, stunning skiing and we saw no one all tour.  As good as it gets.