2 Alpes Snow Report: 12th April 2012

Missed the party in a big way this week by having to work all day the day after one of our biggest dumps of the season. Meh.

After Monday’s unforecast sunshine, Tuesday started out looking grim and got progressively grimmer as the morning went on. High winds at altitude got stronger and moved down the hill until eventually we stopped selling tickets altogether at about 1pm. Some vacillating later, the decision was made to close resort for the rest of the day until the wind blew itself out and disappeared.

Usually under these circumstances anyone determined to ski in spite of it all could retreat to the Vallee Blanche, but given that it’s now mainly grass and none of the lifts are running this wasn’t really an option.

Torential rain in the valley actually woke me up at some horribly small hour of the morning, and continued for most of the rest of the night, a good predictor of snow higher up.

In fact it had fallen as snow (wet and squishy but snow nonetheless) as low down as Venosc at 900m, and there was a good 10 to 15 centimetres in resort itself with even more further up. The forecast was for cloud and more snow, but in fact most of the day was more or less sunny and those people who didn’t have to sit about the ticket office had an epic day in the powder.

Today was overcast and a bit nasty looking, though a few sunny intervals tempted me to go up and have a look. It turned out that there wasn’t much to see, as visibility ranged from really not very good all the way through to thick fog via flat as a pancake.

The snow everywhere from 2600m downwards was a bit wet, but above that level it was still light and fluffy and from what little I could see at the top there seemed to be plenty of powder around still. All we need now is a bit more light so we can all see where we’re going and not risk ending up half way down Muretouse instead of at the bottom of the Signal.

The forecast is for overcast and snow through until after the weekend, with a vague possibility of a bit of sunshine at the beginning of next week, but you never know, it might perk up a bit sooner than that – best thing to do is look out of the window in the morning and take it from there.