2 Alpes Snow Report: 28th April 2012

Good effort from the weather authorities here with loads of bumper snow and fresh powder, but they did rather let themselves down a bit this week with howling south winds which closed resort completely on Thursday and Friday, reducing us to trolling round IKEA for the second time this week, looking for random accessories we hadn’t thought of when buying all the new furniture in the first place. I like a poke around the Swedish furniture emporium as much as the next person, but twice in a week is a bit much.

Poor weather in the final week was particularly disappointing for resort, as the tourist office was running its second annual Semaine des Proprietaires or owners’ week, with discounts, special deals and activities for anyone with an apartment in resort. We took advantage of 10% off in the Porte d’a Coté restaurant next to the Windsor anyway (good pierrade, recommended), but the fact that the wather wiped out most of the week’s skiing must have been disappointing for most, despite the heavily discounted lift tickets available for the week.

Having said all that, if you own a place in resort you should seriously consider a cheeky break at the end of the season next year, because you’d usually expect a good fall of snow in April and some nice sunny spring conditions for this final week. Combine that with the deals and activities on offer (drive a piste basher, anyone?) and it should be a fun holiday. You've also got the Junior Foliz going on in town, a festival of fun for families, with craft workshops, silly games and random animations which included a collection of various local farm animals and a jolly ska band dressed up as insects. Well, why not.

Our intention was to go up at least on Saturday – rude not to on the very last day of the season – but the news first thing in the morning was that everything was shut again and it was blowing 60kph in resort and 100kph on the glacier. This looked a bit odd to me since there didn’t appear to be much in the way of wind in resort, so we hung about and drank tea for a bit in case things changed.

Around 09:30 we got news that the White Eggs and Belle Etoile and Village chairs would open, along with the Cretes chair, giving us Cretes and the Valentin to play on plus three runs at the Bas des Pistes. What with that and the after effects of champagne cocktails and too much rosé the night before, we took the view that it probably wasn’t worth it, last day or not, and trundled off back down the hill to the market.

Hardcore local instructor Charlotte Swift of Easiski went up though, and according to her daily snow blog the conditions were sticky and nasty, though they did open the Bellecombe chair at one point and she found a few decent bits around there.

This was pretty much what I’d expected, and another reason for giving it a miss – a south wind and soaring temperatures had played havoc with the snow conditions lower down, and the best of it was going to be at Toura and above, all of which was closed for the day.

Having had more than enough of IKEA for probably the rest of the year, we went for a preview of the tourist summer season with a visit to the funicular railway at St Hilaire du Touvet on the other side of Grenoble. This rattletrap train was originally used to haul tubercular invalids up from the valley to the sanatorium at St Hilaire, and now does the same for tourists, via ferrata enthusiasts and nutters who spend their weekends leaping off cliffs attached to big hankies on strings.

It wasn’t quite up there with snowboarding in the sun on the final day of the season, but it was a fun afternoon and it gave a good view of the Crolles via ferrata, which looks alarmingly vertical and thoroughly scary. Might have to be done.