The Mountain Echo

This season’s trend of cloudy weather, wind and light snow with the occasional clearing spell for a few hours or a few days continued this past week. The result was more great skiing simply because the old tracks always seemed to be covered up by the frequent snow showers. This coming week looks like more of the same: cold cloudy weather for Saturday and Sunday with maybe some snow showers, a bit clearer on Monday and then sunny and slightly warmer for mid-week

Snow Quality and Stability
“I’ve been talking about a weak layer that is still persistent on North’ish facing slopes above 2200 metres, and it is still there”. This is what I’ve been saying for the past few weeks; true we haven’t had really big cycles of large avalanches, perhaps because the quantities of new snowfalls during any given snow-storm have not been that big in much of the Northern French Alps. However there has been accidental avalanche activity that can’t be neglected. The accidental avalanche in the Combe de Signal a.k.a. Sunny Bowl in Val d’Isère last Monday, is a good example of how, with a 40 cm of new snow over a few days, a well traveled area can suddenly be triggered and take 3-5 skiers down the slope with it (see photos on blog entry for March 1 on www.getoffpiste.com). This avalanche fit the forecast in the avalanche bulletin and the definition of the danger rating for the day – which was a 3.

Tips for this coming week
a) When there’s fresh snow on a steep slope, there’s always some risk that should never be marginalized in the minds of the people on that slope… just in case there is an ‘unlucky’ avalanche.
b) Well traveled off piste runs are fairly well packed down by in-resort skier traffic now, but once you venture even a little way from where people have been skiing over the last couple months, it’s a much less stable situation. Plus you never know… So keep up-to-date on the snow conditions and stability by visiting our blog on www.getoffpiste.com and go to the avalanche forecast translation in the left column, OR if you can read French, on: www.meteo-france.com >Montagne>Bulletins Avalanches.

This past week’s weather can be summarized as unpredictable even for the weather service forecasts. The key was that you could get very good skiing if you got out there even when it looked bad and you’re thinking, “this is not going to be a very good day’s skiing!”. When people asked me if the skiing was going to be good the following day, I should have just said yes, yes and yes. Because there was enough new snowfall in each little storm that when the sun came out from behind the clouds for the odd brief spell, the skiing was great! Even when you couldn’t see much, the snow was very nice a lot of the time (unless you were on a steep south facing slope and dealing with the old crust underneath). The only problem was that you never really new when the snow-showers would come or if the sun would poke through or not.. and that’s why you just had to be out there in order to be ‘lucky’ enough to get the visibility to enjoy the fresh snow.

Snow Quality and Stability
I’ve been talking about a weak layer that is still persistent on North’ish facing slopes above 2200 metres, and it is still there. Well traveled off piste runs in-resort are fairly well packed down by skier traffic now, but once you venture even a little way from where people have been skiing over the last couple months, it’s a much less stable situation. Plus you never know- so keep that weak layer (and what’s on top) in mind. You can keep up-to-date on this by visiting our blog on www.getoffpiste.com and looking for the avalanche forecast translation in the left column or if you can read French on: www.meteo-france.com >Montagne>Bulletins Avalanches.

I should point out that I have released a few small surface slabs of fresh snow on fairly steep convexities this past week. They were small (but big enough to knock you off your feet) because we didn’t have big accumulations when I set them off (which was on Wednesday). Remember that bigger accumulations will mean bigger slab potential! .. which brings us to the Tips for the week.

Tips for this coming week
This coming week looks like the same thing as last week in terms of weather: a series of snow storms coming through at some time or another (at least for the beginning of the week). So my advice is to just get out there and you’ll be lucky with the weather when it clears for a moment! And yes, I will reinforce my approach to skiing every fresh powder day: I start on low angle slopes and take into consideration everything that we present in our talks – again a summary is on my blog entry of 14 January on www.getoffpiste.com

Have Fun and Be Safe!

Most of the nice snow this past week (before Thursday) could be found if you were willing to walk a bit and/or if you new where to find some untouched snow and squeeze a few turns in-between older tracks after lots of traversing! The best quality snow has been on North’ish facing slopes as the South facing slopes have been ‘sun affected’ and crusty despite the very cold temperatures of earlier this past week. The predicted snow for this coming week will make it better and better!

Snow Quality and Stability
Several accidental avalanches were reported through mid week this past week (before it started snowing) by the Météo France avalanche forecasting services in parts of the Northern French Alps on East, North and West slopes above 1800 metres (no one was seriously hurt). These reports are not surprising to me as there is a very weak layer of snow that I keep coming across especially where the good snow is: on East, North, West slopes above 1800 metres. Any new snow that has accumulated since Thursday in these areas (including snow blown in by the wind) will easily create new instability specially
on steep slopes. You can keep up-to-date on this by visiting our blog on www.getoffpiste.com or if you can read French on www.meteo-france.com > Montagne> Bulletins Avalanches.

Tips for this coming week
There are a couple very weak layers on North’ish facing slopes and very shaded slopes due to the periods of cold temperatures that we have experienced this season. This weak layer has not been much of a problem recently due to relatively small amounts of snow in each snowstorm that we’ve had over the last few weeks… but I’m keeping an eye on this instability since the best skiing is in the very places where the snowpack seems the weakest… With the new snow, I’m therefore starting on low angle slopes and taking into consideration everything that we present in our talks – a summary is on my blog entry of 14 January on www.getoffpiste.com

Have Fun and Be Safe!