It’s snowing heavily and has been for the last 12 hours… it’s set to continue over night, too, so get an early night kids because it’s an early start tomorrow!

If you’re looking for good pistes…well.. just get outside!

Right-o! I’m back from London and it’s as SUNNY!! as a powerfully bright hyperbole!

It doesn’t look like it’s snowed for a while, and the dominant high pressure that’s sitting over us at the moment means that it’s not going to for a few more days yet either, which is a pity.

That said the snowpack is great and the pistes are in great condition, so it would *seem* that all is good in the world. But driving up from the valley (ooh, I must do a post on the train sometime – it’s the best invention since steam) the lifts didn’t seem to be working, and there were queues at the bottom. I picked up a hitchhiking ski instructor (rather pretty, too, I thought) who explained that the buses and lifts were starting late since the operators had gone on strike for a few hours to draw attention to their low pay.

The lifts opened about 15 mins later (so I guess there was about 1h protest), so we’re back in the game. But remember they’re good people who help us all, whilst standing out in the cold all day, so be friendly with and smile at the lifties! I’d also recommend high fiving a piste basherer, because they have skills and insomnia and deserve our love.

After some very dodgy Föhn winds warming up the pistes, and then a few days of rain up to 2100m things were looking quite depressing.

Fortunately the weekend came to the rescue, and the snow started on Friday night, continued all of Saturday, and petered out on Saturday night, leaving a nice clear sky to bring on a bit of a chill.

Sunday has been bright sun and barely a cloud in the sky, and the snow is soft and fluffy. It’s amazing how quickly it gets tracked out these days, though.

Piste recommendations: pretty much anywhere is great and has good coverage. There’s some icy patches by the afternoon as the snow is brushed away, but nothing to worry about.

Off piste: head for the peripheries. Mont de la Guerre, off the Roche de Mio down to Les Bauches, and off the top of the Arpete down to Les Bois are all great. I suspect that off the Grand Rochette straight over down to Champagny is also lovely, but that’s more prone to sliding and with today’s avalanche risk of 4/5 exercise some caution. Oooh tell you what – I’ve not tried this this week since the g/f is here – but Cretes down to Coqs (black run, mostly unpisted) off towards Montalbert from Plagne Centre will be storming. Go give that a crack!

Well it started snowing heavily on Saturday night, giving us about 8 inches of fresh above 2000m, but the warm Föhn winds from the south, which had been bringing warm air since Friday, meant that when it fell, it fell wet and heavy.

I did a few runs yesterday taking in some off piste, but the avalanche risk has gone way up: a quick test slipped the second I cut away the back, and on the lower pistes the wet snow made it more like slow surfing.

Higher up is better, of course, but many of the high lifts were closed yesterday due to the avalanche risk.

This morning (Monday) they’ve been blasting since early. The temperature hasn’t fallen much, which means that the roads are slushy not slippery, and the falling snow occasionally turns to rain where I am at 2000m.

There’s heavy cloud so this looks set to continue for a few hours yet.  There’s sunshine forecast for tomorrow though, and a clear night tonight, so hopefully it’ll freeze up, and the pisteurs will work their nocturnal magic.

Well the snow we had today didn’t count for much – basically a bit of cosmetic retouching and giving the piste bashers some extra to play with.

However there’s still plenty of snow on the pistes, and even fresh tracks to be found off-piste if you know where to look: off the Bellecote glacier, off the top of Salla and down to Plan Bois, and the top of Mont de la Guerre are all good. Oh, and dropping off to the right (by the steep cliff / falling man signs…!) from the Roche de Mio.

Fingers x’d for more snow tomorrow.

Compare these two forecasts for the same place (La Plagne) for the same date:

Source J2Ski

Source Snow-Forecast

I’m disappointed to report that not only did it not snow yesterday, but it’s not snowing today, either. It is cloudy, though, but not dense snow clouds. So both of these sites are wrong, and both specialise in snow forecasts…

Update 2pm: Ok I take it back. It’s just started snowing.

Update 6pm: Nope. The question still stands. It stopped snowing about 2 hours ago.

Update 9pm (how sad am I, really?): Snow-Forecast have updated their site with an apology: “INFORMATION: Issued Jan 5 2008 16:00 GMT – There was a serious error in the forecast on Saturday morning because north and south were swapped in the input model.” So Snow-Forecast wins.