Henry's Avalanche Talk, Avalanche awareness, Off piste skiing, snow reports, snow conditions, Val d'Isere, Tignes

Spring Skiing: hoping for HOT DAYS and clear COLD NIGHTS

If you're skiing off-piste this holiday weekend then you should be hoping for the same thing! As hot days and clear cold nights is what it will take to build a nice smooth melt-freeze layer. It is forecast to do just that.

Be careful of slopes above you. There's been a lot of new snow over the last few days in much of the Norther and Southern French Alps. Some big avalanches will be coming down as the slopes warm up - this will be especially true near the Italian border.

See below for a summary on what real spring skiing is (not slush) and how the melt-freeze layer can make for a great day out. 

(click to enlarge)

SPRING SKIING and the Melt-freeze Layer

 Melt-freeze Cycles: Understand the ‘melt-freeze cycles’ and have fun with spring skiing!

Once the new snow melts during the day and then freezes at night (1 melt-freeze cycle) a few times in succession after a snowfall, the top snow layer begins to form a crust that gets deeper and stronger after each melt allows free water to drip down and re-freeze during the night. Any given ‘melt-freeze’ layer becomes stronger with each cycle of melting and freezing due to the deeper penetration of each melt during the day, which then adds more depth to the potential frozen layer at night. If untouched, the top of this frozen layer is smooth and solid first thing in the morning, then it becomes progressively softer as the warm sun and increased temperatures melt it as the day goes by. This process starts on east faces because they get the sun first thing in the morning, then south, then west (north faces at 2500 metres don’t normally get a melt freeze layer on them until late April due to lack of sun).

 For good skiing!

The trick is, after a couple of good melt-freeze cycles have created a solid layer on a slope, you need to get on that slope when the snow surface is smooth and solid with only 2 or 3 cm’s of soft melted snow on top (these are generally slopes that have been in the direct sunlight only for an hour or so e.g. an East facing slope at 9 or 10). Then you need to get off those slopes when the snow surface begins to get too soft and mushy or you’ll start breaking through, which is dangerous for your knees. AND the slope may be unstable due to all the melting - then avalanches can be a problem.

 In sum:

After a solid melt-freeze layer has formed and there has been a good melt during the day, it needs to freeze well the night before; the ideal is a cool clear night with minimums of –2 degrees (or lower) at 2000 m. This will allow the melted parts of the layer to freeze solid again from that altitude up. Then, in the morning, you look to get on the east facing slopes first thing, 9 AM, because the sun rises in the east and therefore those slopes get the sun first. Then you move to south facing slopes, then west. Do this right and get some of the best skiing of the season.

 Aside from a night that is not cool enough, the only thing that gets in the way of great spring skiing is the nasty ruts in the snow that people leave behind because they either ski spring snow slopes (slopes that get lots of sun in spring: E,S and W) before the melt-freeze layer has formed or they ski the slopes too late when they are too soft and mushy.

Avalanche Rating of 4 out of 5

It's snowing so much that the avalanche rating has gone up to 4 from the Northern French Alps: in Savoie down the Italian border to the Southern French Alps: Hautes-Alpes, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence even as far down the Alpes Maritime. That's almost as far as Nice! Even in Corisca the rating is 3 out of 5... See the avalanche forecast from Météo France you can translate these forecasts by copying and pasting the text into Google Translate!

And it's snowing down pretty low too - photo below is at 1850 m in Val d'Isère. I'll be skiing off piste as usual, but will be very careful over the next couple of days.

Season coming to an end...

..and many of you are either sitting in your green gardens, sailing, playing golf, tennis or football, but for those of you who live out here, are skiing out here or just enjoy knowing what's going on in the off-piste in the region, Wayne Watson from Alpine Experience, gives a great description of his morning and the snow conditions off piste in the Espace Killy at the moment as more snow comes in and winter returns once again:

Wow, what a fabulous morning! It had to be some of the best spring snow, without the sun, that I can remember in quite some time. Only a centimetre or two of fresh snow fell overnight, but it was enough for the new snow to ‘eat into’ the surface layer and soften it to a nice texture without the warmth of the sun being needed to melt the frozen surface. It was +5C at 8AM with grey skies and a foehn wind of up to 80kph blowing it didn’t look like it was going to be such a good ski, but once on the snow I knew we were in for a good day. We started out with an excellent Alti-port/Lavachet, followed by a good Cocaine Sud, then a stunning Cocaine Nord, and then a superb Lavachet but from the top through the avalanche barriers. From there we skied a funky Familial to the bottom arriving around 1:20PM to finish off Jean R’s 93rd and last morning of a terrific season. We’ll miss his company and his excellent photographic input to the website. Merci beaucoup Jean! 

And here's a photo from Jean Ribart of Wayne skiing some of the nice spring snow described above:

More snow for Sunday

I know most of you aren't going to be out skiing in the mountains again until next season, but for those of you who are either out here now or will be soon, here is a quick update on what's happening and what's going to be happening in the Northern French Alps!

The conditions have been pretty good for spring skiing over the last few days with clear, cold/freezing nights down to 2000 metres following hot melting days. The off-piste has been kept in pretty good conditions (i.e. smooth spring snow slopes) since there haven't been too many people around to trash the snow by skiing these slopes too late and leaving ruts behind (for an understanding of what makes nice smooth spring snow condtions see my update on the melt-freeze layer on April 1 ) Otherwise, it should look like this when you ski it:

For the next few days: tomorrow is supposed to be clear in the morning then windy (out of S,SW), warm (max of 9° at 2000) and cloudy then snow showers in the evening. then Sunday is supposed to bring in snow especially around the Italian border (surprise!). Total snow 25 cm at 2500 m above 2000 m then more snow Sunday night as the winds move to westerly and the rain snow limit moves down below 2000 metres (another possible 40 cm along the border during the night!) and things begin to get cooler than average for the season. Clearing on Thursday. Each recent snowstorm has been followed by quite a bit of instability in certain areas especially on the lee side of ridges, passes and peaks. For more information on that see the Météo France avalanche forecast (you can always translate it on Google).

These updates will probably become less frequent as the season comes to a close and many of you are off doing other things..., but thanks for your interest during the season and please stay tuned for general HAT updates and other interesting things that we get up to during the off-season! All the best, Henry

Some Tour Images (22-23 april)

The images below are from the tour we did from the Refuge des Fond des Fours to the Refuge de Femma via the Col du Pisset and from the Femma to Val d'Isère via the Balme de l'Ours:

Too Much Snow!

Started the day in Fornet, but it was still overcast, still snowing and there was TOO much snow (a total of well over 50-60 cm has fallen in the last 24 hrs there); none of the lifts above the cable car were open! So I went to Tignes where there was less snow (only 30-40 cm of fresh snow). Very nice especially on slopes that are not subjected to the warmth of the sun during the odd clearing spell. See photo below - I took the photo with my phone so the quality isn't that great, but it gives you a good idea of the conditions! 

One unfortunate thing today: a large group of French students from one of the Engineering Universities, 'ARTS et METIER', set off a couple small slabs above us as we were getting some nice turns in between the Face (in Tignes) and the Rimaye just down from the Vanoise chairlift in the Grande Motte Secteur. The slabs weren't huge but enough to knock Clive and Graham over. The fact that these young people had no comment other than, 'calmez vous', wound me up so much that it almost came to blows. Tignes (and Henry's Avalanche Talk) does a great job in trying to educate their clientele about off-piste safety and avalanches. Too bad the 'educated' are so ignorant and unwilling to learn how to have fun and be safe in the mountains... click here to get back to the HAT web site

Looks like clearing for tomorrow morning then another bit of snow in the afternoon/evening then clear weather for Weds, Thurs and Fri. So spring conditions will probably returning soon!

More Snow!

Powder in Fornet, Val d'Isère this morning - 25 cm. Forecast is for another 15 cm tomorrow above 2000 m

Snowing very hard on Fornet Glacier - didn't even need to go off-piste to get 25 cm of fresh snow first thing this morning. More is supposed to come tonight (it was clearing a bit and getting warm by the afternoon which may leave a sun crust on West and South slopes for tomorrow - virtually no wind though)

...but it did snow down to 1850 m though it was getting warm by mid-day (photo below). 

It didn't really freeze last night though and the new snow layer insulated the lower/older snowpack which means that the whole snowpack is pretty much unconsolidated. so I'm going to be careful tomorrow of triggering a slab on anything steep... see the Météo France Avalanche Forecast Bulletin for more details (if you don't speak French, you can always put it into Google Translations!

I think this snow is pretty localised to the Italian border up through the Northern French Alps... snowing a bit elsewhere. Anyone else have any updates please add in as a comment! Thanks- Have fun, be Safe. Henry

Back to Spring

I decided to go for off piste Spring today due to the cold temps last night as the option of powder seemed limited due to such a warm day yesterday. It was delicate in places, but South and West held up well above 2300 m (see my explantation on spring skiing and the melt-freeze layer on April 1 to understand that lingo: http://www.getoffpiste.com/2009/04/big-snow-no-joke.html

Here's Emma with a smile on her face today (photos off-piste in Belvarde and Solaise, Val d'Isère)

Kids 'n Pow

We had some nice new snow today demonstrated by Gabby, Maddy and Aidan Pinn (in the Mohawk) skiing off-piste in Fornet, Val d'Isère. East and North worked, but west had been hit by yesterdays late day sun (looks like spring again for tomorrow unless you go high and North or nothing if the clouds come in!):

Back to Winter and Powder

Skied powder all morning in Fornet, Val d'Isère. Snow limit down well below the town at 1850 m. See photo below of Moris Pub taken today at 1.30 pm as they were preparing their beach party for tonight!