It has snowed overnight and reports from this morning were quite encouraging. Less snow than forecast but around 25cm of dense powder. I decided to have a look at the col du Coq routes.

Mike was keen to explore the Beaufortain, the snowiest mountain range in France at the moment with some 3 meters since the 1st Jan at 1800 m.

From the end of the road (Areches, la Chornais) follow a track which crosses a red ski run then zig-zags into the woods.

Honestly the ski conditions are not great in the Isere ranges at the moment.

Both Mike and I had time constrainst and had to be back for lunch.

There was light snow forecast for Wednesday with a return to good weather for Thursday so I made sure to leave the day free.

Afternoon quick ski tour to the Roche Noire. There is a reasonable amount of snow at Pipay, pretty dense. I skied the Antenna couloir with was heavy powder except for a section of harder snow.

The Cross country ski area had opened over the weekend and the pistes had been prepared but was closed today. The zero-iso was around 1700 m on Sunday coupled with rain.

The conditions have considerably improved since the weekend with around 20 to 40 cm of new snow on the start of a base.

We set off to tour around and enjoy the beautiful mountains but finally we just did a return to the Belle Etoile and it was not bad at all.We started at 7am.