Quite a lot of wind transport over the weekend as this snow sculpted around a tree shows.
On Sunday we opted for a “Safe” route in the Chartreuse forests.
Well not as safe as that. This small slab avalanche 30-40cm deep and about 30 meters across broke on the SW side of the Pravouta mountain even pulling a skier off the ridge
It ran about 150 meters and “rockered” a brand new ski.
Apart from that no other problems. The tracks which lead to the summit that someone had made crossed onto the lee slope just before the summit. With a risk 2 and given the altitude of 1700m we didn’t expect too many problems but the lesson is not to follow tracks if you have doubts about the slope stability. Particuarly when climbing. The slide came to rest in trees where the snow banked up to 1.5 - 2m depth rather than pushing through. Could have been nasty if someone had been buried or hit one of the trees in the slide, that is a lot of snow mass.
Back to the Sommand avalanche. There was another slide in resort in Sunday. a 400 meter slab in the combe de Perret that finished on the Col Perret black.
http://www.visugpx.com/ign/?lat=46.142346&lng=6.5615&marqueur
The PGHM from Chamonix are investigating the Saturday avalanche. It seems the group, including an instructor from the ESF (who was in her free time) was skiing down when the woman, wanting to avoid some small cliffs triggered a small slide taking her over the cliffs.
Some very cold temperatures, in Chambery it was -14C, a balmy +5C above the record of 1985. -25C in the ski resorts, 19C in Bourg St Maurice.