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.

Some late season snow meant that it was possible to tour from Chamrousse. I'd been skiing in resort a week before and it was surprising how much the snow had melted.

As part of a tour to the Petit Van I decided to take in the Via Ferrata couloir rather than ski the Lac Roberts ski slope.

From the Croix de Chamrousse (summit of ski runs) follow the ski slopes east to the entrance of the Casse Rousse couloir (black piste).

From the Recoin (Chamrousse 1650m) climb to the top of the ski pistes (Croix de Chamrousse). You can generally avoid most of the ski open ski runs. Descend the run to the lac Robert.

With temperatures hitting 26C today, in the valley, it almost seems like summer has arrived. However we're expecting snow at 1500 meters this weekend with a brutal drop in temperatures.