I figured it was time to see what kind of damange the tropical rain and foehn had done to the snowpack so inbetween dropping my son of for school and picking him up for lunch I headed for the Col du Coq. The initial plan was to look at the Dent de Crolles or Dome de Pravouta but as you can see the Dent was pretty much a no-go
and the east face of the Pravouta was not really better.
The Bec Charvet was better, the north-east slopes were taking the sun at 9am. This summit is at the top of the defunct Col du Coq ski resort. If someone could have flicked a switch you’d be able to ski here, plenty of snow on the slopes and under the lifts. Such a shame it closed down in 1995 - snow cover was never a problem and you could ski here from December to April.
The east face of the Charmant Som was bare, we skied here on exactly the same day last year
to give you a comparison, and March last year wasn’t great either.
The west face of the Pravouta is probably still skiable.
So things are pretty much over below 1400 meters. The snow was transformed, spring like where the sun had hit, hard elsewhere, but the snowpack has taken in a lot of water and will need some cold temperatures to consolidate fully.
If you are going anywhere, go high.
