I have written, as I did last year, asking the tourist office in Chamonix where I can access avalanche bulletins in English or in a form that can be translated easily. Their first response was to say it was not available on the Internet and directed me to the OHM or office of the high mountain. When pressed further they sent me this reply, which makes me think I have an ally, next stop Meteo France.

“Avalanche Info

That’s perfectly right!
We have already suggested a compete avalanche report in English and are still waiting for it....

Regards,

Veronica
OFFICE de TOURISME de CHAMONIX MONT-BLANC****
85 Place du Triangle de l’Amitié
BP 25
74401 CHAMONIX MONT-BLANC CEDEX
tel : +33 (0)4 50 53 00 24
fax : +3 (0)4 50 53 58 90
Site internet : http://www.chamonix.com
 Avant d’imprimer, merci de penser à l’environnement 
 Please consider the environment before printing 

-----Message d’origine-----
De : Jim Brady
Envoyé : mercredi 5 décembre 2012 12:45
À : Service Information
Objet : Re: Avalanche info

Thanks very much for the information.

Given the numbers of off piste skiers in the area who don’t understand the technical terms in French of avalanche warnings, can I make a suggestion/request that it is considered for the future, it’s available in Switzerland and Austria, even a report that was readily translatable by babelfish would help make your resort much safer.

Thanks again
Jim Brady

On 5 Dec 2012, at 10:53, “Service Information” <info@chamonix.com> wrote:

Hello and thanks for your message.

Unfortunately you can’t find any English report on internet.
I would advise you to contact the High Mountain Office by phone. They are able to help you.
The contact : +33 450 53 22 08

Best regards,

OFFICE de TOURISME de CHAMONIX MONT-BLANC****
85 Place du Triangle de l’Amitié
BP 25
74401 CHAMONIX MONT-BLANC CEDEX
tel : +33 (0)4 50 53 00 24
fax : +3 (0)4 50 53 58 90
Site internet : http://www.chamonix.com P Avant d’imprimer, merci de
penser à l’environnement P P Please consider the environment before
printing P

-----Message d’origine-----
De : Jim Brady Envoyé : mardi 4 décembre
2012 15:50 À : Objet : Avalanche info

Can you help, I can not find any avalanche information in English.
Thank you

Jim Brady”

Top marks for perservering.  Take a look at what the Swiss are doing reported here on pistehors and some comments on my blog http://swissmountainleader.com/wp/2012/11/27/swiss-alps-new-format-for-avalanche-bulletins-201213/. It’s worth looking at the SAIS reports as well, another great format. 

I think what they’ve done is really good.  I think people have got to stop using the numerical level as some sort of go/no-go level and read what the reports are really saying. That means as much as possible pictorially and where it’s not then clear language.  It’s inevitable that means in English as well as French.

I guess if other people follow your lead and write in then it might help?

not the answer but a quick alternative - run this through Google Translate http://mobile.meteofrance.com/montagne/neige/haute-savoie

Ise, I actually use the Swiss reports as in Chamonix they are quite appropriate. My new idea is to get all the various tourist offices to gang up on Meteo France. Might be helpful for people to contact their local office and ask the question. I will then try and get the Chamonix office to see if there is “demand”.

across the road from the tourist info in Cham the guides office print out the meteo france avi bulliten in english.  this is a paid for pro service that is no available online to the public.  Just don’t expect much from the CMB, unless you pay them lots…

yeah the SLF are great with their website.

The French attitude to this is disappointing.  It’s not hard - have a look at what they offer in Catalonia:

http://www.igc.cat/web/en/allaus_butlleti_occ_grafic.php

This is an interesting tool, showing observed avalanche paths:

http://siurana.igc.cat/visorIGC/allaus.jsp

Would an online automatic translation of the meteofrance.com avalanche reports be of any use? i.e. select dept/moutain and view/be able to print an english version that has been translated via google/bing translator?

e.g. http://france.meteofrance.com/france/MONTAGNE?MONTAGNE_PORTLET.path=montagnebulletinneige/DEPT74

Jjjohnnyo, yes that’s the one I use, last year they issued the report as a jpeg photo that couldn’t be easily translated. What is annoying is a proper translation of the Chamonix report is done by the guides office and posted outside but is not on the Internet.

endlessride - 07 December 2012 12:07 AM

not the answer but a quick alternative - run this through Google Translate http://mobile.meteofrance.com/montagne/neige/haute-savoie

Unfortunately this year even the mobile bulletin is an image, or a series of images

http://mobile.meteofrance.fr/montagne/neige/isere

doh!

^ thats annoying, that has only just changed in the last couple of days. had been looking to see where you could get the info, that just made it a little harder :(

I had been looking at the reports by meteofrance, before the format of them changed. There is still a text bulletin, but is only a weekly summary, not sure much use it is now unfortunately.

Here is a link to a automatic translator from the meteofrance website;

http://avreports-jjjohnnyo.rhcloud.com/

It was working for the full bulletin, but with the images they started using this week, it makes it a lot more difficult

(p.s. it is really slow as it was only a prototype for the concept)

It is a PITA and the images are set at a resolution where they cannot be easily OCRed. Chris at skinets spoke with MF who told them they didn’t want people translating the bulletin.

Salzburg, Austria now do their report in English

http://www.lawine.salzburg.at/start.html?lang=en_UK

I think I can understand some hesitation about making the reports more open, it’s right to be concerned about bad translations and, I think much worse, sporadic updates. But I don’t think they’ve really stopped that anyway, the newspapers, websites, twitter etc are full of avalanche warnings when conditions are extreme but they disappear when the press interest moves on or the internet poster gets more interested in posting pictures of kittens.

There’s an obvious danger that people getting their information from those sources are going to interpret avalanche bulletins are being like extreme weather warnings. From which they’d assume there was no cause for alarm if there was no report. And I doubt those sources are going to regularly get alarmed about risk CONSIDERABLE days.

The real solution is they provide the bulletin in English. You’d think an expert witness might point this out to a UK coroner, it’s reasonable for an inquest to ask if all available information was really available.

ise, i agree completely with the sentiment of your comments, and agree the real solution is for avalanche reports to be provided in English from source. 

If the concern truly is about people misinterpreting avalanche reports, then relying on individuals to translate reports themselves, to varying degrees of success, will be more susceptible to error than providing a translated report.

How do you persuade MF to provide reports in more languages if they have been reluctant to do so to date? Maybe by making reports available in other languages would force a reassessment of the current situation?

Ise, I also agree, I can see a good argument for not facilitating poor translations, however not having such an important piece of safety information available readily to non French speakers is not good. MF’s Chamonix office already produces excellent forecasts in English although they were considering closing down the whole office. The cham weather web page has adverts, maybe this could be an option, sponsored reports!  As I said earlier the local guides office in Chamonix already posts English reports, maybe if a little money was available from adverts it could be persuaded to put them up on a web site. This obviously only covers Mont Blanc.