After 3 day of rain there was a covering of snow down to 2000 meters on the Belledonne mountains above Grenoble today. The weather has turned much colder with day temperatures reaching just 16C on Saturday.

An British climber has died of hypothermia on the dôme du Goûter in the Mont Blanc massive after spending two nights trapped in a snow cave. He had become disorientated. His companion, also British, survived. They had left the refuge Gonella, on the Italian side of the mountain, on Tueday morning at dawn. They made it to the summit of the Gouter but got lost in thick cloud with winds gusting to 50mph and spent the night in a snow cave at 4000meters. They alerted the rescue services on Wednesday morning but could not give their exact location. A team who set out from the Gouter refuge was unable to find them. On Thursday the surviving climber met rescue workers on the descent and informed them of the death of his partner.

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It appears the stricken climber was a very popular Scottish runner and climber Simon Triger. Many sympathies to his friends and family. The weather has been truly awful. It seems the rescue team from the Gouter got bogged down in fresh snow which gives an idea of the conditions.

Photo from the Dauphine of Serre Chevalier

http://www.ledauphine.com/photo-@/index.jspz?photo=52853

15cm fell in the mountains around Briancon

The zero isotherm is around 1800 meters at the moment. The rain has let off a bit in the valleys but there is light snow falling to around 1600 meters in the French Alps. Swiss weather forecasters are expecting 70-100cm in central Switzerland over the next couple of days, at least at altitude.

There’s been around 30cm of snow in the French alps at 2200 meters but it has also been warm with the zero isotherm getting up to 2300 meters today. We’ve seen snow down 900m on the Jura at lunchtime. Best snow in France seems to be in the Pyrenees which has had close to half a meter at 2100 meters.

Winter is on in AK.  It was -13 walking to work this morning.  Great snow in the Talkeetnas, still pretty thin in the western Chugach, which our current high pressure system isn’t helping with.

Following 30cm of fresh snow the road passes of the Galibier, Agnel, de la Bonnette, d’Allos and de la Cayolle are now closed for the winter. The Gorges d’Arly are closed for work until the 12th of December.

In the Savoie the col de la croix de Fer, Glandon, Madeleine, Iseran are also closed. All other cols, including the Roseland and Petit St Bernard, are still open.

I will post some photos later from the Jura from this morning. The Isere seems to have the best of the snow. Les 7 Laux are claiming 60-80cm with one lift open in the resort! This beats their previous record of the 17th November by over two weeks.

Here are some photos from yesterday.

The Radar station on top of la Dole

Summit of the ski runs of la Faucille - Jura. About 1550 meters.

Panoramic view of the mountains of the Haute-Savoie and Swiss Valais with lake Geneva in the middle

The snow had drifted to quite some depth under the influence of the south-east winds.

Not great news for the weekend. The zero isotherm is up around 2000 meters in the Isere. It is colder further north but the Zero isotherm is expected to reach 3000 meters over the weekend. So the snow, at least at lower altitudes, will be short lived and it will probably be pretty rotten higher up.

There was some avalanche activity yesterday. With winds up to 80km/h a lot of snow was moved around yesterday. For example 70cm had fallen on the Ecrins at 3000 meters but this had largely been stripped from the ridges and summits over the course of the day. Expect some quite big slabs to now be in place on north sector slopes. I would give the avalanche risk as 3 today with some snow sluffs expected later as the rain overloads the fresh snow.

A few nice trips this weekend:-

col de Mont Cenis

http://www.skitour.fr/sorties/pointe-du-lamet,14128.html#sortie

and col du Galibier

http://la-haut.over-blog.com/article-24550124-6.html

conclusion, snow coming in from Italy left some good conditions along the frontier.

I’ve visited a couple of areas this weekend. Saturday I was up in Chamrousse but just for sledging with my son. There was about 10-20cm of snow at 1750 meters (le Recoin). A few ski tourers heading for the “Croix” but it didn’t but rocks were not far from the surface.

A friend toured to the Pic de Herpie in Alpe d’Huez on Thursday. She skied from the carpark at 1800 but there was no real base below 2500 meters. Conditions were fresh powder.

On Sunday we climbed to the col du Lauteret (2050m). The snow on the south faces is disappearing fast below 2300m. On north faces there was snow at la Grave at 1450m and even a covering on the east facing runs of le Chazelet at 1800m. We toured to the west summit of the Combneynot, a steep north facing slope. The snow was very variable. There were a lot of rocks below 2300m but easy to avoid if you stayed in the center of the little valleys lower down the hill. Higher up there was good cover to summit. The snow was a mixture of crud (a lot of people have skied this slope over the weekend), powder with pockets of crust, both skiable and breakable. A regular pot-pourri of all the conditions you don’t like to encounter on a ski tour. The best conditions were on north-north-east facing slopes. Luc also kicked off a small sluff below the summit, probably accumulated snow from the southernly foehn episode that was poorly bonded to the base. I’ll post pictures and a film later.

Here’s the video from yesterday:-

http://vimeo.com/2267138

There was about 30cm of snow overnight with snow falling down to 600 meters in the Haute-Savoie. However all this was accompanied by very strong winds so that some ridgelines are almost bare of snow with large accumulation in place on lee slopes. I would have thought the avalanche risk was high at altitude today.

we still calling this autumn?

yesterday in Zinal, some useful snowfall :