First trip of the new year was to nearly la Scia in the Belledonne. The north couloir from the col didn’t have enough snow to be skiable (rocks) so I zig-zagged up the face before stopping below the summit due to lack of time.
We had 10cm of snow on the 31st-1st at 2000 meters. It actually rained up to 1500 meters which didn’t please our local ski resort which had iced ski runs on the 1st. However the new year was warm and the lower slopes soon turned slushy. This meant that today we had a bit of a mixed bag with fresh snow (about 5cm at 1500 meters) sitting on a freeze crust. Only when you get above 1800 meters do you find a solid base to ski on.
Conditions on the Scia were a bit of a mixed bag. Hard snow, a thin crust and powder on a firm base in the dips. The powder was cohesive in places and broke away in small slabs but everything seemed pretty solid. Slightly more worrying were the old “sugar snow” and depth hoar. I had to crampon the last 150 meters and in places you could sink down to the rocks 50-100cm below. In places slabs were sitting on this layer.
I took the steep top section section very gingerly, not keen to overload the snowpack but slightly lower down it was good skiing on a firm and solid base.
Friends skiing further north reported 20cm of fresh. Not enough to bury old tracks but good skiing none the less.
In conclusion, things in the northern alps seem pretty stable at the moment with some localized slabs at altitude particuarly on north-west exposures. The thinn snowpack at altitude is worrying with a lot of uncohesive snow about the place on shaded slopes above 2000m. Take care around rock outcrops, base of cliffs, close to ridgelines etc. This will be a danger when we get a big dump. Snow conditions have not been wonderful - the south facing slopes have yielded the best skiing. We are promised a bit of snow on Monday.