Perfect Day in Sancy?

Think again! Actually the conditions are excellent would you like to improve your abilities to ski on all varieties of ice

It will probably stay like this for a few days…

On Saturday I was on the Rochers de Chalves in the Chartreuse. A speed ascent… 1130 meters in 2 hours with quite a lot of horizontal as I had a lunch date with my wife at 12am in Grenoble (at the wonderful Toneau de Diogene). Starting from Pomarey just 14km from Grenoble and at just 730m the road was a ski piste. At around 850m I left the road for the Tenaison trail. The track had been made by snowshoers and I crossed a couple of fit looking young ladies. There was a brief stoney section which I would take my skis off for on the descent then a traverse of the Grand Champ (there is a wooden refuge here but it looks very cold) then onto the steeper wooded slopes of the Chalves.

The snow was crusty on the south-east section. The trail climbs through cliffs, I’d prospected the route with Anny a couple of summers back and given the dense woodland (just skiable) and crust I wanted an alternative for the descent. At 1500m the snowshoe track disappeared to be replaced on the upper slopes of the Chalves by a vague ski trail, someone had skied down to the treeline before climbing back up, they had probably climbed from the Grande Sure side.

Snow was powder on the upper east facing slopes but you had to aim for the surface that looked like a golf ball (neige tassee), then into the trees and I took a change to descend towards the north-east. The map showed some large cliffs but with the chance of a passage via the vallon de Rochasse. The woodland was sparse and skiable with powder. Lower down I traversed under the cliffs, a bit sketchy as I was skiing on 50 degrees flagstones with 10-20cm of snow at one point - the base between the stone and snow was water and I was worried about the whole snowpack sliding down the mountain. The advantage with this traverse was that it took me to another shaded gully I’d spotted on the climb which lead into the top part of the Grand Champ. Then a short ski down through the forest to reach the Tenaison road and just half an hour late for my lunch date.

The route was much better than I’d imagined in the summer when the woodland is overgrown. The only black spot - I lost my camera on the climb.

Today (Sunday) we were in St Hilaire de Touvet. A snowstorm with fresh powder on the piste. It snowed down to 600m with snow sticking from 800m. Probably about 5-10cm of fresh at high elevations.

(so now I’m going to have to figure out where the “Rochers de Chalves” are)

Tbe new snow on Sunday worked out well for us on Monday.
Georges and I went exploring in the north Beaufortain.
Seemed about 10-20cm around 1800-2200m altitude. Especially nice was that it seemed largely unaffected by wind, and at that altitude it was powdery on all aspects, not just northerly.

Problem was we couldn’t see anything in the mist above 1800m, so we ended up skiing back down close to our uptrack.

Hope tomorrow they get the visibility problem solved.

Ken

Some nice powder turns in the north Vanoise today on NW slopes around 1800-2400m. A bit “creamy”, but definitely fun. Deep enough so we weren’t hitting any underlying crust layer—I guess on these mid-level NW slopes the old snow held fairly soft, and the new powder freshened it up nicely.

What worked less well was higher near the ridgetops and peaks. The soft new powder snow was over a hard icy layer (from previous wind?)—and the new snow wasn’t deep enough, not more than 10cm on those higher slopes. Still pretty skiable, but not a lot of fun. Fortunately the new snow did not come in with a lot of wind. I didn’t see any signs of slab formation on the slopes we climbed or skied.

I did trigger a surface sluff on a NW slope at least 35 degrees. It slid slowly for 50 meters or so, until the slope angle went to less than 35. Didn’t trigger anything deeper or bigger.

We’re heading out again tomorrow for more of that 1800-2400m snowpack - (what takes some cleverness, or hard work, is getting to the stuff that doesn’t have lots of old tracks in it).

Ken

A rapid bit of snow beta. We’ve been touring for the last couple of days. The weather is distinctly spring like with soggy, even transformed snow on south facing slopes angled at around 20-40 degrees. Beware of sluff avalanches later in the day. There was a big slide at Auron yesterday in the Southern Alps. We found a mix of windblown, crust and heavy powder on west to north - west slopes. Aim for sheltered bowls in the north sector if you are still looking for powder although we saw some great tracks on the south-west Ambrevetta in the Aravis yesterday.