Yes, poor weather blew in today with the foehn. Heard of two avalanches. A group of ski tourers triggered a 150cm deep slab on the north side of the Galibier in the Savoie and there was a large sluff reported by a group in the Hautes-Alpes. Reports from a guide based in the Haute-Maurienne who was ski touring says that a layer of surface hoard had formed last week and this was covered by the fresh snow that fell in the border regions. The strong southerly winds have now formed a layer of windslab on north facing slopes. Take care.

We are expecting fresh snow from 1000m over the course of Tuesday/Wednesday, maybe enough to open some more lifts this weekend.

New snow has arrived. The col du Mont Sion above Geneva (Saleve) had snow on it this morning at 8.30am - thats around 800 meters although just a bit of wet stuff that altitude.

lot of snow in the Jura, here’s Les Rasses

Wet snow down to valley floor level today (230 meters in the case of Grenoble). I like how the Meteo France chap can say with a straight face that it is snowiing at 600 meters… take a look out the window man!

No news of the three Italian climbers stuck on the Dome des Ecrins at 3900m since Sunday! I fear the worst. Three bitterly cold nights and a meter of snow at altitude and no contact for 2 days. They were only lightly equipped. A reminder that when the helicopter can’t fly you may as well be on the moon. The rescue workers have tried to reach the men using ski touring gear but the conditions are just too dangerous with continuous avalanches in the high Oisans valleys.

Apparently they’ve now lost contact with the climbers, hopefully it’s just that the mobile batteries have failed.

Going by mobile phone I wouldn’t be surprised. Some info in the local press

http://www.ledauphine.com/hautes-alpes/2012/11/27/dome-des-ecrins-trois-alpinistes-toujours-bloques

Last outing in November. I started from les Vincents (895m) above Theys in the Belledonne with the idea of doing the Grand Rocher. An easy route. There were a lot of fallen trees in the woods due to the new and heavy snow. This meant loads of detours.

Certainly enough snow. 30-40cm of dense base with maybe 10cm of lighter snow on top.

Even under the trees was ok to ski if you avoided any stumps. I didn’t to to the summit. Reports were the snow was less good due to the wind (light northerly today) but maybe it was just the skiers that were less good. Certainly the snow was excellent in the trees.