I’ve been pretty much pinned down in the valley by the bad weather. Conditions seem great to the south, even the southern part of the Ecrins is getting some sun but here in the Northern Alps it has been wall to wall bad weather. It has also been snowing a lot. Enough for Meteo France to issue an avalanche alert for the holiday weekend.

It has been a month since les 7 Laux shut its doors. A bit hastily and it wasn’t due to lack of snow but due to lack of skiers, in part because of the very poor weather we had this winter (more here: http://pistehors.com/news/forums/viewthread/604/). On Sunday we took a tour up there to see how the snow was doing. It had dumped another 20cm overnight and there was snow down to 1350 meters settling on the road from 1400. I’m glad I still had my winter tires as my Montpelier friends found the going very slippery.

The main Mataru red has snow canons and they began snowmaking way back in mid-October 2009. This was the view from my house down the valley back then and some people even decided to ski tour on this snow (we climbed on foot and it was like a skating rink).

The resort seemed to have been expecting a warm winter because there was around 1 meter of glacial hard ice on the piste topped with 20cm of fresh. Work was supposed to have started on the new Oursiere 6 man chair but despite attacking the snow with pneumatic drills it was still impossible to get any of the gear up to where construction is supposed to start.

We climbed to the Dome d’Oudis were the visibility was nearly zero. At one point I got separated from my friends and had to navigate, bat like, by the sound of their voices. However the fog rapidly cleared and we had great powder skiing down to Prapoutel. The snow ran out about 200 vertical meters before the resort (about 20 minutes walk). We then refitted skins and climbed to the Col de Pouta. Again visibility was limited above 2300 meters and we decided to stay on the “marked and not open” ski runs as snow pillows had formed and there was a lot of snow at altitude. The two other people we met had also made U-turns at similar altitudes for the same reasons.

There was good skiing here above the lac de la Jasse

This snowboarder had climbed on home made approach skis, we spoke to another who was on foot.

Pow!

The return on the Mataru to Pipay had some of the best snow conditions, excellent for mid may with no portage.