Courchevel Snow Report: 29th January 2012

Talking of weather, I made the mistake of believing the weather forecast this morning, in English on one of the radio stations. It said that it would be -11°c with a 20 mph cold easterly wind at the top (…which was roughly right but -8°c is nearer – see photo); that it would snow in the morning (…never saw a single falling snowflake all day); that visibility would be ‘white out conditions’ (…the light was a bit flat for the first hour but by mid-morning visibility was excellent and stayed that way all day).

Due to this impending inclement weather, I got kitted out with the full monty of bad weather gear this morning. 2 layers of thermals, neckwarmer, H2 Helmet with bright goggles to help me see in the whiteout. The helmet was worn as it keeps my ears warm when it’s very cold with strong winds and the goggles basically because open glasses are useless in snow and you need the brightest amber/yellow lens to see in a whiteout.

Now I hate wearing goggles and a helmet. I can’t hear properly and my awareness is restricted with the loss of the peripheral vision. Consequently it’s difficult to avoid people overtaking you too closely as you just don’t see or hear them (…even though it is one of the primary rules of skiing that the uphill skier (or boarder) is responsible for ensuring there are no collisions). Quite how people ski/ board with all this AND iPod headphones rammed in the ear to complete the total sensory deprivation, I just don’t know.

We’ve had around 15 cms of fresh snow during the past few days including about 6cms last night so all of the pistes were wonderful with a little light powder covering the corduroy. Suisses was the piste du jour (again!) so it had to done. Creux was great fun from the top all the way down to Prameruel. You can see on one of the photos that the first piste marker on the right has a 26 on it. These markers are placed every 100 metres counting down to the end of the piste. So Creux is one of the longer runs at 2600 metres or 2.6 kms. The other point to notice is the thinner poles without a marker disc on top which are every 20 metres or so down each side of the piste. They are the colour of the run’s difficulty (Black, red, blue or green). Those on the left on the way down the piste are the same colour all the way to the top of the pole but those on the right of the piste have a 20cm band of day-glow orange at the top.

So if you are in a white-out and can’t see or are a bit lost, leave all poles with orange stripes on your right and those that are all the same colour on your left. That way you’ll stay safe and remain on piste (…you may still be lost but that’s a different problem).

The weather forecast shows overcast conditions for the first three days next week with occasional, very light snowfalls and much, much colder than we’ve had so far this winter. Looks like that helmet is going to get more use than normal this week!

Back on Tuesday…