Courchevel Snow Report: 8th January 2012

Well it did stop snowing here in Courchevel….eventually….on Saturday evening and now the hard work has begun to dig out all the stuff that doesn’t work well with a couple of metres of snow on top. Like cars, chairlifts, roads, satellite dishes, car parks etc. etc..

The weather was reasonably clear first thing this morning and I had great expectations of a terrific day on the mountain but things went from bad to worse in the first 45minutes. First of all the Praz bubble from Le Praz to 1850 has broken down for the second day in a row so the old Fôret bubble has had to bear the strain of getting people up the mountain. At the top of Fôret there are (usually) two choices. Get on the Crêtes chair or ski down to the Bouc Blanc area and get on the Dou des Lanches chair. I could see that both were closed. A third alternative then became obvious. A short ski over towards 1850 then down Dou du Midi (the middle ‘Dou’ – although quite what a ‘Dou’ is I have no idea) which is the red run under the new Plantrey chair. This was closed too I discovered when I got there so I skied through the trees, across the mountain to the red run called Petit Dou (middle Dou’s little brother I suppose), which runs down into 1850 alongside the giant slalom race track.

This was what is known as ‘a bad idea’. Petit Dou is quite steep and it hadn’t been pisted for a couple of weeks. It was covered in 60cms of chopped up loose crud which was extremely hard work. I took the Verdons bubble from 1850 for the simple reason that it was the only lift running. I could see that Biollay was closed as I went over the top of it in the bubble so I spent some time in the Altiport area as the 6 man Pralong chair was working at least. All of the lifts with access to higher levels of Courchevel were closed (Vizelle, Suisses, Marmottes, Creux Noirs, Chanrossa) and 3 Valley links were also all closed. The clouds rolled in this afternoon filling up the valleys all the way up to 2300metres with a mer de nuage (sea of clouds) so having been defeated at every turn, I did the only decent thing possible in the circumstances and retired hurt to my chalet via the skibus from 1850 to Le Praz.

I called the lift company this afternoon to find out what the problems were today and it’s a mixture of issues. A lot of digging out is taking place which is delaying lift openings (Crêtes, Coqs, Plantrey); there are some technical issues which they hope to fix by tomorrow (Praz, Biollay); safety is a concern with this much snow and so the upper runs will only be re-opened once they have been declared safe from avalanche and to that end, Courchevel was like a war zone this morning with loud, controlled explosions being set off to trigger avalanches which would pose a potential danger if they happened in an uncontrolled fashion with people below.

I expect most lifts to be open tomorrow with the exception of Chanrossa & Creux Noirs (for safety reasons) and perhaps Praz (for mechanical reasons). The good news is that the resort is so quiet that there were no queues today on any of the few lifts that did open. On piste snow depth is 2.71 metres (almost 9 feet) at the top of Saulire and the weather forecast is for blue sky and bright sunshine starting tomorrow and staying with us all week.

YES!!!