Les Deux Alpes Snow Report
Latest Snow Conditions

2 Alpes Snow Report: 15th April 2013

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Les Deux Alpes - 2013 from Ruud Hofman on Vimeo.

Latest conditions

Number of pistes open	89
Date of last snowfall
Depth of snow on upper slopes	210cm
Depth of snow on lower slopes	120cm
Highest temperature	-13 °C
cm

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Recent grotty weather cleared up on Saturday afternoon, with the last of the cloud departing rather reluctantly around lunchtime and leaving us with the chance to make a few more fresh lines before everything deteriorated into sticky slush.

I spent the morning playing hide and seek with the cloud, and managed to sneak in a few runs in the fresh down the Bellecombe and along the side of Lac Noir during the odd sunny period. Friday night’s snow had fallen at a noticeably higher temperature than the previous dump a few days earlier and couldn’t really be described as actual powder, but it was very rideable nonetheless and lots of fun.

I was considering the off piste run under the Glaciers chair again, having done it the previous morning and found the upper parts to be fabulous even if the gully at the bottom was melting and getting a bit heavy, but I didn’t fancy it in the morning’s unreliable visibility, and by the time things cleared in the afternoon it looked as though the lower sections were likely to have turned into glue, so I gave it a miss.

Yesterday turned up bright and sunny with not a trace of cloud, so I sacked off the jacket and went up in just a hoody, a wise move because it was frankly roasting all the way to the top and beyond. At 11am the runs on the glacier and down to the Signal chair were already softening up, and my habitual detour via Roche Mantel turned out to be a bad move because it was like boarding through wallpaper paste.

In various sheltered corners the pistes were holding up well, but wherever the sun got to it the new snow was rapidly collapsing into a sticky mess, which made everything very hard work. This will get easier over the next day or two as the snow melts down a but further and becomes more uniformly waterlogged, so we get a consistent surface and the sticky patches disappear. The downside will be icy pistes in the morning, so it’s worth having a lie-in and a lazy breakfast.

With this much snow and plenty of spring sunshine I’d usually recommend starting on the Vallee Blanche when the sun hits it in the morning and starts to soften it up, but they closed it at the weekend. This is the first time since I’ve been here that they haven’t made efforts to keep that side open until the end of the season, and it’s a bit rubbish if you ask me, especially since the reduced area is (needless to say) not accompanied by any corresponding reduction in the ticket price.

By mid afternoon I started to get a bit tired of the glue-surfing experience, so I dropped down to Cretes and the Valentin, where everything had melted enough to give us a consistent slushy layer. Valentin was deserted, and probably just a bit too slushy if we’re being picky, but very nice nonetheless. The trip across the Bes des Pistes to the Diable end was wet but not sticky, and it was so hot I could comfortably have been out there in a T-shirt.

Irritatingly, it’s forecast to get cold again at the end of the week, and even snow on us a bit. Normally I wouldn’t complain about this, but it has been a long cold winter and frankly we’re all pretty much over it by now. We want sun and spring snow and basking on terraces with cold beers. Bring on the spring!

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