MegèveSki

Thaw, Freeze, Powder, Hmm

The temperature obviously didn't drop until after the piste bashers had been up. The rain and warm temperatures had caused the snow to go soggy, then it was bashed and then it froze... A typical spring situation only it isn't spring. Now take this rock solid frozen surface and add a couple of inches of fresh snow and that's pretty much today...

The surface we were skiing on wasn't the best. Add to that the fact that the winds were pretty strong so there was lots of drifting snow (one minute you're in 6 inches of powder, then next it's 2, or the icy surface below, then back to 4 inches, etc)... The wind meant that several key lifts were closed. The Fontaine chair was closed which made it hard to get to Cote 2000 which made the Rochebrune area seem smaller. The L'Alpette chair was shut which meant everyone had to use the Ravette drag... It was the first real Sunday of the French half term season and the resort was crammed... The lift closures created queues at most of the remaining lifts, even the out of the way ones... It was windy, snowy, there were too many people and the skiing wasn't that great due to the interesting surface conditions...

In summary, as Miche said just before lunch, probably the combination of issues led to probably the worst day's skiing we've had here.

We stopped for lunch early, 12.10, and were very lucky to get a table at Super Megève. Just after we sat down and placed our order all of the people who'd reserved tables arrived and the place was full until we left... Like I said last week, you should book for lunch if you want to eat at one of the full service restaurants, especially in mid Feb...

The skiing in the afternoon was better, we got a run or two in whilst the rest of the world was at lunch. The main problem was that we'd be lured by what looked like nice soft snow only to discover it was a pile of icy lumps that had been smoothed over with new snow... The last run, down the slalom course under Caboche, was pretty good but we decided to have an early afternoon as the conditions just weren't worth the effort. We've got fussy...

The has snow continued all day and it's still snowing so hopefully conditions will improve tomorrow. I think we'll try Praz, should be quieter there and as most of the lifts are drags anyway there's less chance of lift closures should the high winds persist...