MegèveSki

The browns of Mont d'Arbois

Miche and I skied with Mark this morning whilst Michelle had a lesson with Lucy. We started over on Rochrbrune at around 10ish and made our way to the Mont d'Arbois base area for 11. Even at 10 the snow was soft and slushy, the temperatures have been above 0'C overnight for several days now and the sun during the day is really punishing the slopes...

We stopped for a coffee whilst waiting for Michelle's lesson to start and then headed up to the top of Mont d'Arbois and skied down the blue towards the Betex bubble and then on to the base of the Mont Rossets chair. The snow is in a bad way, very soft and very slow. There are large brown patches on Les Pylones and the Belle d'Arbois run looks like it should be closed there's so much brown on it. Looking across at Jaillet the main run down under the bubble is in a very bad way but people are still skiing it and the steep face of the red down from the Christomet chair looks awful. Lots of brown everywhere, I wonder if we'll be blessed with some late season snow in a week or two, I wonder if it'll come before it's too late...

We took the chair up and then skied down again to the Betex bubble; it was too soft down there so we headed over towards Mt Joux. The snow at the top of the Mt Joux chair was very choppy and very slushy; we came down slowly and dropped down to the Ideal chair.

I did a run down the off-piste stuff under the Ideal chair whilst the others headed for Les Mandarines for lunch; the snow under the chair was crap, heavy crud with a thin crust, so I cut back onto the piste about half way down and then headed for lunch.

We sat on the terrace at Les Mandarines for the obligatory roast chicken and chips with beer. The thermometer on my watch said it was 28'C in the shade under the table... Not good.

We decided that we'd had the best of it and skied down to the Rocharbois and headed home. If the weather stays like this then I doubt we'll have much snow left within a week; still, lots of higher resorts to investigate when the skiing ends here.