MegèveSki

Reliably over the boots in Les Contamines

We skied in Les Contamines today in snow that was reliably over the tops of our boots, sometimes over the knee and in wind blown drifts it was waist high... Visibility was poor and I had expected that, but had hoped for better. Still, the visibility was poor because it snowed all day, nice big fat flakes of dry snow; superb.

Stuart relaxes at the end of the day on the lower section of the Olympique black...

We started the day over on Nant Rouge but the amount of new snow meant that this normally quite pleasant red felt very flat and very slow. The board at the top of the signal bubble said they'd had 30cms of new snow, and that was before the stuff we had today... We couldn't see much so decided to try the other side of the Signal ridge as the Buche red and Tobogan black were both steeper and, perhaps, the visibility might be better. We didn't fancy the up hill walk at the top of the Roselette chair so skied down the Fredze red with the intention of picking up the Buche Croisse chair at the bottom. The visibility this side was worse than earlier and by the time we'd dropped just below the Roselette restaurant we were ready for a rest and a coffee.

The new plan was to take the drag back to the top of Fredze and then ski it again and this time stop at the restaurant rather than below it... By the time we'd reached the top of the drag the plan was to have a coffee at Signal rather than Roselette as the poor vis on the lower section of Fredze made it quite challenging. So we took the Boulevard blue to signal and slogged along the flat sections in the deep snow... I decided to find a route from Roselette to Signal that didn't require walking up hill...

Coffee break turned into lunch and as we ate the visibility improved; we could suddenly see the Tierces chair from Signal, bonus! We decided to try to continue our plan to drop down from the bottom of Fredze and ski Tobogan and Buche. Unfortunately the Gentianes red was hard work in the heavy snow and Miche tweaked her knee when she hit a deep section near the edge of the piste.

Since the visibility was just as bad as before we took the drag back up to the top with the intention of dropping back over to the Veleray side of Signal. To avoid the up hill struggle of Boulevard we took the Olympique black from halfway down, which was possibly not my most inspired choice given the state of Miche's knee. We skied down to the Jonction chair and Miche was ready to call it a day due to the knee so she went into the restaurant at Signal for a coffee.

Stuart and I took the Roselette chair again and then skied the Olympique black from the top where the drifting snow was unpredicatable and the visibility made it almost impossible to spot the difference between boot deep and waist deep until it was too late. The lower section was a lot of fun though and Stuart's powder skiing really came on well. We skied the run again and managed to take an even worse route at the top but skied the lower section better. By the time we reached the chair we were ready to call it a day.

We met up with Miche and then Miche bubbled down and Stuart and I skied down the Montjoie blue to the mid station and bubbled from there. The blue was good, with great snow on the steeper section under the bubble.

All in all a good day though it would have been better if Miche hadn't tweaked her knee; she was skiing the powder really well up until that point. I think we have enough snow now ;) it would be nice to have some sun tomorrow... The skiing today was hard work due to the snow and lack of visibility but it was lots of fun.