MegèveSki

The refreshed slopes of Rochebrune

Today we decided to see if the recent snow had made much difference to the Rochebrune slopes, they were suffering badly last time we'd looked and some were more brown than white. The new snow means that most of them are now white, and skiable, though the lack of base shows and I doubt this new snow will stay for long. Due to the lack of base the slopes were a mix of nice smooth snow and areas where twigs, rocks and dirt poked through; less so first thing.

Since Croia and Stuart had a flight to catch this afternoon we arranged to meet Croia for lunch at Super Megève and skied with Stuart over to Cote 2000 and back. Several lifts are closed now and a few of the pistes remained closed even after the new snow but all of the important routes are accessible. It was supposed to be clear skies today but there was some cloud from around 100m below the top to the top which made some areas interesting due to lack of visibility but once you got low enough it was OK.

The snow on Fontaine was good if you could see and avoid the rocks and icy lumps. The run down to the Rochefort drag was very good and the trees meant that you could see easily. Lanchettes was excellent and Cote 2000 was good at the top, where you couldn't see and rather crappy at the bottom where the blue had been very soft and was now very uneaven and rutted even with the new snow. We had hoped that the cloud would clear by the time we reached Cote 2000 so that we could do a couple of nice fast runs down the race course but it was still a complete white-out so we did one run and then headed to Radaz for a coffee. We skied back home and did another run down Lanchettes which had the best mix of snow and visibility of the whole journey.

The Super Megève black was unbashed and had a mix of choppy powder and some brown patches; a good ski though and a nice end to the day.