MegèveSki

Skiing without seeing at Cote 2000

We skied for a few hours in Cote 2000 today. This is the only ski area in Megève that's still open for business and although there are only two lifts still running there's plenty of terrain available both on and off-piste. It was snowing again this morning and the visibility was pretty poor but the snow was pretty good and we found skiing without being able to see quite good practice.

The snow on the lower section, from the Radaz lift down, was still suffering from the same problem that we'd noticed last time that we'd skiied here, on 10th April; the piste had melted and then frozen into a lumpy and rutted surface that was then covered with some fresh snow. This made for a bumpy ride first thing. The snow on the top section from the Cote 2000 lift was good and the off-piste looked fresh and powdery. The main off-piste section between Chamois and Marmottes was roped off due to avalanche risk but the bits and pieces that were accessible looked good.

The main problem today was that the visibility was pretty crap. Both the distance visibility and the snow contour visibility were bad which meant that you had to trust your legs and keep yourself in balance without using your eyes a great deal. We spent a couple of hours practising skiing without seeing and it worked pretty well. Miche was skiing the conditions very well and it's quite amazing how her skiing had changed since the start of the trip; she didn't like the conditions today but she skied them well, previously she probably wouldn't have skied them at all or if she did she would have regressed to saftey-mode skiing...

I worked on keeping my hands high and stable, once Miche pointed out that I was dropping them, and this made a big difference to my stability.

We gave up pretty early as it's day 80 now and we couldn't really be bothered to ski any more given the conditions weren't that great. The forecast for tomorrow is for sun so we're planning to come back here with the video camera. Friday is also supposed to be sunny and the current plan is to visit a new resort, La Clusaz, which Lucy recommended.