Back in Grimentz and Zinal again this week, but it was a different world to last week. With perfect conditions last week the surprise was not how good the skiing was, but how few people were out skiing. When there's calf deep untracked snow everywhere it's not hard to find great skiing - it might have been the "week of the season". This week, with no new snow, strong winds at the weekend and a huge rise in temperatures, finding decent skiing was more challenging...As it turned out there was plenty of character-building crust, but also plenty of hidden powder and some perfect spring if you timed it right. Not a bad week at all!
Skinning the ridge of the Diablon before skiing the sunny south side to the Moiry dam.
Perfect spring snow off the "wrong" side of the Brinta on the way to Vercorin
The heat caused some big avalanches too - big wet slides on sunny slopes in the afternoon and some huge full depth slides on north slopes. These 2 pics are of opposite sides of the same hill!
Huge full depth, north facing...the bowl to the right of the skin track up the Brinta from Réchy.
Huge full depth, south facing. Looking into Orxival from the Roc d'Orxival. Spot the ski tracks out of the classic Orxival left-hand...
