Alpine Climbing & Skiing: Frost Guiding Blog

 Big snowfalls over Christmas have left great piste conditions in the Val d'Anniviers and some good off piste - but it's still pretty thin and rocky! Careful skiing needed, and careful route choice. Lots of the regular descents are just too rocky to ski safely, and the recently much talked about weak snowpack is very unstable, with lots of slab avalanches on all aspects. 

Skier released slab not far from the Grand plan lift...

Surface cracks, a sure sign of hidden weak layers

Chamois piste

 Challenging conditions in the Tarentaise but there was still some good skiing - reward for battling through a lot of crusty, windblown snow! Not surpringly some of the classic descents of the area were deserted, giving a remote feel to the skiing in the Sache, Tour of the Pramecou, Col Pers, Cugnai, etc. 

Skiing in Val d'Isere and Tignes this week in some challenging conditions. Great piste snow, but off piste things are "variable". Always worth trying though, and there's been some really good skiing. Pics on Facebook

Fingers crossed for more snow on Thursday!

 Things are building nicely now, and teams were out this afternoon at la Gouille (bravely) and the tunnel routes. 

Brave man on transparent ice - from the road you can see flowing water behind the ice. 

There's more snow in the Alps than in Scotland...but only just! Hopefully Santa will bring some more - there's a glimmer of hope for next Thursday but the forecast is only saying "light precipitation". 

In the meantime, there's plenty of firm piste skiing to do! Touring-wise there's some good snow around but - beware! - it's just a thin covering over rocks. Today at the Pas de Chevre it was only just skiable back down, lots of tiptoeing!

The long period of dry cold is producing some fine suface hoar. Nice to look at, worrying when it gets buried by the next snowfall .