Morzine Snow Report: 14th January 2012
A day in the park - hitting some jumps with the yoofs - yo!
As per the forecast, the last few days have been sunny and very cold. This makes for some brilliant piste skiing and we have been taking full advantage. Looking forward the weather system is staying put with more sunshine and cold temperatures to look forward to.
Obviously the cold is not great for the finger tips, although this is nothing a good set of gloves cannot cure. And it keeps the snow very dry and relatively soft. There is no freeze thaw cycle during the day/ night meaning the snow doesn’t become that icy. For sure, some of the south facing slopes are subject to a little of this but at this time of the year the sun quickly drops behind the mountains.
The top pisted layer, particularly up to lunch time, is in perfect condition. The half inch thick layer is soft but has loads of edge grip making for some brilliant turns, Super G style is my preference. By lunch time harder patches can appear where there has been a lot of traffic, the effect of lots of skiers means that the soft half inch of snow gets scraped off. Fortunately this is the quietest time of year, so not too bad in that regard, and it is a great time in fact to plan your holidays.
Today we skied Avoriaz. It was very similar to Thursday initially, some pisted runs down the D’Árare for a warm up. We moved on to the Secteur Chavanette for some bumps in the Snowzone Canyon du Schott but our final destination lay elsewhere.
It’s been a while coming this year, but we decided it was high time to get in the park with all the youth! As it was our first 'go' of the year we opted for the Snowpark de la Chapelle. Its features are a little smaller than the much higher consequence Snowpark D’Árare. The latter features truly big jumps, rails etc. and is not the place to warm up really. We’ll leave that for next time.
Having said all that you can (and people do) still hurt themselves in the so called baby park - watch out. Being a little bit of a straight air specialist I don’t really hit the rails, boxes etc. but there are multiple features of this type if that is your thing. The row of kickers to skiers’ right near the drag lift is where I like to have a play. The blues are fairly tame but will still rattle your teeth if you come up short and ‘knuckle’ the landing. The reds are a fair bit bigger, survivable if you come up short but your knees may not think so. Having said that I prefer the reds, they seem to be graded a little better, or they were today, meaning if you get it right you’ll never know you’ve been in the air.
If the blues look a little daunting then you can have a practice on the run of greens, nothing too bad can go wrong there and it’s a stepping stone to bigger things. The TK Chapelle drag lift pulls you back up in no time so you can really put in the laps in a short space of time. Or you certainly can at the moment whilst the mountain is so quiet.
Lots of fun for all tastes today, piste blaster or park rat, the choice is yours. Or if, like me, you are not sure which ski bus you are on, you can try both!
Bon Ski
