Morzine Snow Report: 21st February 2012

Setting off from Ardent, things were fairly quiet. I had a feeling it couldn’t last but even once we had made Linderets there was still a relative absence of people. As we were waiting for friends to catch us up we headed up the Linderets express for a quick warm-up run down the Prolays blue.

The latter is a great run, nice and wide with a relatively shallow gradient. It’s good for improving beginners and more advanced skiers alike. The snow was already beginning to bump up a little here as it does see a lot of traffic on account of its suitability for all. But that’s how I like it, smashing into the soft lumps of snow other people have scraped into little piles is brilliant fun. Lower down the slope we upped the speed a little and carved some big turns over the little bumps. The snow felt great.

It was time to move on. We were headed in the direction of the Mossettes télésiège, our destination being Morgins in Switzerland. The peak of the Mossettes is situated on the Grand Conche ridge line from where it is possible to drop into Les Crosets and the Swiss villages making up the Portes du Soleil.

Rather than take skiers' right into Les Crosets we went left at the Col du Portes du Soleil and headed for Morgins on the longest blue run around. Initially it’s fast enough to carve some big turns on; the previous day's grooming had left the piste in perfect shape. But eventually this gives way to a long cat track through the trees. It’s all pleasant enough, cruising down between the trees with the peaks of the Pointe de Chesery, Tete du Geant and Le Linga to your left.

From Morgins we intended to return to Les Crosets and then onwards into Chavanette above Avoriaz via the Swiss village of Champoussin. But before that we decided on a run back down to the bottom of the blue chairlift out of Morgins. It’s a brilliant red, not something I do too often but it was well worth it. Well groomed, deserted and very fast, brilliant for those Super G turns.

The trip over to Champoussin is well worth it, with some brilliant wide open pistes to blast down and stunning views of the Dents du Midi. The only slight downside is that the lift infrastructure is a little old over that neck of the woods. There are a few T-bars and button lifts to contend with. The chair lifts are a little slow also but you do eventually get where you need to go and there are very rarely queues to contend with.

Reaching Les Crosets I had the opportunity to contrast those old T-bars with a brand new express lift, the Grand Conche. It drops you back on to the ridge line border with France above the Linderets valley and takes the pressure of the Grand Mossettes chair. As ever, it’s great to see investment in the Portes du Soleil lift system.

I skied down to the Cubore up and over chair in the Linderets Valley and use that to get over the hill into the Secteur Chavanette ready for a blast down the Cubore red and Retour Chavanette blue all the way into Avoriaz.

Handily it was the lunch hour so I got onto the Express Lac Intrets without a moment's delay. This left me with a 1000m non-stop drop all the way down to Prodains and the bus home. Firstly via the Stade d’Árare and then the Le Crot home run. The Stade was quite bumped up at this point; well it was pointing in a straight line at flat out speed. The Le Crot is much smoother, which was great because the legs were stinging at that point. I made it down in time to stroll onto the bus back to Morzine. They leave every 15 minutes so it would not have been a big wait should I have missed it.

The pistes were in great condition today, some icy patches but nothing too bad, more compacted snow than boiler plate blue ice so you could get an edge into it. The forecast is for more blues skies and slightly warmer temperatures, reaching +4 degrees later in the week.

Bon Ski