Tignes Snow Reports - December 2023

As good as it gets! Tignes

Picture taken 18-Dec-2023

Upper Slopes : Packed Powder, Lower Slopes : Packed Powder, Off Piste : Variable - Good.

Just to add a little more detail; clearly the big early-season snowfalls of the last few weeks have left impreressive base depths on the mountain already. Although we saw base temperatures as high as 8C yesterday, the sun is so low at the moment that sun-affected/transformed snow is a rarity on piste and only the lower "home runs" into Tignes Val Claret and Le Lac were getting objectionally hard and scratchy by the afternoon.
Pretty much everywhere else the surface is "packed powder", very grippy but light and chalky. Above about 2500 metres the snow on-piste is really as good as it gets.
We've missed most of the off-piste powder, with south-facing slopes the most settled as you'd expect, but there are stashes around and high north-facing pitches look good (we didn't venture in ourselves as we were out without avy kit yesterday and the Avalanche Risk Level is 3 - Considerable).
There are plenty of people here, but it's not crowded and we didn't queue at all.
Looks like another day of sunshine today, with a change in the weather expected tomorrow afternoon.

The weather changed!

Picture taken 20-Dec-2023

Upper Slopes : Packed Powder, Lower Slopes : Hard Pack, Off Piste : Variable - Poor.

Wednesday 20th - fabulous day piste skiing between cloud layers, with amazing views of peaks and landscape mixed with clouds and varying light; would have been wonderful for photographers. A mix of cannon snow and a light dusting keeping things fresh; perfect snow higher up with only a few bits of hard pack lower down.

Light snow expected later today, and more overnight and tomorrow. Looks like another day for low light lenses! Pix to follow…