Alpe d'Huez news

http://www.alpedhuez.com/webcam/index.html?lang=en

I can't see much, it must be snowing. :D

Good news/bad news.
Good news - its snowing heavily.
Bad news - many of the upper lifts are shut as the area is currently unstable due to avalanche risk.

Good news - we dont go for another 5 days so the chances are things will change.
Bad news - I dont have a crystal ball.

I am guessing that it must have dumped it down quite early this morning then for the area to be unsafe.
I am hoping that predicted cold temperatures arrive and remain to give it some stability on the mountain and allow the base to stiffen up.

Could be worse, we could be planning on going to Borovets!!!

Doesn't usually take them long to get it all open.
Although one year we were there it did, they had had something like 3m of snow, everything above midstation was shut when we got there on the Saturday. That night they were going round all the chalets to tell everyone off piste was simply out of bounds – the way they put it 'you go off piste you will die'. The risk level was off the scale.
Didn't matter as there was 3 feet of powder on the blues!
The Sarenne was finally opened late on the Wednesday.

Just had a look at the Marmottes Webcam and the snow has stopped and clouds have risen and it looks fandabidozy.

Stewart Dowling wrote:I am guessing that it must have dumped it down quite early this morning then for the area to be unsafe.
I am hoping that predicted cold temperatures arrive and remain to give it some stability on the mountain and allow the base to stiffen up.

That's not really how it works. Fresh snow is just one reason slopes can be unstable, I don't really understand you point about cold temperatures so I can't really comment.

If you want to know some more about snow I can recommend this book :

http://www.play.com/Books/Books/4-/727392/Snow/Product.html

it's very short and easy to read, you could probably read on your journey there and arrive to some real snow to observe it all in practice.

There's a companion volume which is also interesting :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Avalanche-Understand-Avalanches-Cicerone-Mini-guides/dp/1852844736/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262620825&sr=1-8

If you're not venturing off-piste you'd get some ideas about what the various snow reports are really saying and if you going off-piste then it's obviously essential to have an accurate idea of what's going on under your feet.

Current status:


The reason they close the upper half is that there are a number of danger points where the snow can slide across the pistes, they have to clear them before opening the runs. Usually that's well within an hour of the lower lifts opening. Great to watch though, especially when they are doing it using charges dropped by helicopter. We saw one mega slide that one time they'd had all that snow.