1st June

The weather is definitely a bit warmer, although pretty miserable generally today. We’re expecting 2 more days of miz and then nice weather! Yippeee!  :D

Snow down to 1800 in Les 2 Alpes

I just spotted these two skiing down the Valentin. Unfortunately they’d got to the bottom of the snow by the time I’d stopped the car, leapt out etc.

However, later, and just for the hell of it, I drove up the Demoiselles to the top of the Petite Aiguille chairlift. :) I bottled out of going further, but this was quite interesting:

La Petite Aiguille, Les Deux Alpes

Good old Chevvy AWD – no probs!

Chemin des Demoiselles, les 2 Alpes

Looking up the third leg of the Demoiselles you can see how much snow is still left on the Valentin

Le Pied Moutet, Les Deux Alpes

Looking across town to the Pied Moutet. Not much snow left on that side

I’m hoping we’re not going to lose too much with the warm weather en route (but it will be nice) … however there’s that much snow up there that unless it’s boiling and rains we should be in good shape at the start of the summer season in 3 weeks. :)

 

 

 

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29th May

OMG! It’s been snowing again! :o I don’t believe it! :o The first two photos were taken at 08.30 this morning:

Encore de la neige aux Deux Alpes

Looking out of my bedroom window this morning

Snow in Les 2 Alpes on 29th May

The view on the south side looking out of the kitchen window to the garden

However, the temperature has climbed to about 4 degrees :) and the fog has lifted so 3 hours later at 11.30

Les Deux  Alpes this morning

The snow has melted for the moment, but more is forecast this week

This weather is totally mad, but of course it’s very good for the start of the summer season – it’s going to be epic! Powder skiing in June for anyone? Come on out. We open officially on 22nd June and Easiski has a confidence and skills course running from 29th! :) It could definitely include some off piste elements :D

 

 

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25th & 26th May

The night before last was really cold and yesterday morning there was significant snow on the ground

Neige aux Deux Alpes

The garden yesterday morning!

More snow in Les 2 Alpes

Open the front door and …

it wasn’t quite as thick to the side of the house (the garden is south facing)

Les Deux Alpes

Snow on the branches of the willow outside the apartment

Snow trees in Les Deux Alpes

The snow still on the bush looks just like blossom. A bit later in the day

Well! It’s not unheard of, but it is unusual at the end of May. All day it was bitterly cold outside, in spite of seeing the sun from time to time – brrrr. The worst thing was that it was damp, so it felt much colder than it really was :(

Today, we had more snow! :o Not quite so much to be sure, but still fresh snow on the ground right down to village level – totally unreal! :o

More snow in Les 2 Alpes 26th May

More fresh snow!

I do hope it warms up a bit – I’d prefer that it rained down here and snowed above about 2,500m? That would be perfect! All my plants are still indoors – too cold to put them out! :(

 

 

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24th May

This extremely unseasonal weather continues: Yesterday I managed to cut at least half of the meadow lawn in the early afternoon. It was very wet and hard work, but worth it:

Finally some dry weather in Les 2 Alpes

Clumps left where the wild flowers are, but a decent cut anyway

but then it got colder and cloudier and by the evening it was snowing again! This is my neighbour’s patio table just as it was getting dark:

Fresh snow in Les Deux Alpes

Oh really! A bit too much, if this was October I’d be excited

so I wasn’t altogether surprised this morning to find that a fair bit of snow had laid in the garden:

Il a neigé aux Deux ALpes

Fresh snow at the end of May

and it’s looking as though this is going to carry on all day and all tonight as well. :( The big surprise was just how cold it was though – I’ve turned the radiators up twice in the last 2 days and still woke up cold in the middle of the night! :(

Very cold in Les 2 Alpes this morning

Blimey!

Of course…. all this is great for the start of the summer season in 4 weeks. :)

 

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19th May

Oh boy! :o It’s snowing down here today! :o I have seen snow here in every month of the year (I once woke up in mid June to find 10 cms of snow on the roof of the car), but even in 2010 I don’t remember it being quite so cold and miserable through May. :( Of course, this is all good for the summer season! :)

My snow in Les Deux Alpes

This was what I first saw when I drew the curtains this morning

so then I looked to the left, and ……………

Le Diable ready for winter 2014?

Right down onto the nursery slopes and quite a bit of a fall by the look of it

Not only that, but very shortly afterwards it started snowing, and this was taken out of the bedroom window again:

Les 2 Alpes

Really quite heavy for a while

Of course it won’t last long,  but it’s amazing to see such heavy snow at this time. :o

 

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17th May

Well, gosh! :o We’ve had even more snow – eek! :o it’s been snowing at altitude all spring, but getting lower. This morning there was snow all the way down to about 1700m which is only just above the town!

snow in Les 2 Alpes in May

Even mid morning the snow was still down to the bottom of the diable

later on, just after midday I took this panorama from the bottom of the nursery slopes:

Panorama of Les Deux Alpes' 'Face'

The Face, the snow has retreated a bit, but still at the top of the Cretes at least

That’s it. :) It’s not warm, but this is all good for the start of the summer skiing season. :)

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12th May

I’ve been busy this week doing all sorts of apartment things, but the weather has mostly been pretty ghastly – rather like the west of England! :o All grey and misty and drizzly. :( However we had one good day on 8th, and I managed to cut the grass (or should I say weeds)

Spring in Les Deux Alpes

The rain meant the grass and weeds were growing like mad

and then more bad weather! Yesterday it was sort of in an out, and before going to Grenoble I took a couple of pix of the snow still remaining:

Combe Valentin, Les 2 Alpes

The Valentin is still complete down to 1800m

and at the other end of town

Le Diable, Les Deux Alpes

It’s still possible to make your way down the Diable

Now that was 11th May – totally ridiculous! :o Coming up the road into resort you can see that the natural snow line is around 2000m which is incredibly low for this time of year.

If the weather continues like this we’ll have good skiing down to 2,600m when we open in June for the summer – could I be skiing the off piste again on 1st July like in 2010?

 

 

 

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5th May

Well, I did it! :) I finally managed to get to La Grave this winter – on the very last day! :) They were saying that descent to P1 was difficult …just a bit:

Not a lot of snow below 200m at La Grave

Very dodgy looking down the lift track

However, once we cleared the mid station, I was amazed at the  amount of snow on

Lots of snow on La Meije

La Meije – one of the most iconic mountains in the Alps

and also on her neighbour

Le Rateau, La Grave- La Meije

Le Rateau

You do see skiers and riders from the lift – the question is the scale – they’re so tiny!

The scale of La Grave is just amazing

These tiny dots have just come over the Col des Ruillons

You also see some pretty huge avalanches, like this one:

Avalanche at La Grave

A big avalanche right where lots of people ski mid-witner

I didn’t stop for a drink at the top because the forecast wasn’t great and the light was going, so I was anxious to get over to our side. They used to pull you over to the drag lift behind a piste machine (the glacier is the only piste at La Grave), but now they’ve got this cute little job:

Teleski La Grave Style

Great little 4 x 4 to drag skiers and snowboarders across to the drag lift

While I’ve obviously been aware of how much snow has fallen this winter, I just couldn’t believe how low the pomas were to the ground! Last year I had to jump for them!

Le tire-fess de la grave

Button almost touching the snow!

Teleski du glacier

Looking up the lift line on the La Grave side

Once I got up it I had a pretty hard walk up to the place where they drop you off from the LDA side – hard work in the fresh snow, and once I got there I found that the definition was virtually nil, although there was visibility. This meant that I couldn’t ‘let go’ on the down hill parts of the track because I couldn’t see where they went, or how steep, or if there were any nasty windblown lumps …. This, of course, meant I had to climb a lot more than usual. :(   What a welcome sight to see the hut where they take your supplement for the trip to La Grave, and – blimey – how much snow has fallen since we closed!

La Lauze, Les 2 Alpes

Half buried inthe new snow!

I did find a bit of hazy sunshine on the Lauze, and …. wonders will never cease, it had been pisted! :) Wonderful soft corduroy with just a whisper of powder on top, a wonderful ski down there, and I was totally astonished to see how much they were having to dig out the Cote lift – we were using that only 10 days ago! This lift goes both ways to give us access to the Lauze without having to push and skate as much as before. it’s the old Dome North lift recycled

T bar Le Cote is a 2 way lift

Totally ridiculous, this much snow in the week since we closed

Once again I found most of the glacier had been pisted, and the ‘rows’ of alleys that we had in the winter had been totally filled in – I could just traverse across the glacer with hardly a bump! I skied some lovely soft, creamy snow on the Muretouse and then down the ‘triangle’ and onward to the restaurant at 3,200m where I took a short break to eat and drink a little.

For interested people, this is what they do with the piste markers:

Pole store on the glacier at les 2 Alpes

Blue and red piste markers and warning signs, waiting to be put back up for the summer

And they’ve obviously been working hard up here – they’ve brought out a fair bit of the stuff that’s only used in summer

summer equipment coming out at Les Deux Alpes

The cages are used by the clubs to store their poles in overnight. I have no idea what the blue thing is/was

I decided to ski down the red (Breche) and found that the whole run had been pisted fairly recently. I’m really hoping that they’ll open to 2600m at the start of the summer season, but this may be too much to hope for with the new lift company. :( anyway, there was super soft, creamy snow on top – around 10cms or so … smashing :)

The snow did get ever so slightly more gloopy just above 2,600, but still very skiable, and just alongside the Pano Bar I took this

View from 2,600m at Les Deux Alpes

You can just about make out the Cretes although you can see the viz was not the greatest

Again I took the red options and the snow was really super, although some ‘bobbles’ of snow accompanied me down the middle option of the old Grand Nord. There had been a big slide in the Grand Couloir, but of course I carried on down the path towards the Cretes where I met a nice couple up from Verbier (yes you read it right) for the day to ski tour. He was a guide, and they were super impressed with the snow – YES! :)
What was totally incredible was the actual huge amount of snow still on the path back to the Cretes

Masses of snow still on the path to the Cretes

Astonishing amount of snow still here – just above 2,200m

A nice sit down at the Cretes allowed me to snap my tracks coming down from 2,600m – they were clearly visible to the naked eye, but I’m afraid you can’t see them at all in the photo :(

2,600m from Les Cretes, Les 2 Alpes

My tracks come down the red in between the 2 larger rocks – really!

Les Deux Alpes

ESF hut at the Cretes

Another bite and a coffee and then off to the Valentin, which was excellent snow albeit looking pretty brown. :( You can clearly see that it’s possible to ski right down to where my skis are with only about 1m of grass to cross

Skiing right to the bottom at Les 2 Alpes

Valentin & Champamé still skiable

Le Fin aux Deux Alpes

No more until June

and just in case you’re doubting me – this is what you see by turning 90 degrees to the right:

Les 2 Alpes

You could actually ski to the bottom of the Bosquet lift!

And so endeth the saga .. or does it? I still had to hitch back to La Grave to collect the car! :o   I was lucky and didn’t have to wait too long for lifts, but I did have to walk across the dam where they’re doing massive work. I heard it had concrete cancer, and is being repaired so they can fill the lake properly in the future.

Stairs for the workmen on the Barrage du Chambon

Stairs that have been put in down the face of the dam – not for me thank you!

Repairs to the dam at Chambon

2 Absolutely HUGE cranes in place now

And all this so they can contain

Water from Alpe d'Huez

An absolute torrent of melt water – this lot from ADH

The lift I got from Chambon was from the guy who has the cafe and refuge at 3,200m at La Grave – very nice guy and recognised me as a customer – I was quite chuffed!!

I don’t think I’ll be writing much in the way of the blog for the next week or so, but this should keep you going for a while! :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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3rd May

Of course not much has been happening on the skiing front since we’re now closed; however I did spot these hardy snowboarders still doing it on the bottom of the Lutins slope yesterday

Still snow in LDA

A small group taking advantage of the snow still in quite big areas of the nursery slopes

I was hoping to ski at La Grave yesterday prior to getting my car back from the very good Garage Pic over there. Unfortunately (and I should no longer be surprised) it wasn’t ready, but they did have a courtesy car for me….. la Grave was closed though :( so we went over later in the day and many thanks to David Ash for taking the time to drive me over. I’m having lots of fun – I love Clios! This one is a 1.9 TD so pretty pokey :)

In the evening I just happened to look out of the kitchen window and – wow! What a fabulous view!

Views from Alpe de Venosc

Wonderful view from my kitchen window yesterday evening – light in the valley

Today (4th) is nice and sunny, and La Grave is open … Tomorrow is also supposed to be good, so if they open the drag lift on their glacier I might go up that side and down this side… just have to sort out getting back for the car. Unfortunately I can’t find anyone who wants to go with me, and although I’ve done it alone before in the current conditions it might be a bit risky. I’ll take pix if I go!

 

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28th & 29th April

Well, although the season has finished, and it’s currently tipping it down with rain :( I have a few photos for you. :)

This one is from yesterday, when we had fresh snow overnight and someone had gone up the Diable in a piste machine and then skied down

Tracks in the snow in Les 2 Alpes

You have to look carefully onthe right side of the obvious line of the machine, but you can just make out the tracks

On the other hand, virtually the same view taken today after 24 hours of rain shows a totally different picture:

La neige disparent aux Deux Alpes

disappearing snow – nothing gets rid of it as fast as rain.

Having said all that, I’ve never (in 21 years) seen the Petit Viking slope complete after – or even at – the end of the season:

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Not only that, but look at these huge piles of snow at the side of the swimming pool!

Left over snow in Les 2 Alpes

About 2m high!

I’m hopeful of being able to ski at least the top part of La Grave on Friday – indeed I have a tenetative arrangement with a friend to do so, and with a bit of luck collect my car from the garage at the same time. :) If I manage it, blog and photos will follow! :)

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