Chamonix snow condition blogs
Chalet la Foret January 15th, 2010
From first flakes:
to full winter:
Where to get up to date information about snow conditions in Chamonix:
The official Chamonix site publishes fairly basic info on snow depths etc. It’s mostly useful for keeping an eye on which lifts are open. The Compagnie du Mont Blanc has similar information and webcams which are handy dfor seeing what current conditions look like:
But it’s hard to gauge the state of the snow from a webcam.
For more detailed snow reports, there are plenty of powder enthusiasts keeping the world updated. These aren’t in any particular order – they are all well worth a look to get a good all-round picture of conditions in the valley.
Tom publishes regular and detailed reports on conditions around the valley at http://www.chamonixsnowreport.com/. “If it sucks, we won’t pretend it doesn’t.” He’s always got plenty of good pics, you can ask him questions through the site, and follow him on Twitter @chamonixsnow
You can also see him in action! in this useful glacier safety film (no sound, as it’s for the local info screens)
Glacier Skiing Safety (Silent edit for CMB) from Simon Christy on Vimeo.
Trey at Chamonix Insider writes vividly about “Climbing, skiing, gear, and general irresponsibility by, about & for the Chamonix Massif.”…more eclectic subject matter, with regular snow reports sprinkled in the mix.
“Brewing up, dropping in, flaming out, landing hard, cowboyin’ up, topping out, throwin’ horns and basically having the “Best Day Ever!” over and over and over again in this little corner of paradise we call Chamonix.”
He’s also on Twitter @chamonixinsider.
Seb Montaz, Chamonix guide, films beautifully crafted video snow reports which are fantastic viewing if you’re dreaming of being in the mountains, and useful when you’re lucky enough to be there. His site is well worth a good look around, and you can also see them on his Vimeo channel. Here’s the latest one to give you an idea – the visible frame tells you it’s gonna be good!
Neil McNab, snowboard guide par excellence, updates his snowboarding blog frequently – useful if he’s been in Chamonix, and always interesting if it’s from elsewhere! He’s off to Kashmir this week so I’m looking forward to reading about that.
Chamonet has a regular snow update which is always interesting and thorough, with current snow depths, avalanche risk etc. It’s also easy to page back and compare with previous weeks or even years. They have a video version too. Well worth signing up for their Dump Alert to hear when the good stuff’s arriving. They also have excellent webcams and I especially like their 5 day timelapse videos
Video produced by Chamonet.Com
Chamonix.net also has a regular snow report with pics, and features the videos from Seb Montaz as above.
This thread on snowheads.com is updated by forum members (including me!) pretty regularly
For the iPhone, here’s a very useful little page with lots of handy links together chamonixunderground.com
If your French is up to it, you can get information from the Office de Haute Montagne on both high mountain and mid-mountain conditions, and also the Meteo France report which includes avalanche conditions.
Another good way to get an idea of the current conditions is to search Flickr for ‘Chamonix’ and then view the most recent photos I’ve seen some lovely photos over the last year or so from “cedccb” who recently posted this great shot of the Couloir Rectiligne
So hopefully these sites will give you useful info – but of course conditions change all the time, so make your own judgements carefully when you’re out there – remembering this quote I found on the excellent Pistehors site, from French guide Claude Rey:
“Globally the risk is good, locally there is a danger of death”.
Please do leave a comment if you’ve found this useful, (or not!) or if you’ve got/know of more sites that could be added.
Happy skootching!
