Val d'Isere Snow Report: 11th December 2012

In our current climate change crisis, there is no such thing as way too much snow. However, I may or may not have said one or two times in my life, “there is way too much snow right now” referring to a very specific time and place. It is usually when the depth of snow is greater than or equal to the fitness of my legs and I happen to find myself on the flats or in waist deep snow. A treewell, of course, has the same effect. My standard comment is that “there is way too much snow down my pants” and unfortunately for my bum but fortunately for my riding, I say that quite often. Finally, there is the case of the “there is way too much snow to do this”.

This week was a perfect example of just that concept. With the first weekend of the season an awesome success, the next attention grabber in line was the 57th Criterium taking place from the 7th to the 15th of December. An FIS world cup event, the Criterium brings some of the world’s best skiers to Val d’Isère, each of them competing on Bellevarde’s Face for the men or the OK piste for the women. It is the international importance of this event that makes the Criterium such a delicate affair. Not enough snow means having to make snow, risking a poorly made course and potentially cancelling the event like last year. It seems that we wanted snow so badly this year and forgot to consider the alternative.

The alternative, “too much snow” means another thing altogether. Instead of beginning on the 7th of December as planned, the Criterium was pushed back the 8th and began at 2:00 PM only after a huge crew of ski school instructors and pisteurs had finished flattening all of the snow that continued to come down. While the athletes handled conditions perfectly, it was really strange to see races that are normally held on near-ice conditions take place under perfectly falling snow. With the 85 centimeters of snow in town, all festivities were also postponed on Friday meaning that all children looking forward to the random gift drawing walked away a little disappointed.

Sunday was another experience entirely: bluebird skies and perfect conditions, a first for most of us on the slopes since the beginning of the season. Almost all lifts were working, giving us more waist-deep terrain than we could hope for. We all met at the bottom of Solaise at 9 to discuss our strategy. How to attack the 150 cm at the top? While the stoke was undeniable and we were impossibly undecided. With an avalanche risk of 4 out of 5 and the remembrance of a girl’s unfortunate avalanche-caused death, we were didn’t want to be overconfident and find ourselves in dangerous zones. Sticking to the perfectly groomed pistes over on Solaise, we hit all side-pistes possible, dipping our boards and skis into nature’s whipped cream. After 2 hours, it wasn’t enough anymore; we couldn’t get the spots we had been hoping to hit since Val’s opening out of our minds.

Tempting fate, we headed up Le Fornet. What we saw only reinforced exactly what we had thought. Amazing snow, everywhere. We did what anyone else and seemingly everyone else would and did- we ducked into the trees with our transceivers, our shovels, and our probes and headed down, testing specific spots carefully along the way. It was decided that plus or minus hitting a tree or two, we had chosen the sweet spot and more specifically that nature was working with us today, even after hitting a tree or two.