Today was a perfect day to go and ride the tree-lined groomers at Les Houches, with flat light and the Foehn wind announcing an approaching storm. It was so easy to step off the bus from Chamonix town, and straight onto the Prarion gondola, which took me up to almost 2000m, from where I could ski all the way back down to the Gondola base, or cruise around the chairlifts on the top plateau. I checked out a couple of the restaurants open next to the chairlifts, La Ferme, and The Hors Piste, just easy access on the groomed runs.
The temperatures were pretty warm today, but the pistes are all in awesome condition, and its great to put in some cruisy turns down the smooth runs in the forest. The pistes are running pretty fast at the moment, and off to the sides is some soft-ish snow which has not yet formed moguls.
The next couple of days has a ton of snow forecast above 1800m, which is awesome, and then with falling temperatures again, so hopefully it won't be soggy in town for long. We have the altitude here to handle the warmer temperatures like this, so it should be a pretty good weekend of storm skiing...
As of Tuesday, the Bochard lift has been open daily too. They are sure to close it if it gets too windy, but we have an awesome amount of skiable vertical too, though you have to watch out for the rocks up high where the wind has been playing games with the snow, filling in some areas more than others. There is a great groomer from the top of the Bochard, though, and one from the Herse chairlift which may also open in the next few days.
Here's a video from The sunny Grands Montets on Wednesday and Les Houches today:
