The temperatures were high during the night and there was no doubt that we needed to stay high and as north as possible so Chris, Thomas, Henry and I all headed towards the Fornet. It was foggy in town but promised to be clearer higher up the mountain and sure enough we broke into clear blue skies almost immediately as we rose above the sea-of-cloud below. That in itself was a cause for celebration but we knew we were in for a good day with our first turns off-piste off the Laisinant Express as the snow was soft and skied beautifully. Next up was a great run in the Combe du Signal (see photos) en-route to the Pisaillas Glacier where the skiing turned out to be surprisingly tough. Chris tried the 3300 and aborted so Thomas, Henry and I tried the Pays Desert, which wasn’t much better although we made the most of it and found some decent pitches to get ourselves down safely. From our earlier runs we knew the snow was better at mid-altitude so we went over the Col Pers and had excellent skiing top-to-bottom. It wasn’t perfect by any means but was significantly better than anything on the glacier and ranged from lovely soft soufflé to deeper excellent soft snow to slightly tougher but very skiable snow. We had a couple of patches of ‘skiers snow’ mixed in but I personally love a little ‘skiers snow’ from time to time and I was really pleased with the way my team skied it and more importantly the way they embraced the challenge and they all seemed to love it! We finished off with a funky run into the Vallonnet and around above Oh My! to the shoulder that separates Oh My! from the Grand Vallon and here we encountered some proper ‘skiers snow’ and again all the teams did the business and left some great tracks. I thought it was a fantastic morning and was pleased Martin and Amy had a chance to see the views because we skied the same area a couple of days ago in flat-light and they had no idea what the mountains looked like!
Sun is forecast for tomorrow morning so it might be time to go for a walk? Stay tuned!