Off Piste Skiing

A quick tour was the order of the day today, after a lazy lie-in (for once) we decided a start should be made on working off the turkey excess of the last couple of days..
Blue skies and crisp temperatures greeted us up in resort (along with freshly arrived Parisians & others) and we headed up high for a wander out the back of Courchevel 1650.

A great day to be out:



A couple of bold tracks heading down the big canyon:



Mucho instability: depth hoar, a thin consolidated layer, more hoar, a 3cm crust layer, yet more super-sugary hoar then a big layer of heavy fresh... A quick pit didn't give the easy 'wumph' collapse I got 3 days ago with Keith, Claire & Pip, where a light press on the top of a block was enough to collapse the hoar layer, but with a fair pull the whole top layer moved - a good 40/50cm:



Care is most definitely required at the moment, steep slopes mostly to be avoided, so we worked a relatively safe way up to the shoulder over in to Les Avals:



The South facing slopes had a nice layer of fresh on top of a much harder crust layer underneath, giving pleasant skiing:



Unfortunately due to work commitments there was no time to call in & see Lionel at the Grand Plan refuge for an omelette, so we continued on down, linking nice fresh powder where it had remained unaffected by the wind:



More snow is due over the next week, along with some more 'weird' temperatures, so the off-piste is likely to remain unstable for some time - take care out there folks!!