Mardi 13 décembre 2011. Les Grands Montets vallée de Chamonix Mont-Blanc. Les acteurs: Antoine Bletton, Lambert Galli, Remi Peschier, Flo Tomei, Romain Aubrun, Alex Marchesseau… Merci à chamonix.net et à Te-Crew. Musique Olivier Rouquier…

http://www.tvmountain.com

According to the notoriously unreliable ‘How Deep Is The Garden Path compared to The Cat’ index of snow depth, we can see from this picture that for the much asked question How much snow? the answer is… A lot

Other snow reports are available

The first snow fall of the 2011-2012 winter in the alps

The thick white blanket that has covered much of the UK in recent days has caused road chaos, closed airports and given thousands of children time off school. From frustrating traffic jams to picturesque wintry scenes, take a look at how people have coped in the snow.

Click the image to play

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Source: BBC.co.uk

Images courtesy Getty Images, PA, North News and BBC News website readers.

Audio from BBC News, BBC Radios 2 and 4, and BBC local radio. Music by Owl City, John Lennon, The Rolling Stones and Katy Perry.

Slideshow production by Paul Kerley. Publication date 2 December 2010.

Snow-wise, this winter is turning out to be epic. It just keeps snowing. Here’s the latest snow report video from Seb Montaz-Rosset

While the deluge of snow brings most of Britain to a standstill it has meant for another busy week here in the valley.

Some of us have even managed to get up the hill to play in it and remind ourselves why we live here.

2010 has started well. There?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s something wonderful about the clean slate a new year can bring. A solitary, slightly loose skinned, satsuma left in the fruit bowl reminds us we better start eating healthily again, and maybe think about putting into play some of those optimistic resolutions!

Chamonix is seeing some crazy amounts of snow falling up high especially but the freezing level has been up and down more than I have been up and down the many lifts in this glorious valley! It has unfortunatly meant that a fair bit of rain has been falling below 2000m but with some of the highest lifts in Europe operating in Chamonix its pretty easy to get in to the snow line and find some fresh powder snow! The freezing level is comming down lower and lower and this morning it was Snowing heavy with chunks around the size of a small child’s fist laying down a blanket of snow for us all to have fun in! however this afternoon that has changed back to rain, and up the hill it never stopped snowing!

I was up Brevent today as I heard the ques in Grand Montets where crazy, due to the festive season and many people trying to get their own freshies, added with the ridicoulous amounts of snow falling up high, changing temperatures and high winds which have made for a very avalanche prone time for Chamonix, thus the lifts will not open for the safety of the people riding. It was a similar story up at Brevent, not so much que’s to get up initially but with only one chair lift open there was a good 20 minute que for each decent! The snow was amazing though, and some of the deepest I have ever seen, I am not telling a fib when I say this but I actually fell in to a patch up to my shoulders! So it was pretty much necessary to find the steeper slopes and ride fast in order to stay on top of the bottomless powder! I hung around for a good few runs untill I got annoyed at the queing procedures, hitting some of the many drops available in to nice fluffy powder pillows, and scoring some sick fresh lines, before comming back down to tell you guys how good it is up there, followed by getting ready for a really good party tonight celibrating New Years in true Chamonix style!

The past week has seen the big change from little fluffs of snow flowing through the valley to massive winter style dumps, spelling the end of Autumn and the begining of the thing we have all been waiting for WINTER! temprature dropped to a massive low of -22 degrees making for some very nice snow up the hill when the percipitation entered Chamonix, and so it has been over the past few days dumping huge amounts of fresh snow on the lower and upper slopes alike, meaning that all the Lifts in Cham are now open.

Ive been getting around as many of the resorts in the Chamonix valley as possible the past few days and I can tell you that there is a lot of weather fighting its way through with very strong winds up high but only affecting some mountains meaning that sometimes we may have Flegere closed because of high wind but Grand Montets open and with realtivley calm weather. So if your over at any point its a good idea to check wind direction before you head out as Chamonix will benifit from being able to shelter from one wind direction as we have slopes pointing in all directions!

The past couple of days Brevent has been tugging at my soul, normally a small but quiet hill on a powder day as most will head for the biggest mountain Grand Montets, so heading against the tide I tried my luck at scoring some freshies for the day there. The hill was fairly empty and we were able to get fresh tracks all day sesioning 3 main faces on the mountain, the biggest and probably the best accesible from the top gondola then straying off the Bozon piste where there where many rocks to drop and some really heavy snow up to waist level making the steeper slopes feel much more enjoyable! We also headed over to either side of the Cornu lift but there where a lot more people with the same idea and with slopes not as steep in these areas it was hard to get going in the vast amounts of snow, so back to the top gondola it was where we spent the rest of the day getting fresh line after fresh line!

The whole town is in full swing now, Christmas is just around the corner and there are many festive events going on in the bars around town, the snow is still falling and although tempratures have risen above there near Baltic levels the town is still sitting on top of the freezing level so all is good for a bit of riding in what looks like a very good start to this winter season!

Got up to Lognon for around midday. Would have been sooner but the locks were all frozen on my car so I had to wait for it to melt a bit.

I was so excited to be skiing on such a beautiful sunny early winter’s day that I forgot my camera. So here’s a picture from the 13th December 2008 instead.

There’s plenty of snow up there, and the recent rain has packed the original layers down a bit to fill in some more of the rocks.

There’s no queues during the week, and you won’t have to share the classic off piste with many people. With the hearse out and plan joran the only way of getting back from the Lavancher bowl, that whole area must be a pleasure for those lucky few to live in Lavancher.

On the whole, there’s plenty of fresh powder to be had at the moment if you know where to look and with few people around and no snow forecast for a while, now would be the time to get a few hours skiing in before things get hectic.