Nearly one and a half meters of snow for Verbier
The last week has been very kind to those in resort
After a long spell of endless sunshine and little snow over the Christmas and New Year period, Verbier has been hit with nearly 1.5m of snow over the past week, creating amazing conditions all week long.
On Thursday the resort awoke to a fresh coating of 30cm of snow, with conditions on piste being fantastic all day. Before the snowfall the runs were suffering with several icy patches, but since then these have all been covered, and now the pistes all over the resort are fresh and soft once again.
I spent the day cruising on-piste around Attelas and Lac des Veux, as well as lapping the off piste of Mont Gele and Fontenay a few times. With bright sunshine, it felt glorious to put some turns in on as much as 40cm of fresh powder. With almost 100cm of snow building over the weekend, the piste bashers have tried hard to keep the pistes hard and groomed, but given the constant and significant snowfall, the fresh snow depth on the pistes has been between the 5cm to 15cm mark. While these aren’t necessarily great conditions for practicing race or slalom skiing, they do make for incredibly playful and forgiving terrain, with little need to worry about crashing as any falls are dampened by the soft snow.
The worries of a receding snowbase are now well and truly gone too, as the new snow has covered many of the exposed rocks and tree stumps that were exposed beforehand. The base in resort has jumped half a metre from 30cm to now 80cm, and the snow depth further up the mountain is 190cm in places. With the incredible snow conditions but low visibility on Saturday, I headed over to Bruson for some epic treelined skiing. The snow was light and waist deep in places, getting a little heavier lower down the mountain. Conditions were similar if not on a par to those you’d expect on the west coast of Canada, with face shots and big snow sprays every other turn. The side piste heading down from the top of the Pasay chairlift provided lots of fun and easy powdery conditions, and the off-piste routes from the top of the Grand-Tsai drag lift such as Canadian Trees and Elephant’s Graveyard were incredible.
A slight rise in temperatures over Saturday night and into Sunday has meant the snow off piste has turned quite heavy, although still soft and fun to play on. The avalanche risk has also increased dramatically, shooting up to level 4. This means it’s highly unrecommended to venture off piste without any safety equipment, and even with equipment one should be extremely careful. Most of the main lifts in Savoleyres and Bruson were open on Sunday and Monday, but over the Medran side it was only the Mayentzet, Ruinettes, and Chaux Express that were open, as the avalanche risk was too serious in the higher parts of the resort.
With the sun predicted to come out on Tuesday, it should be a terrific day on the mountain, and hopefully more of the resort will open. The snow up top is likely to still be fresh and very deep, which could make for some epic riding conditions for the week ahead. One thing’s for sure, there’s now plenty of snow on the pistes for the grooming team to work with, so the conditions will be great for all levels of ability for the foreseeable future. The forecasts are all suggesting that the weather could remain quite moody and unstable for the next week or two, with the clouds coming and going to make for sunny and snowy weather. January is often a month of cold spells and heavy snowfall, and many people around resort are hoping things will continue the way they’ve been for the past week, with intermittent sunshine between decent falls of snow. For now though, conditions are great, and everyone’s happy.
