The Laplagnet.Com La Plagne Snow Report

Surveying the snow conditions

Sunday 25th April final words from Lauren

The winter season in La Plagne is now over but the resort will re-open for summer on 16th June until 28th August 2010.

If you're thinking about booking up for next year, or just fancy reliving last winter all over again, why not check back over our archive reports to see how conditions changed throughout the season.

We'll be back again in December with our regular updates on the snow conditions in La Plagne, but in the mean time, we're off for a rest! Thanks for reading and have a great summer! :O)

Sunday 25th April final words from Lauren

The season has come to a close in the Paradiski after five months of great skiing on excellent terrain. Even with some of the highest temperatures I can remember in a ski resort in April, the snow stayed put until the unofficial final day yesterday.

A couple of the main lifts were open yesterday in order to give that work on the mountain an opportunity to ski after the last tourists in resort left on Saturday. From Plagne Bellecôte the Arpette was running as were Les Blanchets and the Colosses. In Plagne Centre the Funiplagne Grande Rochette was running but not a lot more around resort was running yesterday.

For me, my last off-piste morning came on Saturday. A group of around fourteen of us and a couple of Evolution 2 guides from Montchavin went for one last mission to try and find some powder. We warmed up down the piste to Bellecôte and took Les Blanchets then the Carella up to the top of the Roche de Mio. We managed to find a gully off the back off the Roche de Mio that had just enough snow in it to get through and it looked a little sketchy at the top but the snow was actually soft and easy to get through. As the gully opened out at the bottom of the Bellecôte glacier, the snow became slightly heavier but with a faster speed it was ok.

Up on the Chalet de Bellecôte chair lift in order to join the Bellecote bubble mid-station and up on the glacier plateau we jumped onto the Traversee chair to get over to the ridge which joins the North Face of the Bellecôte to the Friolin or the south facing side. From here we took a route that I had never done before which is always a bonus. We skied some hundred metres down a couloir on the North Face which was one hundred metres of fine powder! We then traversed the ridge line in order to get all the way over to one end of the face that we wanted to ski on the other side. It was a difficult traverse, very difficult and the snow conditions on the ridge made it a lot worse.

Once we reached the drop in point the snow seemed to instantly flatten and soften and from top to bottom we had flat, soft on the slushy side snow which was easy and fun to ski. We stopped half way down for some Champagne, cheese, bread and saussicon and then finished the run at the Bauches chair lift with tired legs from the heavy slush at the bottom.

At the top of the Carroley there was one last off-piste run to be had and that was a run known as the Salla which is straight off the back of the Carroley and Dos Rond lifts in the Montchavin-Les Coches sector. I couldn’t believe it was possible to get all the way through the dense forest at the bottom. There were a couple of times where we ski trekked across heathery type bushes to join a patch of snow but it all added to the fact that it was the last day of the season!




What’s On Guide
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[1] Generally described in more detail in the resort avalanche bullettin (e.g. altitude, aspect, type of terrain etc.)
[2] Additional load:

• High: e.g. group of skiers, piste machine, avalanche blasting
• Low: e.g. skier, walker
• Steep slopes: Slopes with an incline of more than about 30°
• Steep extreme slopes: Particularly unfavourable in terms of the incline, terrain profile, proximity to ridge, smoothness of underlying ground surface.

This is an indication of status at time of writing. Please check latest situation at the lift stations before setting out.