Snow report Pyrenees Orientales, 02/10/2020

Snow condition

Start at 1800 m and there is already a good meter here. Above that, everything is very well snowed in, except for the purely south-facing slopes. In the basin at 2300 - 2700 definitely 2-3 m of snow. A little less at the top of the ridge, but still better than anything we've seen here so far. As this is rather a rarity at Puigmal, we give it 4 stars for the excellent snow conditions.

Snow quality

The usual: In the morning, everything is frozen hard as concrete due to the day/night rhythm. From 11-12 o'clock the south, west and east sides become soft, the mighty Puigmal north side with its excellent ski terrain remained a single wall of ice all day. Rarely have we seen such a massive icy slope. We initially wanted to go up it, but then had to give up despite the rather moderate steepness (30-35 degrees) and crampons, ski down into the basin and ascend via the west-facing ridge. Here the snow was much softer and more pleasant to walk and ski on. From 2900-2800 m on the north side there was some settled powder snow!

LLB reports 1/2. The south-facing slopes here are mostly unloaded, the rest is still far too frozen to go down. In general, however, with the rising temperatures and increasingly high sunshine, there could be a few big falls here in the next few weeks due to the enormous snow depths. In the north, even on moderately steep slopes, there is a very high risk of falling because the ice is almost completely bare!

Overall impression

Puigmal is a really impressive mountain on the border between France and Spain with a lot of snow at the moment. Despite the fantastic weather, our joy was somewhat dampened by our ultimately aborted adventure on the icy northern slope of Puigmal and the large number of people by local standards (certainly 50 people on the mountain, almost all Spanish). In the end, we reached the summit after some delay and quite exhausted, and the descent, at least on the south side before reaching the basin, was firn fun at its best. The next goal is set: To ski the Puigmal in powder snow!