Snow report Valle D'Aosta, 01/02/2017

Snow condition

Although low down in the valleys cover is poor, at the far end of Valsavarenche, in the tiny hamlet of Pont at 1900m of altitude, we could skin straight from the car, and ski back down to it easily at the end of the day. The track up through the forest to the Rifugio Vittorio Emanuele II was fat and friendly, and except for a couple of open crevasses near the summit of the Gran Paradiso, snow cover was total.

Snow quality

There was a lot of snow, but it could be described, at best, as a mixed bag. The day started cold, and never heated up enough to soften any of the higher slopes between 2800m and 4100m, and apart from a few patches of bulletproof-but-smooth, wind-carved sastrugi and ripples were the order of the day. Lower down, below 2800m, sun-softened skiing could be found on south and west facing slopes, and there were even a few pockets of relatively-untracked powder hidden in north-facing gullies and chutes.

The official forecast for the whole of the Aosta valley, a curiously broad judgement, is a simple 1/5. We saw a couple of patches of suspect-looking windslab on a few prominent convex slopes up high, but they were easily avoidable. We briefly chatted to one local man on his way to a nearby peak who, when asked, seemed perfectly happy with the level of risk to be out touring on his own.

Overall impression

I've wanted to go up the Gran Paradiso, the tallest mountain entirely within Italy's borders, in a single push for quite a while now, and today, with nothing better to do, a couple of friends and I decided to give it a go. We left Chamonix at about 0430, drove slowly, and left the carpark at about 0630. "Who brought the map?" I asked. "Do we know where we are going?""Oh, it's somewhere in that direction," Dan replies as we sprint-skate along the path, trying desperately to warm up in the fiendish night frost, and he waves his arm flamboyantly in a 120 degree arc. "It's the big one, we can't miss it. "Several hours later, we don't miss it. The view is incredible. One day, we'll have to come back and ski it with something in the way of good snow, instead of the odds-and-sods that we found. A great day out anyway, chasing away the final Christmas and New Year demons.