JANUARY 30th, 2015 - ARGENTIERE, FRANCE - 165
Still snowing. We woke up today and found at least another foot of snow on the ground. I am not sure I have ever seen so much snow in my life - it just keeps dumping.
New snow by day. That is 56 inches in 4 days - crazy!
We looked at the forecast and it was supposed to keep snowing all day. Given the experience we had yesterday we figured we would head to the other end of the valley to Les Houches where the entire resort is below the tree line. This resort is known for being the only thing open in the valley when the weather is really bad. Peter and I were going to be the scouts and report back to the girls on the conditions.
We suited up and went to go wait for the bus to Chamonix where we would change for another bus to the resort. When we got outside we could see just how much snow there was.
Peter on what used to be a bus bench
That is one heck of a lot of snow
It took us almost an hour and a half to make our way down to Les Houches, but once we got there we did not have to wait in any lift lines, which was surprising. We made it to the top and got our bearings. We decided to head down to a lift that looked like it might have good tree skiing. The visibility was not great so we figured staying in the trees would be a good idea. The snow was beautiful, but the trees were thick, so we had to stay on the runs for the most part. We called the girls and told them it was not worth the trouble of getting down to Les Houches.
We explored just about every aspect of the resort and could not find anything that was very exciting to ski. It is a great intermediate resort, but for steep skiing, or trees it is not great. We made the best of it and in the end found one run that was fun, but I had a board call at 5:00 and so we decided to head back around 3:30.
It was a good day and we were happy to have experienced the last of the Chamonix valley resorts. The snow is so deep now that if the sun ever comes out we are going to have one hell of a time.