TR: Champex 2/22/2004

Resort: Champex, Switzerland
Date: 2/22/2004
Temp: +6C
Wind: Still
Snow: Hard to spring
Sun: Variable

The huge dump on the Italian side never made it into Switz or France. High winds shut down all the upper lifts on Saturday. On Sunday, the clouds started to break but still no new snow in Switz. The foehn started blowing over Saturday night, which meant warm winds at altitude. Out of sheer boredom, I went to Champex to get a few turns in. Not bad, but not good either. Offpiste was weird - thin soft crust on top of soft spring snow. Each turn would break off a couple inches of slabby crust, which would follow me down the entire slope, building with each new turn until I was riding down with a pretty large sluff. After a pretty large slab broke off, I gave up on the offpiste and took to the red run and did a few top to bottom speed runs.

And now, on Monday, it's snowing! Grrr....oh well.