Verbier, Switzerland 3/19/00

jon

New member
<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 3/20/00. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR>Snow fell throughout the Alps last week. Mostly in the eastern half of Switzerland and into Austria. The Swiss national avalanche bulletin even reported up to 60cm in some spots. A few friends were caught between two mountain passes on their way to the Bormio in the Italian Dolomites on Friday night when the roads closed. Luckily they found a room at a hostel, but they said it was snowing extremely hard at around 1600 meters. The southern and western sections unfortunately were not as blessed and only saw around 10-20cm. <BR> <BR>My weekend was a bit on the relaxed side. All but one of my weekend days has been spent in the mountains since my arrival here. I had some things I've been meaning to do, so I spent Saturday cruising around in Bern doing stuff that's been put off since January. By Sunday I was ready to go. Took off for the southern valley and hit Verbier. There is not much doubt that spring has arrived in the valley. The grass is green and the birds are singing. Temps were hanging right around 10c in the morning. <BR> <BR>Elevation does magical things for snow quality and snow was beginning to be evident hanging in the trees at around 1300 meters. Through the day, the obvious spring conditions were abundant. Low elevation was icy in the early morning, smooth corn in the late morning, and mush bumps by the afternoon. Good dry snow was able to be found at the higher elevations on the shady slopes. I actually got a grand total of three untracked turns in about 10cm of powder. Lots of chowder in other shady spots. I didn't get much higher that 2800 meters but the snow should get better the higher you go. <BR> <BR>The bottom line is plenty of snow in the mountains. Things should be good for at least another month. Temps are low enough, with the freeze level hanging out around 1500 meters, for more snow. There's no precip forecast for the beginning part of the week but that can change in a hurry.
 
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