An amazing week!

A week ago the forecast was "iffy", the weather turned cloudy Sunday evening and the next few days, whilst not looking bad, did not look really great.

How wrong that forecast was! It went from good to better to amazing! The snow was generally great for snowshoeing (although pretty blown for skiing above tree-line) and the weather cleared to perfect by Tuesday - the clarity of the views was exceptional.

This was a week where we were able to do everything we set off to do and by the end of the week we'd run out of superlatives to describe the conditions. We did classic snowshoe summits in France Switzerland and Italy and also had a wonderful two days at the Grand St Bernard Hospice where there were only 6 other people staying. It must be said that the snow there was blown to bits and I was grateful not to be skiing. This meant that there were very few skiers around, but snowshoes will plough through anything and plough they did.

The weather has now changed and tonight they are forecasting 70cms of snow over in Courmayeur and 40cms in Turin! We are just hoping all this will stabilise for next week in the Aosta Valley. Meanwhile for this week we have a mixed forecast but already today was okay in the woods with fresh snow. And over here on the north side of the massif we are somewhat protected by the Föhn so let's hope for a week half as good as last week, which would be just fine.