A magical winter wonderland - at last!

Well it's been a week of very odd weather here. We've gone from freezing cold with high winds, to heavy snow last Monday creating havoc on the roads in the space of a couple of hours to pouring rain as high as 2000m the next day! The main road in Vallorcine became a river and avalanches roared down the valley slopes, closing the road to Vallorcine for several days this week.
But we could still snowshoe, albeit a bit damply. Once again we found that snowshoeing was one activity that could be done regardless of the weather and whilst it was a bit depressing to set off in the rain, this soon because snow at altitude and the snow under-raquette remained surprisingly good. Some views would have been nice....but the snowy forest was pretty.

Nevertheless the numer of times I have snowshoed in the rain during the last 19 years here could be counted on one hand - and two of those times was this week!

Then yesterday it all came good - big snowflakes were falling all day and soon we had a good half metre of fresh. Everything was white and beautiful, a magical winter wonderland. What a great way to start 2010!