In contrast to the excitement and crowds last weekend as the lifts opened for the first time of the season today was a more relaxed day. First thing this morning down in the village it was pretty overcast and damp so we were surprised to glance at the web cam and see it was sunny at the top. Temperatures have been high during the week and the snow at village level in Zinal has suffered, overnight some light rain turned to snow and at village level we had a little snow.

Up in the ski area a little more snow fell so we had a few centimetres of powder off-piste and ski conditions were probably better than last weekend with empty slopes as a bonus.

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Delayed from last weekend the lifts opened at Zinal today. Two chairs, the Corne de Sorebois and the Chiesso, along with Remointze drag lift and of course the cable car from the village. Snow conditions are pretty good, there’s a base of canon snow on the piste topped up this week by some significant snowfall. Something like another 20cm or would be needed to full operate I’d guess and the Piste de l’Aigle back to village is going to need a lot of more snow to open.

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I’ve been wanting to get out skis since the snow fell and today presented the best chance. There’s not so many places here in Zinal it’s safe to ascend solo, climbing into the ski area is awkward because some sections of the route are exposed to avalanche risk and looking over yesterday the cover’s not brilliant anyway.

My plan was always to go to Grimentz and climb up there for a couple of reasons, the snow base should be better as I think they’ve had the cannons going on the lower slope and there’s a track that meanders up through the woods which is ideal to ascend and the route isn’t exposed to elevated avalanche risk. The plan worked well with the only mishap of the day being that I made a flask of coffee and forgot to put in my rucksack, so reaching 2200m I decided to stop for a coffee only to be disappointed.
There were some tracks on the way up which I hopped into, it makes things easier, from a couple of skiers maybe yesterday from the state of the trail. I’m not sure where they went as there was no descent tracks at all. Obviously the untracked powder is a bonus!

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With the recent snow falls today was the one of first days we’ve seen much sun in Zinal for a few days so I took the chance to get out on some snowshoes around the valley.

I think I’m probably the first person to take this route this season, apart from a few animal tracks I was breaking trail all the way round which adds a certain amount of effort. In fact, there’s as much snow on the track as I’ve seen really, I’m not sure it was practical at all last winter in large sections. The trail is surprisingly sketchy in places though and it’s awkward in fresh snow to say the least.

I was testing a pair of Inook snow shoes from Zinal Sports which I thought were excellent although I found it a little awkward to engage the heel risers on them and a couple of times I nudged the heel lock and locked the shoe down which is slightly awkward. It’s probably one of those things that needs practice though. [ updated : I see on the Inook website that the new model of the Expert I was using has a redesigned heel riser which looks much better.]

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