The weather forecast was correct last night. It did snow. When I woke briefly just before 6.00am, it was falling heavily. At breakfast time though the snow was disappointingly thin around us, ending just below the village, the Lauterbrunnen valley still a mix of greens and browns.
At Mannlichen however the landscape had been transformed. Off piste, the snow was still paper thin (with a few tracks through it all the same), but on piste a couple of centimetres had transformed tired pistes. For the first time in a while, we were skiing on real snow and not man made ice.
It was dull this morning, but after a while the sun turned up. Later, it snowed again heavily and that has lasted into the evening. It has been cold as well, with a temperature of about -3.5 degrees at Holenstein close to midday.
It hasn’t snowed nearly enough to allow any of the many closed pistes to be opened and it will take a lot more of the white stuff for that to be even a possibility. There are probably many runs which will not open this season at all. Still, in the words of the song, let’s accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. After two consecutive days when I have praised the the snow as the best of the season, today was better yet again.. There is just a chance it might improve tomorrow.
A cold, snowy day with empty pistes brought 8,268 vertical metres in 17 lift rides and 44 kilometres travelled.
Idle thoughts from a mountain 