Masses of snow but poor visibility

The good news about our snowpack is that we have exceptional amounts of snow for this time of year. An instructor friend who has worked in Méribel for quarter of a century says he can’t remember there every being this much snow at Eastertime. There is almost 2m on the Saulire summit and plenty on the lower runs. Not surprisingly, the snow is beginning to degrade after so many days of strong sunshine. The slopes are beginning to ‘transform’ into spring snow, with hard snow early in the morning and slushier conditions on warm afternoons.

In these spring snow conditions, it’s generally best to start skiing on the sun-warmed east-facing Tougnète side of the valley and then cross over to Saulire side later in the day once these west-facing slopes have received some sun. Once the clocks go forward this weekend, the snow will remain hard for longer in the mornings, so why not enjoy a lie-in and a later start?

Today, however, a peasouper of a fog meant none of the slopes received any sun at all. For a few glorious moments, the top of Saulire was in sunshine, then the clouds rose up and swallowed the mountains in dense murk.

Now, I loathe skiing when I can’t see where I’m going. I can get lost even on pistes I know intimately and quickly start to feel disorientated and nauseous. After one run down an invisible Biche piste, we gave up skiing as a bad idea and retired to the comfy sofas in the Panoramic restaurant for coffee instead.

Should you find yourself playing blind man’s buff in zero visibility, here are a few tips of how to cope:

• Keep skiing from one piste pole to the next. Something most people don’t know is that that the right hand pole has yellow band at the top. As long as you keep to the left of the yellow-banded poles, or to the right of unbanded poles, you’ll stay safely on the piste.
• Follow somebody down the slopes.
• Try going higher or lower to get out of the clouds. Often there is a band of cloud at a certain altitude and the viz is much better above or below this level.
• Go low to find tree-lined pistes. The slopes around Méribel’s Altiport are particularly good on poor viz days.
• Be prepared for feelings of nausea – queasiness is quite common in flat light. Some people say taking travel sickness pills help. I asked Méribel’s pharmacist what she recommends: her advice is to take Griffonia pills and Coca to ‘help calm the parasympathetic nervous system’. I don’t know whether this works, but it might be worth trying.
• Give up skiing and have a nice lunch instead.
• And if the clouds still haven’t cleared after lunch, you can always take the lifts back down into the resort.

Do you have any top tips for coping on foggy days? Please do add your suggestions below….