Get up high with Adret & Dent de Burgin chairlifts, no queues

This has been a very topsy turvy winter. Usually, the season starts bitterly cold and gradually warms up. This season, however, the weather has been extraordinarily mild throughout, making it, according to the French Met Office, the mildest winter this century. Yes, there has been plenty of snow, but there has also been an unusual number of gales, cloudy or foggy days and rain too.

March in Méribel is a month I associate with sunshine and increasingly balmy weather. My reports at this time of year are mostly about eating on sunny terraces, sunbathing and the slow transformation of our snowpack from powdery to spring snow. Not this March, however. The temperature has plummeted recently and this past week has seen two major dumps of snow and lots of little snowfalls too. And far from spring snow, there is lovely dry and soft snow all over the mountain. 

After each big snowfall, there is an inevitable delay before the top lifts reopen. This is frustrating for those of us itching to get into the powder, but necessary for avalanche blasting. 

It's a good idea to listen to the local radio station, R'Meribel, which has an excellent report on the lifts and pistes each morning around 8.20 in French, with an English language summary shortly afterwards. This tells you which lifts are due to open at what time, allowing you to plan your itinerary and cunningly hop onto the lifts that will take you to the best untracked snow before anybody else.

It's also a good idea to avoid the Chaudanne when the top lifts are still closed because large queues form here. I like to get higher up above Méribel and use the Adret and the Dent de burgin chairlifts instead. These two fast lifts normally open at 9.00am even on days when all the top lifts are still closed, and they give access to lots of easy pistes and easy powder skiing. These two lifts never seem to develop any queues either.

The snow on piste is currently in excellent shape and the powder off-piste is gorgeous and light and fluffy, except for exposed ridges where it's wind-blown. As today's photos show, we've been having a lot of fun bouncing around in the pow on the off-piste areas around the Dent de Burgin and Loze chairlift. 

One word of warning: if the blue Boulevard de la Loze piste is closed, please don't take it. This path gives access to lots of tempting off-piste and I often see people stepping over the big 'Danger of avalanches' sign. It's closed for a very good reason - big avalanches can sweep over this path. If you don't believe me, ask the people who run the Rhododendron restaurant at the foot of this hillside - years ago, an especially big avalanche took the roof off the restaurant. The lift company does everything it can do to prevent skiers going down this closed path, erecting netting and putting up danger signs in four languages. Should they also employ ferocious dogs or armed guards, perhaps?