Skip to main content

Sale

Save up to 50% on past-season products, online only.

Shop Now

Free Shipping on Orders Over $99

Orders are shipped within 1-2 business days and arrive within 3-10 business days. Need it sooner? Concerned about the environmental impact? Flexible shipping options are available.

More Details

Earth Is Now Our Only Shareholder

If we have any hope of a thriving planet—much less a business—it is going to take all of us doing what we can with the resources we have. This is what we can do.

Read Yvon’s Letter

Ski Report from Patagonia Europe

 /  Dec 11, 2007 3 Min Read  /  Snow

Start_face_2Yannick Clévy of our IT dept. at Patagonia Europe’s offices in Annecy, France just wrote in with this report about the early season conditions they’re seeing across the Atlantic. Regular readers might remember Yannick as the French-speaking, cliff-dropping, steeps schralping author of the earlier "dawn patrol" post Climbing Foot with Backbag.

If you’re planning a trip to the Alps this season, a full account of the early-season conditions close to the Patagonia Europe offices in the southern Alps is available here on Yannick’s blog, Team Dré Dans le Pentu (rough translation: Team Point ‘Em Straight Down). The site is in French . . . but the pictures aren’t.

It’s a good thing we just picked up our first decent snowfall in the Sierra, else the jealousy might have been unbearable. Here’s an excerpt of Yannick’s update:

Deep_powderEarly snow in the alps ! Or "SNo-vember skiing" !

November (Sno-vember) was incredible in Austria with meters of snow and an early opening of all ski resorts.

French’s alps (Patagonia office range) was not so bad too, with 2 weeks snowing and cold weather. Just enough to make first turns of the season, and get back on this nice feeling of powder skiing!

Inthe_face_2We went to the Mt Sulens witch is a small mountains, 15 minutes drive from Annecy office. This place is the local beginner ski-touring summit with only 1800m height and a "flat" normal route.

We choose this place because there were no under layer of snow, and this place is full of grass!
Going height sometime is not good, you just broke (hurt) your skis on the rocks bellow the powder snow.

DogThe local dog, from the restaurant near the car park climb many times to the top with groups of skiers ! Don’t seems tired to see this beautiful landscape with the Aravis surrounded. You have a nice view of the Mont Blanc too from this place.

I found a tricky couloirs with not a lot of snow to ski from the top. ItMandalaz_montblancsounds really stupid, but finally it was a good time of laughing !

After a lunch time at the top, we did the first descent of the season.
Times to times some bad sounds remembered us that we were only in November !

We feel that this season can be better than last year (the warmest one).

Since this date, weather changed to a warm period, and rain clean up the mountains from snow…

We hope that those early turns were not the last…

[All Photos: julien voignier / Barj-team.com]

Popular searches