Awesome powder in Megève

17th January 2015, by Dave Watts

Stanford Skiing owner John Kinnear cruising through knee-deep powder on Rochebrune on Saturday morning

Avid followers of my blogs will remember that on Friday night it was snowing and 20cm was expected by Saturday afternoon. In fact, more than 20cm fell overnight and the snow continued till late afternoon. We caught the first lifts up to Rochbrune at 8.50am on Saturday morning and were rewarded by untouched knee-deep powder on ungroomed pistes and wonderful cruising on 7cm of fresh snow on top of groomed pistes – delightful.

Sadly, my hosts John and Kathryn Kinnear who own Megève specialist tour operator Stanford Skiing, which has bargain unpretentious but great value and well-situated chalet-hotels, had to go home mid-morning. Their daughters and son-in-laws were coming out for a week and the parents were required in England to look after the children. Tough on them but great for their daughters (who run the company at the UK end).

After they left, their resort manager Jonnie showed me round the pistes under the Princesse gondola, opened for the first-time this season because of the new snow. These are lovely tree-lined trails that make seeing in snowfalls much easier. One of the delightful things about Megève is the number of tree-lined trails, which makes skiing delightful in falling snow when higher resorts such as Tignes are often unskiable because of white-outs or high winds.

After lunch at the new, trendily decked-out Folie Douce, I left late afternoon on Saturday and headed for Samoëns (part of the Grand Massif area which includes Flaine). More news on that this week.

• france
• megeve
• megève
• powder

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