While It Lasts

If you read my posts, you'll know that I love winter, and that I worry about its disappearance due to climate change. I particularly love the peace of mind an Alpine winter affords. Snow or shine, these mountains have become one of the few places where I feel at ease.

This year, for the first time in over a decade, I was fortunate to experience a full winter in the Alps from beginning to end. Spending more time in the mountains allowed me to reflect on my own evolution, and to find optimism that, even in a warming world, winter is still a wonder.

November

The northern Alps got a lot of snow in late November, launching the ski season to a strong start. Nowadays, people might label this an early snowfall but skiing good snow in late Autumn used to be more common. I'm never sure how much to look to the past but having seen many snowless Novembers in recent years, I felt lucky to travel back in time for a bit.

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December

The Alps might look cold, but these days, temperatures can warm up drastically at any time of winter, melting the snowpack even above 2000 metres. Bare ground in winter this high up still feels strange and unsettling to me, even though it's become more common over the past ten or twenty years.

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January

The more you ski, the more time you spend dreaming about 'the perfect day', yearning for more snow, better visibility, colder or warmer temperatures, and so on. If only this, if only that...

January 11th was that perfect day, and I was lucky enough to be all alone. Conditions like this are what all the tourism advertisements and ski montage videos show, but I've only experienced a handful of days like this in my life. Skiing in postcard powder was a bit like reaching life's final level. For just a few hours, there was nothing off in the world, no problems to fix, nothing more to dream for.

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February

While leading a friend down a new line we'd found, I was awestruck by a snow formation below us that I'd never seen before. These shimmering rivulets seemed to form as a temperature inversion caused wet fresh snow to crystalise overnight. They were gone by the afternoon as the wind blew them away.

Mountains environments always surprise me in how ephemeral they are. As in life, things rarely stay as they are, and it's important to appreciate the good before it's gone.

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March

Mid-March saw one of the biggest snowfalls of the year across the alps, with 100 cm in central Switzerland. Further away from the centre of the storm, in the 4-Vallées Region, the snow was still heavy enough to completely cloak Mont Fort.

Returning to this peak after 15 years, I thought about how I'd changed in that time, and how the landscape had too. In 2011, the glacier beneath this snow was much bigger. Today it's almost gone. Back then, I was a teenager too afraid to ski this face. This winter, it was one of my greatest thrills, whereas it's the stumbles of life that have proven to be far more challenging.

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April

Thanks to a big snowfall in early April, there was still a fair bit of snow above 1500 metres for the first few weeks of the month, and the skiing was great. It felt like what I imagine a 'normal' year should feel like, where winter lingers on into spring. Sometimes, I like to pretend that the natural world is in fact normal, and there's nothing out of balance. It's a nice fantasy to live in, if only for a moment.

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May

And just like that, it's over. Temperatures for most of April have been 10 degrees warmer than historical averages and what was covered in snow just a few weeks ago is now hike-able again - about 3 to 4 weeks ahead of schedule.

Despite the unnaturally warm temperatures, I enjoy the end of winter as much as its onset. Experiencing sharp seasonal contrasts like this helps me bookmark the passage of time in my mind, and reminds me to appreciate life's wonders while they last.