Posted as guest by davidof:
Hi Andrezej
I’ve noted Mic’hels and Pascalou’s comments. You need to be fairly careful about the avalanche risk comments on the forums. A specialist from the French forecasting service has already mentioned in the French forums how they can be incoherent at times. I think people try their best but for example on a day recently when someone noted « pas vu de coulées » I noticed their group had skied directly in front of a long point avalanche.
When people say « l’air bien plaquée » they either mean as Pacalou said that they observed evidence of slabs - fissures, whoumpf sounds or also as they climbed a slope towards a col or ridge the powder turned to much harder snow (plaque dur) which when they probed with their poles was resting on an insubstantial base (depth hoar or sugar snow).
As Mic’hel observed, often slabs are difficult to detect - they may be covered by fresh snow or may be soft slabs (plaque friable) which are essentially dense powder with some cohesion.
Regarding current condtions. Take care. There was a lot of fresh snow (50-80cm) coupled with strong winds from the North-West to South-West on Friday/Saturday and again strong winds from the North-East last night and today. Expect fresh slabs on slopes sheltered from this wind.
The warm temperatures on Saturday have stabilized the slopes below 2000 metes a little bit but the risk is high further up. There was a fatal avalanche a couple of years back on the Shoulder of the Colon which killed a man that had the shop opposite my parents in law’s appartment in Grenoble and of course a skier was killed in the north of the Belledonne on Sunday afternoon.
