After the last few days which have been quite frantic with some seriously good skiers, I took a few hours off this morning to catch up on admin, but couldn't resist samplimg the sunshine. Luckily one of my neighbours, Philippe (l'incontournable chef de Service Compris) was up for a break from his cooking pots, so we had a quick scoot round Le Tour: once down the Scandy Trap, a Combe des Arolettes, a Combe des Jeurs and a final run down the Posettes Couloir back to Vallorcine (see photo).

Always good to get out for a few hours....

Anyone watching the snow reports over the last week will have seen the Easter bunny bringing a huge dump right across the Alps. I've been getting emails from clients as far afield as St Moritz and Val d'Isere on what a fantastic time they've had.

Yesterday in St Gervais was breathtaking, literally. On several occasions the depth of the powder required snorkels! I was going to go ski there for myself, but a call from Robert and Gillian meant I could go there and enjoy the experience with them, along with Henry and James. The pictures say it all.......

I've just skied for a couple of days with Mark, Brook and Tim from Utah. They flew in from a weeks surfing in Hawaii, with the airline having lost their skis and then had their jet lag exacerbated by drunken guests in their Chamonix hotel. A tough start and not a great intro to the Euro experience for them.

Meeting Mark on day 1 , he revealed that he works for the winter as a heli ski guide for Mike Wiegele Helicopter Skiing in BC. It got me thinking again about the differences between the European and North American ski experience, given the perennial debate about which is best.

To me, it's not a question of one being better than the other: they're just very different. I ski every year in Breckenridge Colorado at the start of the season in late November. The snow quality is fantastic, even in November: light and consistent. The lifts are well organised (when are the Euro lift companies going to put in singles lines?) and of course the level of service is super high.

In Europe, the big plus factor for me is the vertical interval. I often find North American clients are blown away by both the area and the height differrence in alpine resorts. But above all, the spectacular scenery of skiing in the Alps in general and Chamonix in particular is unparalleled.

On Friday night I got back from one of the best weeks of sking I think I've ever had - 6 days travelling from Verbier to Zermatt on safari with a team from the Ski Club of Great Britain. The Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were the icing on the cake: perfect powder every day, with all the logistical arrangements slotting into place like a well oiled machine (something that is crucual on safaris where we're using taxis, uplift, post buses and even a bit of skinning as well).

I'll be running this Valais safari again on a private basis in early February 2009, so if you fancy a bit of that, then get in touch.

And what's more, I even got a few pictures of myself skiing, something that's a rarity, and even then only from above. However, last week we were aided and abetted in our consumption of fun units by Stuart Macdonald, an aspirant guide in his final stages of training before he gets his own badge to polish in just a few weeks.

As you can see, Stuart takes a pretty mean photo himself!

Day 1 with Dave, Ben and James on the Vallée Blanche - this was their 5th attempt, having been foiled by weather and conditions in previous years. This time we finally got there, though not without queuing for Britain. A queue for tickets at 8.30, to get on a cable car at just before midday, then a pleasant ski down via the Gros Rognon with some great powder for a few hundred meters.

Just before arriving at Montenvers, I had noticed a helicopter hovering at the cable car, and my incident antennae started to twitch. Walking up the steps from the ice grotto, I could see a PGHM mountain rescue policeman administering CPR. A heart attack had happened just half an hour before. Unfortunately the victim did not recover...... We later learned that in another incident, a skier had died in a crevasse fall near the Gros Rognon. The glacier really is in a very delicate state just now..

The queues and the fatality definitely put a damper on what should have been a great day.

By contrast the next day was at the other end of the scale - no queues in Vallorcine in the morning, a lovely quiet skin halfway up to the Col des Autannes, some great skiing on grippy carpet back to charamillon, and spring snow down the Combe de la Vormaine, and an afternoon ski down to Trient in Switzerland with no one else around. I was sat on a chair lift listening to two British skiers commenting how small Le Tour is, and that tomorrow they would be off to the Grands Montets. As far as I'm concerned, the more folk are of that opinion, the better. It leaves the great little resorts quieter for the rest of us!

I thought I'd been as wet as I could possibly be in Scotland.... WRONG!

Wednesday in Les Contamines was the wettest I have EVER been on skis. Even the contents of my rucksack weere soaked. Zero visibility above treeline, slush below, snow rain limit at 1900m. SO WHY were we out there at all? A good question......

Alastair Lee of Posing Productions, makers of Psyche, Set in Stone etc., is looking to turn his talents in an alpine winter direction. He needs to move around on snow, but allegedly skis like Frank Spencer. He does, however, snowboard more than adequately, so a split board solution was finally reached after much internet shopping.

3 days of training in Chamonix followed, with the result that if Al can move around in weather and conditions like that, then when the weather is good enough for filming, it should be straightforward.

On the last day, we had a drier and more scenic day on Brevent, with Al showing what a true pro can do with a camera:

Plus we have some fairly outstanding "making of" footage too....

I just spent the last 4 days ski touring with Peter and Mike. Originally the idea was to prepare for an ascent of the Piz Buin in April by doing some work with crampons and ice axes. In the event, we had quite a bit of snow, so apart from a short section of ice on a footpath in Les Contamines, the pointy things stayed firmly in rucksacks.

We had a couple of days in Les Contamines when the weather in Chamonix was a bit too cloudy to do the kind of tours we were interested in. Even in Contamines, I had to get the compass and map out a few times. It was almost like being back in Scotland the previous week (!), though not as windy or wet!

The Thursday and Friday were based in the Western Bernese Oberland, where on Friday we skied down a totally deserted valley for a vertical interval of 1500m. I had (partially) been joking with Peter that skiing or skinning in someone else's tracks is somehow a less pure experience, and disturbs my "Zen feeling" in the mountains. However, this season I seem to have managed to have quite a few wilderness experiences with nobody else around, something that is very special. It means that I make decisions based 100% on the mountains and not infuenced by what anyone else is doing.

PLUS we had powder every single day :)

Having just spent a week based out of the Stronlossit Hotel in Roybridge, I can once again confirm that Scottish winter mountaineering is the toughest work I do as a guide. For the last 7 years, I've climbed with Darren here in the same week, more often than not in perfect weather with good to fantastic conditions. This year was the payback: two severe weather warnings in a week for gales with 100mph winds, and global warming restricting ice formation to the final few hundred feet of Ben Nevis. Despite all that, we had a very productive time, with Smiths Route on Gardyloo being the highlight of the week. Nevertheless, it required some lateral thinking and a flexible approach to get the best results.

One thing that struck me while we were fighting our way down the Carn Mor Dearg arete was that, far from being outrageously bad, this was just normal for Scotland - high winds, poor visibility -though it would be considered poor to Armageddonesque in the Alps. It just goes to show that, if you can climb well in Scotland in winter, you can climb well anywhere!

PS: Thanks for the photo of character building conditions on Fiacall Couloir, Darren:

While the crowds seethed in Chamonix and the queues on the Midi arete got longer, I've just been away for the week in Switzerland. We had fresh tracks every day , with some sublime powder despite it not having snowed for a week. We saw chamois just a couple of hundred meters away from a piste, and put up a brace of blackcock just meters away on one memorable off piste run. The most common comment from our group is that they were amazed by the lack of people, despite it being a UK half term week and also for the cantons of Vaud and nearby Geneva. On many runs we were totally alone!

I'm not going to say exactly where we went, as that would spoil it all for next year, but if you're smart you can get an idea by checking out my Calendar. Or you can test your knowledge of the alps by trying to recognise the photo to the right. Answers to me on a postcard (or a contact email!).

It just goes to show that, with a bit of intiative, you can get a wilderness skiing experience with no skinning or helicopters required!

I wouldn't normally post just a snapshot from my webcam, but this mornings sunrise over the Midi is one of the best images I've seen from it, along with some awesome sunsets in the summer when the whole face glows red and orange.

It makes you realise once again that Chamonix really is an amazing place to live, and to never take this place or the way of life that goes with it for granted.