Sainte Foy Tarentaise : 06 February 2021
There aren’t many people to witness it, but the snow has been living a strange and interesting life of its own recently. As seen in the lead picture, it came down thick and fast, leaving a wonderfully wintery ‘couche de neige’ all over Sainte Foy Station.
We have also seen temperatures of -10˚ with brilliant blue skies and spectacular hoar frost forming on the trees and other exposed surfaces.
One morning, after a particularly windy night, we woke up to find pine tree seeds scattered all over the freshly fallen snow of the day before. They had been blown out of the cones on the pine trees in forest, carried in the wind, and settled in powdery snow hundreds of yards away. It was a strange and almost unbelievable sight. They were everywhere!
I’ve often wondered how pine trees end up growing in strange and inaccessible places, this must be why!
Then, this morning as the sun rolled slowly over the horizon, it lit up millions of grains of Saharan sand in the sky. The peculiar orange glow is almost enough to make you think you’ve woken up on another planet! Perhaps this afternoon I will get ready-gritted, orange snow landing on the path up to the chalet?
The French newspaper, Le Parisien, helpfully explains the phenomenon.
And finally, in another shift from normality, this afternoon I will have to watch the Six Nations rugby from the comfort of my own sofa, rather than the jostling noise of excitement and a pint of Guinness for company, in the pub. Hey-ho, strange old world!
Read other articles about Sainte Foy on the Time to Ski blog page
