So here goes nothing with my first blog.

Sunday 17th February.

After a few days of snow fall the clouds finally cleared on the saturday and working all day meant that  it would be well tracked out by the sunday, so a tour was in order to get some fresh. After eyeing up the Col Du Chardonnet for a while but having no one to do it with I managed to convince a snowboarder friend to tag along, with him borrowing my split board and me being on skis for my second ski tour.

We had some nice choppy powder down to the glacier and then started the skin. There were two tracks in place, one to either side of the glacier and we opted for the left had track as it would see the sun sooner and it was well below zero. After 2 1/2 hours we had reached the Col, with this being at 3323m  the last half hour of climbing was quite hard after not climbing at altitude since the summer.

The route up and down was very similar. The col is between the Aiguille du Chardonnet and the Aiguillette D’Argentiere.

We were considering taking on the Three Cols but as there were loads of tracks going over the back we thought we would have much better skiing going back down the South-West face as the only tracks on that face were the ones going up!

Just reaching the Col, the going was tough up there!

The snow on the decent was amazing, about 30-50cm  and so light, we had over 800m vertical of fresh powder, which was well worth the effort on the assent. Finishing back with a blast down the home run at Grand Montets we were back in town by about 2:30pm.

Only the skin track to be seen!

Missed the photo!

Fresh snow down the the glacier…

A really nice, easy ski tour with great rewards. Recommended.

Until next time.