With over 80cm of snow falling at 3800m over the last 48 hours and with a forecast of Cloudy with Sunny spells, Me and Katsu decided to at least go and have a look up the Midi!

On arrival and after speaking to some local skiers in the bubble who were all heading down the Rond, we thought that it would be a safe bet doing the Gros Rognon, which was really good on monday.

After a short, snowy walk down the arete we had our skis on and the clouds came in.

Skis on and the short steep face to the col was good fun, nice and deep, then we hit the heavy flat snow which leads to the top of the Rognon. This was hard going and almost required skins! After about 15-20 mins we were back on the steeper stuff again and there were no tracks in sight!

Katsu doing her portion of the trail breaking!

Once we were at the top of the steeper face we were in the clouds again. we decided to wait it out rather than waste the ski in complete whiteout.

Ten mins later we had a small window so quickly made our way down the bottom of the face.

The snow was almost up to my waist and although it was not light, it was fresh and it just took a little bit more concentration and strength to ski fast!

As Katsu found out!

She nailed it after a couple of tumbles! Nice big turns in complete silence.

It was nice to look back at a popular route and only see two tracks, and when one of them is your own!

We had a little more hard work in deep snow to get back to a track that someone had put in from the Petit Envers and then it was smooth sailing all the way back to the ladders at Montenvers.

Still cant believe it is May!! No summer for Chamonix this year!

My first day up the hill this winter was on October 31st up Le Tour hiking with a snowboard, and 7 months later I am still on it, and with Powder!

After Tuesdays epic at the Chèré couloir we noticed that the Cosmiques Couloir on the south face of the arête was full of snow and looked like a good ski. Me and Ally then went about trying to find out some information about it and asking around to see if anyone we knew had skied it, but all we could find is that it is a 200m PD climb that is a little short cut on the Cosmiques arête.

Taking this into  account and seeing that it is only 40-45′ we decided to give it a go.

Thursday morning looked like there would be some good weather and with Ally working at 13:30 we knew we had to be at Montenvers by 13:00 at the latest!

We started the route with a reverse of the Cosmiques arête by climbing over the platform and then doing to 30m raps down a couple of chimneys.

Because this route isn’t often reversed we did loose a sling and a couple of pieces of cord for our belays.

After we completed the raps we had a short traverse over to the start of the couloir.

At only 200m long it is not very big but it narrows towards the bottom and was a really good ski and a good extension to the Vallee Blanche!

Due to this couloir being south facing there was a risk of avalanche so I decided to traverse along some footsteps to the other side and rope up for 15m to test out the snow. There was a lot of sluff but I was able to avoid being taken down and made nice powder turns all the way down to the bottom.

Ally coming to the bottom of the couloir. Getting to the bottom we realised that we had less than 1 hour to be at the train, this made rushing down the glacier in complete white out very scary.

When we got to Montenvers we noticed that the gondola wasn’t running and that Ally had 15 minutes to get up the ladders and onto the train, he just made it.

Being the good friend I am I offered to carry his ski’s, 30m rope and skins all the way up the ladders which was very hard going, there was a big group of slow kids going up the main ladder route so I took the more exposed rock ledge. This was a nice hard return from a top class day skiing!

Another sunny day in the mountains with Alistair Hurst, this time we headed up the Argentiere basin with our aim being to ski the North-east Couloir of the Col des Cristaux. I headed up to attempt this two weeks ago but turned around about a third of the way up due to heavy snow and a lack of motivation to boot pack the whole thing on my own. Luckily today I had Ally to run up the thing before me with his long legs, he was at the top one hour before me!

Photo taken from google.

Getting first bin on the Grand Montet we were putting our skins on by 9:15 and started heading up the glacier with about 10/15 other people also going to ski some of the steeps up the basin.

It was hot from the word go with shells off straight away and still being too hot. After an hour of nice easy skinning we were at the bottom of the Col with three people who had just crossed the bergschrund in front of us. Ally thought the boot pack didn’t look that hard with there being some good steps in already when he said about 45 min to an hour I knew that wasn’t realistic for me but it was spot on for him.

Ally looking back down the Col after reaching the top with me just right of center just over half way. It looks a long way down from here and with rocks below you cant really afford a fall, we skied the left hand ridge and then half way down we traverse to the right of the boot pack, the first half was steeper probably closer to 50′ with it getting a little less steep on the lower right hand face.

Ally had a nice hour in the sun while waiting for me to get to the top so he took some nice pictures, this ridge line photo shows the steepness of the Col.

The guy on the right was hit by an avalanche on the lower half which took him about 100m and over the schrund, he skied away fine with his sunglasses on his head, lucky escape!

The view over the top looking towards Mont Blanc and the Grand Jorasses on the left. This was just after midday and the sun was belting down on us at this point which made the last few steps very hard!

Ally dropping in below the big cornice, I opted to rap the first 30m so I could avoid negotiating the rocks at the top.

After putting the rope back in my bag while trying to stay in one place on the face I had a look down at what I had to ski and the nerves set in!

Only making a half dozen turns in the top 200m of the Col my confidence came back just as the snow became very mixed. It was a combination of hard wind blown snow, deep heavy slush and wind slab which made for difficult slow going skiing.

Just after jumping the Bergschrund, carrying a lot of speed into the heavy slush which I still have not found a way to ski properly.

No great turn photos from today as we just wanted to get down and there was no deep powder for the classic fun day out ski photos, It was overall a really good tour which didnt require too much effort, and it is nice to have done another Chamonix steep.

Thanks to Alistair for some good photos.

Todays main objective was to ski the Spencer Couloir which is on the North face of the Aiguille de Blaitiere. I can see this ski line from my balcony and have had my eyes set on it since I changed to Skiing in January. It has only just come into condition as there are a couple of rock bands that have now have good snow cover.

Meting up with Alistair Hurst at the Midi at 8am there were some clouds over the face but the forecast was for clear skies so we headed up in the cool shade which was nice for the hour long skin to the start of the bootpack.

The snow was refrozen slush which was not to bad to climb and there was already a reasonable track in which made the going fast.

When we got to the bottom of the slope we saw some tracks going up the Contamine couloir so decided that would be our best line of accent, so  Alistair started the bootpack with his long old legs, which made it a breeze for me!

This was the start of what turned out to be a very long 800m bootpack that took nearly 4 hours, with me breaking trail for about 50m. Ally needs the training!

More boot packing, this time with me doing some of the hard work.

Getting closer to the top with an amazing view back down to the Valley floor, I can almost see my house from here!

As we got to just below the Spencer Couloir start we came across some windblown snow that had covered up some very big holes.

After Ally nearly lost a leg into one we decided to rope up and have another go at crossing the Bergschrund, this still led to Ally nearly going into a big hole. With time creeping up on us we decided to bail on the Spencer at 2:45pm and just enjoy the powder on the decent without any crevasse rescue.

There was a good covering of firm powder on the steeper slopes with glacial ice being uncovered when you put in the harder turns.

Nice to get some powder after 5 hours of climbing!

Ally putting in some nice quick jump turns on one of the steeper sections.

The good snow continued all the way back down the the bottom of the face, until you hit the slush on the moraine.

A short 15m rappel and we were off the face and started the long slushy traverse back to Plan D’Aiguille.

The traverse had a few surprises in store for us including a number of big holes below heating rocks and some very slushy snow.

This hole Ally fell in started a slide that went on for a good 100m and was about 1m deep, a close call at the end of a long day.

The hole above is at the top of this big slide.

Getting back to the mid station at 4:30pm we had 30mins before we would have had to walk down, so we were glad that we didnt push on trying to cross the Schrund.

A great decent that is well earned after the 1000m of climbing. Next time we just have to do the Spencer…

Entering my 3rd month of skiing I thought it was about time to raise the stakes, so when ‘Cautious Tom’ Grant offered to take me down the Cosmiques Couloir  off the Aiguille Du Midi I jumped at the opportunity.

Having done a couple of Plan D’aiguille laps with Tom the day before I felt safe entering the high mountains with Cautious Tom of UK Climbing mag fame!

Toms lunch break was the only time we had so 12-4pm, so after some careful queue jumping at the midi station we were on our way by 12:10.

After a short traverse  and a 5 min bootpack we were at the start of the couloir. The rappel start was some 15m down and with the risk of a fall being almost certain death I opted to down climb to Tom who was setting up the rap.

I am not yet confident enough on skis to side slip 50′ slopes so Tom opted to save time by lowering me down the full 60m of the rope. Being lowered backwards down a seemingly endless couloir was one of the most intimidating things that I have ever done! But then when you get somewhere where you still don’t feel confident skiing freely and hearing “thats the end of the rope” was allot worse!

As Tom rapped the 30m down to the skiable slope I slowly but steadily side slipped down a further 10m before putting in my first turn on a 45-50′ slope. Which went well and boosted my confidence.

The snow on the top 400m was nice to ski and felt good under foot, then the second half was a little less tracked out and we found some nice patches of powder.

When the Bossons Glacier came close and into view I knew I was safe and I was chuffed I had skied the couloir with out having fallen.

Some traversing later and we had arrived at the top of the Para face with only a dozen tracks going down it, A nice Powder reward after an Epic afternoon.

A bit of bushwacking, skis on/ skis off and we were being chased out of the pikey camp by a bunch of dogs finding ourselves parting ways at the Grepon car park, Tom to go back to work for the evening and me to go and get a well deserved beer and to let that ski decent sink in. All together my best ski decent to date and an Epic afternoon.

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.