powder

And so it begins…

/ joelevanschamonix / 1 Comment

I have not posted a blog for over two months but with all this recent snowfall in the Alps it looks like things will start to change. I failed and bailed on a few alpine routes in september and I have spent the last two weeks in Finland which has been amazing, I got lucky with the skies and witnessed my first Northern Lights which is by far the most impressive sight I have ever seen!

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The Northern Lights, taken in Rovaniemi Just inside the Arctic Circle, Northern Finland.

After being back in Chamonix for two days I was already in the Aiguille du Midi que with skis, Compagnie du mont Blanc getting ready for winter with a 11am opening after snowfall, and I was going to meet up with Charlie Boscoe and Tom Grant.

There was SO MUCH SNOW! It had snowed a few inches down in the valley at 1000m so we knew there would be a fair amount at 3842m and there was, around 100cm of perfect cold powder. After a very scary swim down the arete we had our skis on. Tom and a few of his friends had already dropped in the north face and skied down the south face of the arete so we could see that it was stable and deep.  Me, Charlie and his friend Matt decided to ski the south face also and after a couple of falls by me, getting back into skiing!, I was down ad ready to get some photos of the boys dropping in!

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Snow was blowing everywhere, you would think it was mid January!

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Charlie Boscoe getting some early season face shots on the south face.

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And the result!

After the first ski down the arete we met up with another one of Charlies friends who suggested the Petit Envers, We knew we would have to hike out but it is October, this was a great idea as it is a pretty mellow return to the midi and there was some deep light powder to be had!

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Charlie and Matt on the top section of Petit Envers. Loving life.

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Trench digging!

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One of me where I manage to stay upright.

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Three happy people!

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Starting the skin back up to the Midi, I’m thankful to Ben and Charlie who did all the trail breaking through the deep snow!

A great start to the winter, I ended up having my first apres ski too and I am paying the price now. Fingers crossed for more snow and some early season touring.

Contamine-Grisolle, Tacul Ski descent

/ joelevanschamonix / 2 Comments

Contamine-Grisolle. II AD. 350m

Initially I wanted to go up and climb this route on the Monday with the intention of skiing powder on the North Face of the Tacul. However when checking the webcams on Monday morning at 6:30am you could see nothing but cloud so we decided to bail on that idea looking at Tuesdays forecast we thought it would be a much better option.

Rising early on Tuesday there was some cloud visable from the valley floor but upon viewing the webcams and seeing no cloud up high I was straight on the phone to Emily and arranged to meet at the Aiguille du Midi at 7:30.

We were at the top by 8:30 after a slight delay and down the arête with our skis on by 8:45.

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Skiing from half way down the arête we already had some nice powder turns with just over 6” of fresh snow. Skis on our feet made the approach to the base of the triangle very quick and we had our skis on our back and crampons on by 9am.

The start of the Contamine-Grisolle is on the far left of the Triangle behind the lowest rock spur.

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To start there is a 150m 50’ slope to climb before you hit the first rock step and mixed gully.

Emily climbing the lower snow slopes before the first rock step.

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The first mixed gully was easy to protect and we moved together up it fairly quickly, we were slower than other groups but they didn’t have 188cm planks of wood on their rucksack, which made negotiating some of the narrow trickier sections of mixed quite a delicate operation.

A couple of hours in and the wind had picked up and it was really cold, struggling to keep my hands warm I was in and out of hot-aches and cursing a lot!

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There was a lot of mixed ground in the middle of the climb then a few snow slopes that had changed into bullet hard ice in places, which made moving very precarious and slow going. We tried to place protection as much as we could but there were some places where it was not possible so extra care had to be taken.

The exit mixed gully was knackered, a combination of little or no ice and what was there would break easily or was slushy, this coupled with little protection made the last pitch take a while and we were both pretty tired by this point.

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Finally on to the ridgeline and a small mixed climb to the summit slopes.

The wind on these exposed top slopes was blistering and we tried to make a quick pace to get some relief but the altitude and our tiredness made the last 200m very hard. As we had both summated the Tacul in previous weeks we decided to just head down without topping out as by this point it was not looking like we were going to make last bin.

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Above the clouds on the summit slopes to Mont-Blanc du Tacul, with Mont Maudit on the left and the Dome de Gouter ahead.

We walked down the the lower ridge of the Tacul before putting our skis on as the snow was heavily wind affected and didn’t make for good skiing.Watching skiers come down the north face of the Tacul on our ascent we could see some great snow and some nice big powder turns, this is what kept us going throughout the climb. The ski down was amazing, and not just for the end of June! Nice powder and so much fresh to be had as only about 3-5 skiers had been down.

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We made a quick descent of the Tacul and tried to carry as much speed as we could off the bottom so we had less walking to do back up the arête. It was hard going because of the long hard day we had but we just made it to last bin, a couple minutes late but we were on it!

Thanks to Emily for another fantastic day Climbing and Skiing, and another Epic!