l'Épée du Tacul - 2893m

Friday March 22, 2013

This is one of those really scenic Chamonix tours that also offer some fantastic powder and steep skiing.

Between the dramatic rock features, the seracs and infinite snow fields this is the kind of day where I have to pinch myself…

Today Philippe and I decided to tackle the Épée du Tacul.  You start off by taking my favorite center-of-the-universe-tram to the top of the Aiguille du Midi. This takes you 9,230 feet up in no time and you get to start your day at 12,600 feet. It all started in the clouds today and we got worried about visibilty but the day cleared up when and as we needed it to. We skied down the Glacier du Géant via “Petit Envers” all the way down to “la Salle à Manger” (the dining room) on the glacier du Géant. This involves some really nice skiing between crevasses and seracs with some of it on rather steep terrain. By the time you’re at the Salle à Manger you have dropped in excess of 6,000 feet and you haven’t even put your skins on yet!

At the Salle à Manger you ski across the Glacier du Géant till you reach the bottom of the Glacier des Périades at about 6,000 feet or so you get your skins on. You head south east on the glacier while trying to veer left enough to avoid the potential serac falls. After gaining about 2,000 feet you take a sharp left to head north east and gain another 1,000 feet and some till you’re at the bergschrund. From here you ski down in an arc that takes you first south west and then north west for some really fun skiing some of which is a bit over 45° in some shorter sections while the most part is 35 – 40°. You lap this a couple of times till you can’t do it anymore (or it’s getting to late to catch the Montenvers cog train) and you finish off with a 4,000 ski out on the Vallée Blanche. To my knowledge, there are not a whole lot of better ways to spend a day.

Topo map: 3630OT (Chamonix)

Dominating aspect: NW

Starting elevation: 12,600 (Aig. Du Midi)

Elevation where you put on the skins: 6,000 feet

Bergschrund elevation: 9,300 feet

Elevation gain to the pass: 3,300 feet

Here are the pictures (click to enlarge):

View down the Petit Envers slopes, its all quite tasty and its all
before you even put on your skins.

More nice slopes as long as you keep out of those pesky crevasses. The
ones we see here are not the ones we worry about, it's the ones
 you can't see that'll get you...

Skiing around the seracs ads to the ambiance.

These are here just because...

OK, I'll quit the serac pictures now...

Dent du Géant (tooth of the giant) peeking through the clouds.

Looking back down our skin up to the Epee a rescue operation for a guy who
fell into a fairly deep crevasse. The chopper landed four times...

This is the third landing, the second one was for medical personell this one
for extra gear. This must have been a challenging extraction. We were later
told  in one of those amazingly non-descriptive medical formulations that the
guy was stable. It hit me then that dead could probably also be seen as
fairly stable...

Philippe working his way up the Glacier des Piérades.

Halfway up view of the Dent du Géant (4013m) to the right and Aiguille de
Rochefort  (4001m) to the right with Glacier de s Piérades in between

Of the three features here l'Epée du Tacul (épée is sword) is the middle one,
the lower one is Chandelle (candle) du Tacul and the high one is Aiguille
du Tacul. After this it was all skiing so no more pictures...

Aiguille du Calvert (Aravis)

Thursday March 21, 2013

Today I went out to La Clusaz for a work-out that ended up being more fun than anticipated. I went in resort because nobody wanted to go out based on a sucky forecast. Well I got luck as the forecast was off enough and the snow wasen’t anywhere close to as bad as announced.

Some stats for La Clusaz:

Number of lifts:                               129

Tot. run length:                                200 miles

Highest lift:                                      8,121 feet

The best part of Aiguille du Calvert is that you get a fast and efficient 5,000 feet skin and drop and you can be home by about 1pm. Not too shabby…

Here are the pictures of the day (click to enlarge):

La Clusaz - the perfect medival village: To the right the medival church
and to the left the gondola that leaves from the church plaza...

View of the Beauregard domain of la Clusaz

View of la Tournette from "behind".

Massif de l'Etale.

The cross on the Aiguille du Calvert, a place as good as any to find religion...

The view from the Aiguille into a lot of great backcountry ski terrain.

Freaky death week in the French Alps

Sunday March 10, 2013

With 10 mountain death this last week, this is probably (hopefully) going to be our worst one in a while. We are looking at:

8 avalanche deaths

1 fatal crevasse fall

1 tree stub encounter

The first avalanche fatality of the week was on Tuesday when a party of four ice-climbers at Crevoux (southern alps) got thown down the ice fall by a slide. The fall was about 500 feet down and so they never had a chance. It happened at a well known climbing site well named la Goulotte des Enfers which translates into the Gully to Hell.

On Wednesday 2 skiers (one of them a guide) took a ride from just below the ridge line and all the way down to the stream at the bottom of the valley in the Tignes backcountry. Avalanche risk was 3 medium.  The avalanche broke 300+ feet wide and travelled 2,000 feet down, the debris pile was 25 feet deep. It hadn’t snowed but the winds had been quite strong overnight and they got caught in a hard wind slab. 

Tignes avalanche broke just below the ridge line.

The bodies were found by the stream. See the two people for scale.

Yesterday (Saturday) two additional fatalities were counted in the massif du Queyras (northern alps). Avalanche forecast was: High to Extremely High with a special avalanche warning by the local authorities. There was a foot, foot and a half of freshies on an already instable snowpack.

On Friday a resort skier hit a foot high tree stub and gut unlucky enough that it cut off an aorta, he died of blood loss in no time.

The crevasse fatality today was a professional guide from the rescue service who was, with a colleague, doing reconnaissance in the Mont Blanc massif in preparation for a glacier safety class they were setting up for next week. As he was skiing a snow bridge collapsed under him, he got flung 50 feet down and seemingly died of trauma. His collegue was heli rescued out of the area.

Heli rescue in the Mont Blanc massif, these happen
more or less daily in this massif.

Regarding the avalanche tally we are now, for the season, up in 87 people caught in avalanches of which 22 are fatalities. On the bright side, this is a 75% survival rate out of the total caught… One lesson this week's victim stats reinforces, with its two professionals, is that neither the avalanche nor the mountain cares if you,re an expert.

No name couloir of Mont Fréty (Italy)

A compromise tour due to bad weather conditions up high: The original idea was to cross from Chamonix to Italy via the Glacier de Toule but the weather wouldn’t have it.  So we did a smallerv tour starting at La Palud in Italy and skinned up the 3,000 some feet to Mont Fréty to ski the partially gnarly couloirs off of the “Pavillion”. The pictures below were taken during the rare fog breaks so they are kinda overselling the conditions that day as most of the time visibility was quite limited. However once we were on top things thankfully cleared up nicely enough to allow us down this cork-screw entrance of a 55° couloir (first 500 or so feet) that eventually mellowed out to 45° (amazing how mellow 45 can feeel...) after whivch most of it is 40°. Absolutely worth while ski, exciting and epic surroundings, and I can’t wait to get back there.

Topo map: 3560OT Chamonix (French IGN reference) this one covers only a tiny part of our tour and I still don’t know the Italian topo references.

Dominating aspect: NE

Starting elevation: 3,900

Highest elevation: 7,400

Elevation difference: 4,550

Access by car:

Drive towards Chamonix and at the first rotary take a right towards the Mont Blanc tunnel (make sure to ask for a round trip ticket). After coming out on the Italian side drive down a coupled of switch backs and take a left towards La Palud. Park at the second parking lot after the La Palud tram base. Looking up the mountain with the parking lot behind you, cross the road and veer right. Put your skis on the obvious snowfield and start going uphill.

Here are the pictures (click to enlarge):

Our starting point

After missing our start and getting lost boot-packing around with our skis, we
got back on top. This is  the village of La Palud

Looking down to the east is the Italian Val Ferret wich
offers some nice touring choices.

Looking down to the west is the Val Veny which offers endless & epic touring.

Courmayeur in the Val d'Aoste

Jean Claude working in the fog...

After the effort a rewarding lunch at the "Refugio".

Leaving the refugio behind here is a view of the Auiguille Noire du Puterey.
This area is full of classic and epic climbing routes favored by the alpinists.

The mellow part of our No-name couloir, in the higher parts
I was too busy surviving to get my camera out...

Took this one for the ambiance and the characteristic gendarme

JC fighting his way down the couloir...

Our line down no-name

Two couloirs to the right of "ours" I got this shot all the way up to Punta Helbronner

We saw this one from above, this could be our next objective in the area.

View of Dent de Jetoula

Trient (Switzerland) from the Grandes Otanes (France)

I've been fighting a heinous flu caught on the slopes of Saint Jean d'Aulps five days ago and this is the first day I have enough energy to even blog so this tour is already a week old when it's posted.

This was a beautiful cross-border tour on a great initiative by Jean Charles of the French Alpine Club, Chamonix chapter. It is a tour that starts from the top of the lift at the “Le Tour” resort well up the Chamonix valley. Off the lift you have a traverse then the skins come on for a short while as it’s soon too steep for skins so now it’s some mixed climbing (crampons required depending on conditions) for a 1,000 feet boot pack. Once at the pass you have an impressive view on a very remote feeling environment with views of a series of Swiss 4’000 m peaks including the Matterhorn. As much as I love nature watching I got to admit the most exciting part of that view to me was to look down a fun and sustained almost 5,000-foot drop all the way down to the village of Trient in Switzerland. The powder was excellent and fast and not a cloud in the sky. In Trient we had a great slow lunch at the “Relais du Mont Blanc” and then took a bus back to Vallorcine where we changed to a bus for Chamonix.

Topo map: 3560OT Chamonix (French IGN reference) & Swisstopo 282 Martigny or Carte National de la suisse no. 1344 - 1 : 25 000 Col de Balme

Dominating aspect: N

Starting elevation: 6,900

Highest elevation: 8,800

End elevation: 4,250

Elevation difference: 4,550

Total elevation gain: 1,800, I know; it’s cheating… but this is cheating at its best! Actually, we were planning on skinning another 3,000 but we caused two small slides and saw signs of a fair amount of activity around us so we ended up sacrificing the best part of this tour.

Access by car:

Drive through Chamonix and Argentière and continue up to Le Tour, park there and buy a one-way (rando) lift ticket.

Trail access:

Take first the Charamillon gondola then a six-pack “de Balme”, get your skis on for a five-minute traverse going south. Skins come on and you are now going east then you're pretty soon boot-packing still east till you make one of the obvious passes above you. Once on the ridgeline, you will look down into a series of slopes and funnels and it won’t be too hard figuring out “where down is”…

Here are the pictures (click to enlarge):

After the lift and traverse, the skin track at Le Tour.

From the French side a last view of the Mont Blanc.

After the skin the boot pack.

At the Grandes Otanes first view into Switzerland.

From the Swiss side, view back towards Les Grandes Otanes and the pass.

Fun lines and glaciers all around...

...as well as constant reminders to not get carried away figuratively and non-figuratively...

Seracs of the swiss Glacier des Grands

Approaching the village of Trient

Not so shabby view from our lunch terasse

Very bad group picture with Relais du Mont Blanc in the background

Those swiss sure have somer tricked out ski busses...