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 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):
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| After the lift and traverse, the skin track at Le Tour. |
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| From the French side a last view of the Mont Blanc. |
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| After the skin the boot pack. |
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| At the Grandes Otanes first view into Switzerland. |
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| From the Swiss side, view back towards Les Grandes Otanes and the pass. |
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| Fun lines and glaciers all around... |
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| ...as well as constant reminders to not get carried away figuratively and non-figuratively... |
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| Seracs of the swiss Glacier des Grands |
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| Approaching the village of Trient |
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| Not so shabby view from our lunch terasse |
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| Very bad group picture with Relais du Mont Blanc in the background |
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| Those swiss sure have somer tricked out ski busses... |
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