First turns of the season

On Sunday I went to one of my favourite ski areas in the Chamonix valley: Les Grands Montets. They are not yet open (false alert for this last week-end) so a great “backcountry” destination for yet another few days. Les Grands Montets is about 5 miles up the Chamonix valley from Chamonix the town and has its base at 1252m (4,107’) and culminates (for the lift served part) at the Aiguille des Grands Montets at 3295m (10,808’) which translates into a nice 6,700’ vertical feet drop. All in one long steep run… If that did not qualify for favourite, I’m not sure what could.

I did not climb any 6,700’ on this my first skin of the season but got up about 4,000’ and was able to ski half of that (the rest was walking with skis on the backpack). The good news is that my first turns of the season were all powder turns as in the good dry and crisp stuff so hopefully a good omen.
Below are some pictures taken at Les Grands Montets proper and also on the drive in and out (click to enlarge).
What the town sign to the center of the universe looks like:

Looking east as the climb starts from the base of Les Grands Montets is the Bec Rouge Superieur:

Top of Bec Rouge Superieur with chopper these are everywhere all the time in Chamonix (mostly serving the huts and rescue missions):

Looking west accross the valley are a myriad of Aiguilles (needles) here is one I like:

Driving back home I got this shot of the dents du Crocodile (dents=teeth):

...and the eternal Aiguille du Midi:



Snowline

Was back up on Mont Veyrier this morning and found a little snow as early as 3,600’ which is always encouraging and we do need all the encouragement we can get in this pre-season to a slow to start season.

Since the winter adventures are still a bit off in the future I will take this opportunity to introduce the one who has been (next to Mike) out with me on the most tours: Skadi Askmo.
Skadi was born on August 26th in Park City, UT. She is the youngest of eleven puppies: she has six sisters and four brothers. Skadi (née Belle) is of American and French ancestry as she is a black Labrador and great Pyrenean mix. We got her at age eight (weeks) and although her name was a charming Belle we had to rename her, if you can’t figure out why click here. She is a very smart dog, great montaineer and pathfinder and an enthusisatic skier. Her prefered snow type is supportablre crust.

In keeping with her name, she loves the snow and so she enjoyed this morning’s outing:

I think this the side she tries to promote on most shoots:

Did I mention she likes the snow?

Orienting yourself around the Plan de l’Aiguille

Was back up to Cham yesterday morning, started from the “Parking des Grepons” and went up a bit over the mid station of the Aiguille du Midi at the Plan de l’Aiguille (aiguille is French for needle). One of the starkest contrasts between the alpine massifs and the Wasatch or even the Rockies in general is 1) how low you start and 2) how high you can go. As an example, here in Annecy I live at barely 1,500’ and when I start hiking from the valley floor in Cham I am at just 3,388’. As a comparison, in the Wasatch we mostly work on the last 3,000’ culminating at about 11,000’, so essentially in the 8,000 – 11,000’ band. As an extreme here you can start skinning/hiking at 3,388’ and culminate at 15,776’ (Mont Blanc summit) a whopping 12,388’ climb! In reality that is rather rare, first because there is only one summit where this is even a possibility, and second because most people will skip the few first thousand feet by using a tram or another mainly because the first few thousand feet are not considered very interesting. In any case we here typically start a lot lower than in the Wasatch and gain a lot of elevation even without doing any laps.


Yesterday I started hiking at 3,388’ and culminated a bit above the mid-station at the Plan de l’Aiguille at 8,100. Once there I took the pictures below.

In the pass between Mt Blanc and the Dôme du Goûter (litterally the "snack dome") and hidden behind is the Refuge (hut) du Goûter which is a stop on the way on the "normal" ascent route when summitting Mt Blanc. That hut is now getting a major makover, to find out more click here. 

On the picture below note that the distance between Aiguille de l'M and the Aiguille Verte is 3.4 miles. For more info on Aig. Verte click here and for the Dru click here.

Ever heard people tell you about boredom on Canadian glaciers, weell it doen't have to be a universal thing...

More stuff taken yesterday, just because I had it...



New base camp: Annecy

We are finally “substantially” moved in to our digs in old Savoie (Savoy, for you rare non-French speakers out there…). Jana really went to town on the whole interior décor/furnishing/eternal-color-picking/buying-stuff-then returning-stuff-rebuying-other-stuff etc… Anyway after spending the better part of the last four months with contractors or in furniture stores, I have joined the French national uprising and also gone on strike, not so much against pension reform as in NO MORE HOUSE CHORES THIS SIDE OF THE DECADE! For the unaware few; we did not pick Annecy so that I may become some sort of domestic virtuoso but for the one and only reason anyone should move anywhere: The Mountains. This is the very watered down version, the only one that could make it through the heartless consorship authorities (Jana).


In any case, I have now been able to pick up where I left several months ago, and now finally get to spend some quality time in the mountains around here. My training hill in PC was Iron Mountain (reasonably flat and 2,000 ft el gain); well I have found a bloody perfect replacement here with Mont Veyrier (unreasonably steep and 2,400 ft el gain) on the east shore of the lake (about six min from home). I have done some skiing on the glacier in Tignes but still can’t wait for actual snow skiing as opposed to last season’s black ice skiing… I was quite jealous looking at Tyson's Snowbird pictures from his Oct 29th outing. Having said that, I am really grateful for Tignes (opened on Sep 25th) its only drawback being that it is a two hour drive from here.
My short workouts are Veyrier and my weekly “biggies” are at the center of the universe: Chamonix (about 50 min from here). There I gain 4,000 – 6,000 feet on the week-ends getting ready for the season. I typically will get up to the “Plan de l’Aiguille” and further up that side or around the Brevent on the other side of town (starting from the Brevent lift). This is the kind of mountain that won’t tolerate any sloppiness at all at any season for any reason, if I dress or equip even a tad bit light on a summer day, it’ll serve up some bloody snow and ice storm just three to four thousand feet up from where people go to the pool! I appreciate the warning, although last time it was very close to throw me down a really, really long and steep cliff band with a wind so powerful I had to fight back a lot plus use my hands just to keep from taking flight. As you can see, this mountain is an absolute blast!

Below are some pictures taken on my Mont Veyrier training rounds in Sept and October (sequentially in chronological order) and after that a little of Chamonix also in chronological order but starting in October.

Taken from Mont Veyrier (click to enlarge):

Taken in Chamonix:

Chuting it down

Today Mike and I went to Wolverine Cirque entering and exiting from Alta. Conditions are getting generally heinous so we figured we go do some chute skiing. We skied both east and north facing between aroud 40 degrees, including boot packing up one of the shutes and the pack was hyper solid no signs of instability at all.
Our first ski was down either The Huge Chute or Tips and Tails (we will have an agreement on that after exhaustive analysis of the photo finish…). The second one we did was Bombay (there is consensus on that one). The picture below is of the entry of either The Huge Chute or Tips and Tails (click to enlarge)…

…and this one is of me and Mike in the cirque (photoshoped i.e. although the mountain details are real that configuration is not):

How extreme is extreme skiing?

Ever since Patrick Vallençant, Anselme Baud, Pierre Tardivel and others launched the movement while people like Doug Coombs, Shane McConkey and others brought it further, extreme skiing has fascinated a lot of people including this writer. Incidentally all these people and many more died on the mountain. A question that I think is not fully answered is: What is extreme skiing? We all heard of the easy clear sounding definition “if you fall you die”. That would somehow settle it; that If you are on a line where a fall could/would be fatal you just skied an “extreme” line. Alright, so is it any-fall-on-this-line-will-kill you or is it a fall-on-this-line-can-kill-you? I think the difference is not insignificant as a lot of places you could die on are not necessarily that extreme. Also, what is an extreme skier? Someone that got lucky a couple of times on some hardcore lines or should it be a more regular occurrence? If so, how regular? Is an extreme skier someone that does X number of descents down a Y degree line or higher that are no shorter than Z elevation loss? As a caution to anyone feeling frisky you can see Garett Bartelt's fall by clicking here.

Red Pine

Today we went in to Red Pine from the White Pine trailhead. We went there partially because it is a spectacular drainage (especially the upper part beyond Red Pine lake) and also because with our current lack of snow cover you definitely want to remain as high as ever possible. Turns out that even when staying high, the snow quality is now marginal on essentially all aspects and the cover is thin enough for you to hit the occasional rock. On the positive side: The weather was gorgeous and we did not witness any signs of weakness in the snow pack. Below is a picture of an east facing line in upper Red Pine with Whit Baldy in the background:

The picture below shows the undefined “we” in the first sentence above. From left to right – James. Scott, Mike and yours truly:

...and finally, just because the snow quality is marginal, it does not mean that no skiing is going on: