A week skiing in Gressoney. You need to hike to find the best turns.

My friend James Thacker along with his wife Alison  run the Off Piste Performance company.  The issue for them was that Alison was about to have a baby.  James asked me if I could take over from him and ski with his  group in Gressoney which is part of the fabulous Monte Rosa ski area in the Aosta valley.
Kenny Grant was the other Mountain Guide working on the course.  We stayed at the Gletcher hotel at the head of the valley in Staffel. This proved to be a great base, it was run by the delightful Francesca.

The brutal truth was that we did not have the best snow conditions because it had not snowed anywhere as much as it had in the northern alps and especially Chamonix.  In addition there had been very strong winds particularly in the Champoleuc valley.   The good snow was hard to find but we were able to do this because everyone was equipped with touring bindings fitted to off -piste skis.

This allowed us to do a mixture of some good tours and we found our selves in some great places .

Plus some memorable descents all which would have been impossible without the flexibility of touring equipment.

Skiing down the col de Zube towards Gressoney.

If conditions can get better than this then I have not seen it.

I spent two days helping Ski Weekend run one of their big events for Polar Capital.  It coincided with a day of significant snow fall where we skied in the trees at Les Houches , followed by an unforecast blue bird day at Le Tour.

Frankly I was a bit sceptical about what the skiing would be like even though the weather was beautiful.  There had been a lot of snow and a lot of wind and the avalanche forecast was posted at 4 out of 5.  Yet when we arrived I was astonished how light and fluffy the snow was.  It was possible to ski fantastic safe terrain making fresh tracks all day.  By the end of the day I concluded that, in 30 years of skiing at Le Tour I had never had better skiing there. Just goes to show the very best conditions turn up when you least suspect them .

Snow and conditions just gets better.

We continue to have excellent skiing conditions .  Reuben and Fiona Berg joined me for a few  days .  On our first day we skied off piste at St Gervais where conditions were first rate .  Plus we sampled the somewhat OTT venue of the Folie Douce where we eat lunch at  the adjacent La Fruitière Restaurant complete with a rather eccentric singer:

The singer is on the right.

The next day we skied at La Flegere.  The snow and conditions were perfect.

On our third day together it was a chance to ski with Antony and Reuben .  It was snowing hard when we turned up at Les Grands Montets to be told that it was closed by high winds.  We returned to La Flegere where the cable car was miraculously running.  We found exceptional conditions which allowed us to ski the front face underneath the cable car where we bounced down on huge pillows of cold fresh snow.
On our final day together we returned to La Giettaz where the tree runs were as good as any tree run in the alps .

Antony in the secret powder stash.

Excess Boys 2019

They are as reliable as the Atomic Clock.  Every 25th January 17.00hrs on wards they can be found in the Savoy Bar in the village of Argentiere.  2019 was no different. I walked into the bar to a fantastic welcome . Several jugs of beer later we had a plan:

We decided on  Les Contamines. Although  Toyota Land Cruiser's have a formidable reputation for toughness  it's a big ask to cram them with  over a 1000 kilos of sculpted, lean muscle .  Still, despite bulging tyres we arrived serenely at the cable car station  and were greeted with beautiful weather and exceptional light fluffy snow. 

We even had a "Gilet-Jaune" taking time out from "agitating" to come and  ski with us.  We just couldn't shake him  off despite trying to push him in a river.

The  day would have been perfect apart  an incompetent lunch where we had to wait for over an hour for our food.  I always thought the French knew how to cook omelettes.

Our second day is traditionally our ski touring day.  The Excess Boys had been nothing of the sort the night before showing a steely focus when they turned up at La Flegere at 8.45am.  They were greeted by the usual Chamonix Ski Station incompetence with a massive queue.  An even bigger queue than normal because the adjacent Le Brevent cable car had also malfunctioned. [Again.]  Still I'm sure the people didn't mind the two hour wait in -14c conditions.

  Luckily for the Excess Boys I got everyone up through the Ski School priority line and we were up and away on route up to the Col du Belevedre high above Lac Blanc.  The weather and conditions were once again perfect and the back drop of the Aiguille Verte is simply stunning.
The ski conditions were so good that we could ski all the way down to the car park.  It was an exceptionally good day out.

The Excess Boys 2019

Helicopter assisted skiing.

The weather at the pick up was not great .  In fact it was snowing quite hard.  It was touch and go as to whether we would fly, yet the helicopter slalomed through the holes in the cloud and found us in the lay-by just past  the village of Chatelard close to the Franco - Swiss border.

We piled into the helicopter and seven minutes later we were dropped in a different world on the Trient plateau.

The plan was then to ski and then gently  skin up to the Col du Tour before skiing down the Le Tour Glacier back into the village of Le Tour.

The issue was there wasn't a  great amount of snow at the top of the col which necessitated Phillipe [my fellow Guide] and my self roping the clients down the steep col to where they could refit their skis.

It was then skiing all the way down to the village and reluctantly back into the cloud.

Thanks to Gavin Foster of Ski Weekend.com  for being there and making all this happen.

Fantastic Off Piste Skiing conditions

Richard Lewis and his good friend Joe Gold skied with me for a few days.  Richard lives near lake Geneva but Joe was coming all the way from Vail, Colorado  and so the bar was set quite high in terms of expectations.
So why not start by show casing the ultra modern lift system the Chamonix Valley has to offer?  There are now no queues to access the mythical off-piste skiing at the top of Les Grands Montets.  The lift company had a novel solution to the queuing , instead of building a new modern lift , they got someone to set fire to the existing one thus removing the need to queue.

So now to ski on the Argentiere glacier you have to walk, which is 100% more pleasant than standing in the old cable car  queue for about the same amount of time.

We enjoyed a wonderful descent and a late lunch at the Chalet Lognon overlooking the massive ice fall.

The next day we headed up La Flegere and the over to the Breche du Berard.

The climb up to the breche is in a world class setting up there with any alpine backdrop.

We finished our time together by skiing in La Giettaz , where there snow always seems to be fantastic.

Bullet hard pistes replaced with cold fresh snow.

Charles Sherwood heads off into the Aravis

Since before the New Year it had not snowed.  Neither had it snowed in the first week of 2019.

Our planned skiing in and around Megeve was looking like it needed to be relocated. The  Plan B had been discussed in readiness for a venue change. Yet the day before we were due to meet not only did the temperature drop significantly but it also snowed.  Even better, the weather cleared  to reveal close to perfect conditions.

Our group was organised by Charles Sherwood and consisted of  his brother Simon, plus some of his other very good friends Peter Folkman, Simon Allen and Martin Smith. I had skied with everyone many many times although I had never met Martin before.

The Bus Stop.

The first day we skied in St Gervais.  We found some delightful meadows to ski.  There was one particularly good descent in un tracked snow .  The down side was that the run ended up at the foot of a Poma lift [that unbeknown to me ] hadn't actually opened for the season.
Luckily there was a shuttle bus. Nevertheless  it did lead the group to allude  to the   Napoleon quip about his  Generals : Do you want a good Guide or a lucky Guide?
No harm was done and we even got to eat in the  quaint restaurant  Sous Freddy's run by the  Mountain Guide Olivier Curral , who for his sins was once the guardian of the Gouter Hut.  [ Food has improved.]

January 11th We skied in Combloux.  The descents were excellent.

Lunch was at the  Auberge de Bonjournal.  This was all very merry.  Possibly the  "on the house " Genepi was the cause of the days principle accident.  One of the group fell into a ditch while  not rejoining  the piste.

the one in the middle didnt get any higher

On our final day together the 12th January, our plan for the day was to ride the lifts of Praz-sur-Arly and then ski down into Hauteluce, from where we would take the short bus ride to Les Contamines.  We then planned to ski off -piste from the resort.  Yet when we arrived at the car park the weather was looking like a "jour blanc." I decided that we would be better off skiing somewhere else.  Mind you the indifferent weather did not stop the local balloon festival taking off. Or not, as was the case with the balloon in the middle of the photograph.  This one suddenly fell out of the sky.  It was while driving out of the car park that we saw the balloon  drapped all over a house and the passenger basket had lodged itself in the windscreen of Mercedes- Benz

Instead we skied again in Combloux and Les Geittaz.  The snow was still very good and the trees helped with the visibility.  Yet an attempt to find even more pristine meadows was thwarted by some uncooperative bushes which created much hilarity and the observation that anyone who followed our tracks assuming an uninterrupted powder descent , would at best, be surprised.

The winter Season so Far

Andrea raises the Women's Varsity Cup.

This season our eldest daughter, Andrea started skiing before I did even though she is at University in the UK. She went to Val Thorens, to captain the Varsity women's ski team to victory. In addition, she won the Giant Slalom and came second in the Slalom.

For early season skiing, Val Thorens is often the best bet because at 2300 meters it is the highest ski resort in Europe.  Indeed, the Vanoise received a lot more early snow than the Haute-Savoie and  Chamonix. Here the resort was slow to open and in order to wake up my ski legs it was necessary to go to Courmayeur where the conditions on and off the piste were excellent.

Although Andrea is now qualified to teach skiing in France and she has started on the long road to become  Internationally qualified.  What this means is that she has to pass the Eurotest which is a Giant Slalom Race.  She thought she should at least go and see how much work she needed to do to pass, by entering the first qualification race of the season in  in Alpe d'Huez.  I decided to go with her because it was an opportunity to explore a new area.

I now know that Alpe d'Huez and Les Deux Alpes are not the same resort badly pronounced, but in fact two distinct resorts facing each other across a valley. We drove from Chamonix in about three and half hours and stayed in a quirky trendy hotel, Les Grandes Rousses, which Andrea had managed to get us a good deal on.

Les Grandes Rousses Hotel was on the piste.

It was quirky because the we had to share our bedroom with a meter-high rainbow-coloured polar bear which was someones good idea of interior design.

Needless to say the weather the next day was awful.  A blind man galloping by on a horse would have known it was not safe to run an Elite ski race, but Andrea still had to turn up, sign on and get her race bib, all at the rather grim hour of 7.45hrs.

queuing for the race bibs

At 11.30hrs the race was canned.

Can't run a race if you can't make out where the sky starts and the ground stops

The race was rescheduled for 12.00hrs the next day.  It snowed all afternoon and then it finally started to clear in the early evening.
The next day the weather was stellar. Andrea did her two runs but missed the qualification time by 0.4 of a second.  She at least knows it is attainable.

This is the race slope. Believe me it is steeper than it looks!

waiting for the race slot

Next, our middle daughter, Florence, returned from her first term at University in the UK.  She too wants to qualify as a Ski Instructor having passed the entry exam last year known as the " Test Technique", this is as it might suggest a test of your technique.  The next stage for her will be the 10 day course known as the "Cycle Préparatoire."  The only snag in this plan is that as a Ski Instructor you also need to be able to snowboard and teach snowboarding. Florence therefore needed to learn to snowboard.  She set off to do this with no real plan but plenty of determination. After subjecting herself to mild concussion she lay down to reflect on what she should do next.

day 1 of snowboarding

So with a day off to recover, Florence then asked one of her friends to give her a few pointers. We asked who this might be and if she is any good at the snowboarding?
She's my school friend and she is the Freeride World Tour Junior Champion, Anna Martinez. Progress was rapid but it allows the opportunity to roll out the well worn joke :

What do ski instructors and snowboard instructors have in common?
Answer: Neither can snowboard.

The bad weather had resulted in a good dump of snow and the conditions became good. The best
off-piste skiing in the Chamonix Valley is currently at La Flégère where there is a good depth of quality snow :

Off Piste at La Flégère

Christmas Day was wonderful.  The skiing at Les Grands Montets was excellent. After the unfortunate burning down of the lift station, access to the glacier is by an hour's skin from the top of the Herse chairlift, so slightly less time than standing in the horrendous lift queue. The big plus is you arrive in a trackless pristine wilderness.

Les Grands Montets looking down Combe de la Rachasse.

So all in all conditions are quite well set up.  Happy New Year.

Christmas Day: The one day a year that the Seaton Family ski together.

PS ; Andrea is a great Ski Instructor and  can Snowboard .

Arete de Marseille. The classic of the classics.

Making the most of November ,  a "nothing month" between the end of the summer and the start of the winter can be a challenge, yet what we did might prove to be a very good template for future years.

A call from my friend and fellow Guide [retired] Bob Barton suggested that we should go climbing in the south of France seemed like a very good idea.

Bob flew from his home in Scotland and stayed the night with us in Chamonix. The next day we set off for the south of France.   I was particularly keen to try and climb in Les Calanques.  Bob was just keen to climb on  dry rock.  This world famous climbing region was an area which was missing from my climbing CV.  Like a lot of climbers , I  heard it had  the  reputation for being the best place to get your car broken into by the Scroats that live in near by Marseille.  This had always made me luke-warm about the place. Yet  once I had sussed out a strategy to minimise the chance of a car break in , my one and only attempt to climb in the area had been thwarted because the whole of Les Calanques National park had been shut by the imminent of risk of forest fires.

Nevertheless the challenge of getting from Chamonix to Marseille and also climbing on the same day does require a bit of pre-thought.  Therefore we hit on the plan of driving to just before Sistereon where we had identified an ideal winter crag which faced south and accordingly received  the suns full rays. This was at Châteauneuf-de-Chabre above D942 along the river La Méouge.

Yet the plan did not factor in steady rain.  After four hours sitting in a car we at least needed to stretch our legs , hence we went to look at the crag.  Rather unexpectedly the rain stopped, the sun came out , the rock dried out and we climbed for about four hours  in an idyllic situation .

As dusk set in we headed for the Mediterranean passing through Aix-en- Provence and eventually arriving in the sea side town of Cassis.

Cassis in the rain

Despite it chucking it down with rain , Cassis was busy and finding anywhere to park the car  in the small port was a challenge .  We fortuitously stopped in a parking bay for a Hotel.  It seemed like a reasonable place so we went in and found our selves a room.  We ended up staying there 4 nights and using it as our base to climb in the area.

On our first day in the region we decided to climb in the La Ciotat area.  The town was originally famous  because it was the setting of one of the first projected motion pictures, L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat filmed in 1895.  It was also where Petanque  was invented.  Its a bit like bowls , but played with a giant  metal ball-bearing and a bottle of Pastis.  Petanque is almost a French national sport.

Plus La Ciotat  has some of the weirdest rock I have ever seen or climbed on. Yet the first challenge was to actually find the crag because it was located behind some very expensive real estate. The owners had decided to reroute the path to the crag and the guide book editor had failed to pass on this information.  Mind you we didn't help ourselves by asking directions from what we thought were fellow climbers , but we failed to spot the flippers and lead weight belts in the back of their car.  They gave us a set of useless directions and we ended up walking into a botanical garden and concluded we were in the wrong place when we were confronted with a big "Escalade Interdit" sign.
About an hour later we arrived back where we started , found the path and the crag. [Hind sight and all that.]

Walking to the Crag

The rock is actually solid

We climbed on the weird rock , which is a type of conglomerate and finished the day with a mountaineering excursion to climb to the summit of Le Capucin.

Between Cassis and La Coitat there is a spectacular " alpine road" called the Route des Cretes D141.  This was to be the departure point for our attempt to climb on the crags called falaises de Mallombre near the  Semaphore which is a modern light house and naval communication center.

Once again the crag took some finding in part because  our route to the crag was over complicated by a helpful local mushroom-picker giving less than accurate directions , despite his help eventually we did locate the crags. However we were not impressed as all the routes resembled mirrors where you could see the reflection of everyone who had ever attempted the climbs and therefore made them impossibly difficult for their grade.  In the afternoon we decided to explore some more of the area and bumped into two local women , who new exactly where to climb.  They proved to be a wealth of information on the local climbing area as well as their view on potential car crime.  They advised us to completely clear out the car if we planned to climb in Les Calanques close to Marseille.  I asked them what they thought was the route we should try and climb.  They suggested the Arete de Marseille on La Grande Candelle.

Despite an initial poor weather forecast , we decided that this route would be a fine objective. The path to the climb starts at the University car park.  It was about an hour and half's walk to the foot of the route.  Once again I made the mistake of stopping two students who were out for a walk and asking them to confirm we were on the right path for La Grande Candelle. Uncannily  like the previous days , these girls were only too happy to offer us spurious directions and even tell us we were in the wrong place and should turn around.  We thanked them and this time ignored their advice.

 The weather was decidedly  windy and there were some significant spots of rain, but the weather forecast was for the weather   to improve and we pressed on.  This  meant we had the route to ourselves and therefore made it an even more exceptional climb in a unique situation.

The spectacular arete de Marseilles on La Grande Candelle.

The first pitch is  the hardest. yet after the experince of the previous days climbing it was  straight forward and solid positive climbing.  The pitch which makes the route famous , is the start of the second pitch. It requires you to step/fall/jump from the pillar to the main arete. It is spectacular , but it is surprisingly simple.  A further five or so pitches of immaculate climbing leads to the top and a 30 meter rappel dumps you back on the return path.

Looking down the arete

Bob sporting his special badge

So I had finally climbed a route in Les Calanques.  It was worth waiting for.  Yet it seemed that we should ride on our success and return to what is arguably the most popular area.  En Vau.


 This is a place steeped in French climbing history and where among others Gaston Rebuffat cut his teeth to become one of Frances most distinguished  climbers [and writers of mountaineering literature.]

 We identified the route called La Moitie-Moitie as the route to go for .  We drove up to the Col de la Gardiole and parked the car.  From there it is a question of walking down a track [partly tarmacked] virtually to the sea.  Although it is understandable that access is restricted it is also annoying to be constantly passed by military trucks and forestry vehicles who in the latter case , it seems that there only function was to drive up and down the track making sure that no one else drives up and down the track.  Whats more when I flagged down one such Forestry official to ask him if he knew where our climb was he hadn't a fucking clue.

Once located ,the climb was superb and this being mid November we saw no other climbers.  The weather was perfect.

En Vau

We then walked back to the car , sorted ourselves out and drove to Sisteron with the intention of climbing on the crags opposite the Citadel the next day.  This is exactly what we did before driving back to a rather chilly Chamonix

A resort with issues.

Economists will tell you "invest in the resort and the people will come." In Chamonix there seems to be the view: Don't Invest and the people will STILL come. People would joke about the "third world" lift system saying it just added to its charm.  



Some Background

 Then around the new millennium  someone within the Powers that Be had the bright idea that they should target a "better class of skier." But not  better skiers, just skiers with more money. It was theorised that people with more money generally only want to ski in the sunshine, so the logic was to reinvest in the lifts on the south side of the valley i.e.  Le Brevent and La Flegere. and  spruce up the center of Chamonix with some posh shops - hence the arrival of the Chanel Boutique- [which has now gone again.] So, firstly Flegere and Le Brevent were linked with a horizontal cable car thus creating a larger ski area . The Brevent /Plan Praz telecabine was rebuilt and a new Index cable car was installed. When it was pointed out that skiing on the south side meant the snow deteriorated quickly in the afternoon , the official thinking was wealthy skiers don't ski in the afternoon, they eat lunch. Yet the project was half baked because they never got the cafes and restaurants sorted out. The choice is laughable. At the top of la Flegere cable car there is a cafe called the Foehn. This is supposedly named after the Foehn wind, the same disastrous wind that frequently shuts the cable car leaving thousands of skiers trapped on the mountain very regularly. The decor inside The Foehn cafe gives a nod to the Eden Project with savanna grass like  carpet stuck on the walls and spot lights that hang down like triffids. It sells insipid coffee and car-wash sponges purporting to be  flavoured muffins at eye watering prices. In the same building down stairs there is a restaurant which provides DIY incinerators loosely based on table top barbecues.  These barbacues have a two stage job. Firstly they allow you to burn your own meat and cheese which creates a thick impenetrable stench.  The smoke then accomplishes the second job of completely blanking the jaw dropping view  through the un openable windows. Over on Le Brevent there is La Bergerie, which is okay, but only as long as you don't go  down stairs into the cafe where you will be treated as an inconvenient annoyance. The whole thing bumbled on for many years , then there were some big infrastructure warning signs that even a blind man galloping by on a horse would have seen.  

The Vallee Blanche Eggs


Firstly there was the high-season breaking down of the Eggs which traverse the Vallee Blanche from the Aiguille du Midi to Helbronner. Last year this made international news headlines. Many people went home with some memorable  stories. For example , being plucked by helicopter in vertiginous rescue would be up there with anyone's holiday memories. Meanwhile others were "lullabied" to sleep in the Eggs. If that wasn't fun enough, on their eventual "hatching"  the next morning they were  presented with a free voucher for another  complimentary trip. Yet it was arguably last winter which marked the start of the slippery slope.  During a winter storm the cable which suspends the Eggs snapped sending the Eggs to the glacier floor.  


The Aiguille du Midi Second section

Next there was the saga of the Aiguille du Midi damaged cable. This, don't forget is one of the biggest generators of cash in France and it is meant to be the 3rd most popular "natural" tourist attraction in the world after the Pyramids and the Niagara Falls.  Well the second stage broke down for the second time in six months. Firstly the tractor cable , which pulls the cable car up, was replaced. Soon it turned out to be rusty. Rumors flew about that this was because there had been corners cut in the sourcing of the cable. These were categorically denied. The new cable was defiantly sourced in Switzerland and this time the lorry transporting the bobbin did not get stuck under the railway bridge in Argentiere. The new cable was up and running by mid summer. It was during a routine check in mid July that a 60cm section was found to be damaged. Again rumors started flying - the most popular was that the permafrost had melted and the mountain had moved, causing the cable to be out of alignment. Whatever the real reason know one seems to know . What is agreed upon is that this won't be fixed until Christmas 2018 may be January 2019.


Le Brevent

Moving across the valley to the other side of Chamonix to the Brevent , while the Plan Praz telecabine is the bench mark of a modern unit, the same can not be said of the Plan Praz /Brevent cable car. Presently the cable on this also being changed.  It was at the point when they had completely dismantled it that the engineers had the eurika momment to experiment with  a new tractor cable.  Perhaps in the context it isn't surprising that they are struggling to get it up and running again?


La Flegere

Moving along the valley we arrive at La Flegere. Regular users will be accustomed to the depressing queues which go with trying to shoe-horn skiers into a cable car that is no longer fit for purpose. As already mentioned it closes regularly due to the Foehn wind , but in addition the motor regularly burns out .




Le Tour

 At the head of the valley in the village of Le Tour it is universally accepted that the telecabine is in dire need of a new one. It was 'old' 30 years ago. Now the pylons are unstable and again rumors suggest that even the people who work on the lifts are scared to travel in the bubbles because they are worried that they will spontaneously self detach . There was and is  a plan to rebuild the lift. It was to start from a slightly different place. A place that not everyone in the village could agree upon. There was a petition signed arguing that the new lifts departure point would disadvantage certain businesses.  The whole project stalled and consequently there has been little economic alternative other than to put a "sticking-plaster" on the current lift and hope it gets through the next winter season.

 Les Grands Montets

Moving back down the valley on the north side there is Les Grands Montets. This is considered by many to be " the jewel in the crown" of skiing in Chamonix. It has some of the best and steepest skiing terrain in the world. It is mythical. It was also the first resort in the valley to have "Ambassadors."

These brave people  are there to break the news to you that the whole Grands Montets experience is not going to be quite as good as you thought it was going to be. This is often because the queue is too long , or the lifts have broken down , or because the chief Pisteur detonated a preventive avalanche that  ploughed through the middle of the Plan Joran Restaurant.

This next season the Ambassadors are going to have even more to explain. The challenge will be to explain how the roof caught fire and destroyed the Lognan lift station, bringing down the cable and causing upwards of 40 million euros of rebuild.
How the roof did catch fire is a matter of conjecture . But it all seemingly stems from cost cutting: The building needed a new roof but it was judged that patching it up would be fine. So a local contractor was employed to use a flame thrower to melt and spread hot tar over the biggest holes. Only it went wrong.