Early season ski touring.

Our Base Camp.

 Bill and Greg arrived for their annual weeks ski touring with me. Ski touring requires at least decent settled weather. Yet the forecast was anything but. All my plans in preparation for  interesting tours had  been up ended. Nevertheless we still accomplished a lot of exciting skiing:

Actually on the Monday, the weather was slightly better than forecast although there was high cloud which gave a sort of luminosity to the day.

However  I felt we could probably do something more interesting than we had thought possible the night before. So literally the moment I picked up Bill and  Greg we headed off to Liddes, [my new favourite ski resort] which is about an hours drive in the direction of the Gd St Bernard pass.  We parked the car and then bought three one-way passes at the bargain price of CHF 15. each. We travelled through the lift- system using 2/3 of it which consisted of a 1960s chair and a equally old T-bar.  We then headed up and climbed the Bec Ronde.

Bill on some scetchy ground just before the summit of Bec Ronde

We eat lunch on the summit and then ski down the magnificent wild and remote Valley the only thing was that the snow was to say the least challenging.  but this was more than made up for by the scenery and the setting. We returned via a track to the lift station.

The only other person we sawall day eating his sandwiche on the summit

The day was completed by a visit to the roadside fondue  vending machine.  A unique experience for anyone or anyone who loves melted cheese.

On the Tuesday we awoke up to the foehn wind.  Chamonix was horrible and a grey and a warm wind was just stripping all the snow. Show we took a trip through the "magic snow tunnel" to Courmayeur.  As we came out of the tunnel it was snowing hard. We enjoyed a brilliant day skiing Off piste in un tracked powder before returning back to the Foehn in Chamonix.

On the Wednesday we came up with a radical different plan and headed to St Luc in the Val d'Annvers.

We skied Off-piste from the list list them in really very cold conditions before heading up on skins to the hotel Weisshorn which we intend to use as a base for the next two nights. It was built in 1882 and has remained largely the same since. It is an exceptional place to visit.

Hotel Weisshorn

Thursday we awoke to indifferent weather but still decided to head out and see if the weather improved. It did improve enough to give his encouragement to continue but then, after we done some rather tricky kick turns the weather socked in leaving is it leaving us in a white out on the summit of the Toûno. 

The Toûno

 Yet we were able to navigate off the top and find the entrance to the fantastic North Couloir which provided us with a stunning descent followed by a hours skin back to the hotel where the weather has improved enough for us to have a celebratory beer on the terrace.

Bill& Greg in the north couloir

On the Friday the day dawned clear and the weather was beautiful this was the first good stella day of the week.  No flat light, no wind just blue skies.  We zoomed up to just below the summit of Pointe de Tourtenage. [we did not go to the actual summit, because it had been blasted by the wind, and there was no snow.]

After a quick bite to eat we headed down the rather steep north face. 

looking towards the Touteneage.

Bill eating lunch

 This was somewhat thought-provoking not least because it had a load of wind slab at the top. We skied cautiously one at a time until the slope mellowed somewhat and we had excellent skiing all the way down to the piste.  From where we skied all the way down to the village.

Steep descent

Fabulous skiing

Another Mountain Professional in the Family: Diplôme National de Moniteur de Ski Alpin.

 

Florence in the Land Rover Defender.

Last week Florence successfully completed the final part of her Ski Instructors Qualification and now has another degree to add to her CV. Diplôme National de Moniteur de Ski Alpin, which is issued by the L’École Nationale des Sports de Montagne.  ENSM.  

 It takes many years of hard work even after you have put several years of skiing in since you were a small kid.  Like her elder sister Andrea, they started skiing when they could walk.  Flo skied the Vallee Blanche when she was seven years old non-stop in 40minutes.  She was the fastest 11 year old Super G Champion

So it helps considerably  if you are an exceptional skier just to get onto the programme , even before you are taught and assessed on how to teach.

The Eurosecurity is the final: the last test . Two full weeks  of off-piste and ski touring assessment. [On non glaciated terrain.]

The final day is another speed test - Yet this time its not on skis, but a search for two buried avalanche victims. [ Buried rucksacks not people.]

The  bags are buried one meter deep and 10 meters apart.  The aim is to find and recover the two bags in under eight minutes. Using an avalanche transceiver , shovel and probe. Florence's methodical  preperation and practice meant she found the bags in a few seconds over 4 minutes.

Flo returns home still in her assesment bib.

Now all that awaits is her badge which she will collect from the official ceremony in Paris in May.

The much coveted badge.

Poco Loco Staff Training.

 

Team Poco Loco.

Poco Loco is the iconic burger bar on the Rue du Dr Paccard in Chamonix. Squashed into an unfeasibly narrow gap in the main street it produces its famous burgers.  

The reason it is so successful is probably for many reasons, but one of the key factors is that people like working there.   Poco Loco is smart too, because it has a house where the staff  can stay for a modest rent.  

Thus Poco Loco, by providing dedicated accommodation has circumnaviagted the enternal problem of all alpine businesses based in ski resorts : That is the workers can't afford to live in the resorts, which in turn means the restaurents  bars etc can't find the staff.  

The staff are motivated young people, many, who are exploring the world and this being Chamonix are here to ski and to ski off-piste.  This is where I come into the picture because this year and last year I have run a days training for the staff roughly along the lines of "How to avoid getting avalanched while having a good time." 

The unintended consequence of days like these is that if they are not delivered carefully they can have the effect of " Giving people enough information to be dangerous..." 

A lot of avalanche courses concentrate very heavily on teaching avalanche rescue techniques with heavy  emphasis on extracting the casualty as quickly as possible.  While this is undeniably vitally important, my starting point puts the emphasis more on not getting avalanched in the first place.

So my group of highly motivated skiers and snowboarders, Olive Scarlett Merryn Quentin Gemma and Grace joined me at Le Tour. 

Everyone skied with a backpack, shovel and probe plus transceiver.  We started by looking at the signage provided by the resort.  The avalanche forecast for the day.  It was two, on a scale of five.  I explained that although it is possible to be caught in an avalanche at level two it is very unlikely. 

yellow flag risk level 2

 The issue with level three is that it is going to provide the best off-piste skiing but also at a hightened chance of being caught in an avalanche. 

On a level four day I suggested it was best to not ski off-piste.  Level 5 you did not need to worry about because the resort will  be closed as will a lot of roads.

We talked about the signage at the pistes - Skiing either side of the poles was fine, while ducking under a rope meant there was potentially significantly more challenges and if there is netting, then you should probably not try and climb through it or over it.

Probably best to not climb through..

My aim was to accept that the team were there to ski off-piste- but to make sure they knew what they were getting into. After all there are so many people rescued who claim "They didn't' know."

Next there was an explanation of what causes an avalanche.  It's not snow.  But snow plus wind. With their new found knowledge the group could then see for themselves natures signage.  There are many clues.

We skied some good north facing snow, while also talking about how to organise the group, so that if by chance some one was caught in an avalanche, then the whole group wasn't caught in the same slide.  I.e ski from point of safety to point of safety one at a time..

We looked at how to calculate slope angles, quickly, - [Generally if you can stay away from slopes of more than 30 degrees in marginal conditions then you will be safer.]

On our next run we started by throwing the skis over the shoulder and hiking up to the top of the Tete du Balme.   We dug some snow profiles to see how wind slab is formed, plus how to identify the weak layers

Looking at snow profiles

After which we skied down some challanging remote off-piste, putting what we had learned into practise.

The second key part of the day was to look at what happens if all of the above does not stop you from getting avalanched,or if you come across another group who have been avalanched. 

Above :If avalanched here is a template of what to do first.

So we did full avalanche transceiver searches, plus how to probe, how to shovel, what to do if you are the person caught,

Above :If you are caught you could try this?

Plus loads of other small details like which are the best Apps to have on your phone all which could make the difference between a sucssesful rescue and one that is not.  Hopefully everyone went away wanting to learn more because it is like a lot of new subjects: The more you learn the more you realise what you dont know!  

Continuing the theme of small is beautiful :Arolla.

Mt Collin seen through the fabled Arolla Pines

Charlie Di and Mike have been skiing around Argentire longer than I have. So at the end of their anual trip they were keen to go somewhere different.  So I suggested Arolla which is about as different as it possibly could be.  Situated at 2000meters at the end of a long valley it is a popular summer mountaineering destination.  In the spring it attracts lots of ski tourers and is best known because the Patrouilles des Glaciers ski mountaineering race passes througth the village on its way to its finish in Verbier. [Having started in Zermatt.] Yet for people in the know it also has brilliant lift accessed off-piste skiing. Well by lift accessed this actaully means two very long poma lifts, the second of which drags you to nearly 3000meters.  From where there are plenty of off piste ski descents.

I collected Di Charlie and Mike from Argentire and we drove to Evolne where we stayed at the Hotel Eden.  Charming and clean but had had no real upgrade in about a hundred years.

Dinner was in a restaurent down the main street which was good.  However the evening will be remembered for the charachters who par took in the Evolene festival.

This was some ancient festival which the villagers were determined to keep going.  It consisted of some blokes wearing scary wooden masks, dressed in dead sheep [ legs still attached] ringing cow bells , who took great pleasure in disrupting the traffic.  

My attempt to learn more about the tradition failed to glean anymore despite reading the glossy magazine which ws meant to give the history.

Anyway.  It snowed over night and we awoke to a cold clear day.  We drove upto Arolla.  The women selling the tickets was the retired guardian of the Vignettes Hut who I hadnt seen for 20 years.  We briefly reminist about a particular night when we were both blocked in the Hut for 3 days during a mega storm.-But thats another story.

Needless to say the combination of fresh snow, blue skies and effectively our own private ski resort meant we had exceptional skiing.

 

In fact Charlie [ who has done a lot of skiing in his life] said that it was one of the best dyas skiing he had ever had. 

Unfortunately the next day was possibly one of the worst... The weather changed, the foehn kicked in , it was windy and eventually the visibility disappeared. Life is timing.

One chair one T Bar one Drag + Perfect conditions : Liddes

Adam Symes with the Chamonix mountains .

 

When you know the conditions are good it makes sense to return.  This was my thried trip to the mega resort of Liddes in a week.  It is about an hours drive from Chamonix but worth it.

Adam Symes and I used the chair followed by the T Bar to help catapult us on our ski tour to the summit of .  There had been about 20cm of fresh snow overnight and I was thankful that someone else had ploughed the skinning  track.  

Our goal was the summit of the Bec Ronde, normally a straight forward ascent, but there was still a section where we need to take our skis of to negociate some underlying loose rock.  We summitted at linch time which also coincided withe the wind dropping and so we were able to eat our sandwiches and take in the marvellous 360degree panorama.

Aiguille de Argentiere.

our track with Lake Geneva in the back ground

After our picnic we skied back more or the less the way we had come through some good but frequently challanging snow.  Afterwhich we spent the rest of the afternoon skiing off piste from the lift system.

Before driving home we visited Liddes unique Fondue cheese vending machine.  Highly recommended for the best Fondue cheese in Switzerland [therefore probably in the world?]

A unique purchasing opportunity ...

Conditions are not what they always seem...

 You can awake to lashing rain drumming on the roof and think should I actually be going skiing? Certainly not in a wet soggy Chamonix. Yet investing a bit of time looking at the weather forecast in detail and the web cams and noting the word "Foehn" in the forecast always points to heading through the tunnel to Courmayeur.

This is exactly what Peter Whelan and I did.  We left a grey rainy miserable Chamonix and after 11680 meters of tunnel we arrived to 20 cm of light fluffy snow.

Needless to say the skiing was some of the best so far this season, plus the sun came out and the scene was just about perfect.

Late afternoon and still acres of untracked snow.

Skiing down towards the Peutry Ridge and Mt Blanc

Nearly into 9th decade of skiing.

 

Aiguille Belvedere in the background determined ski tourer in the foreground.

Peter Folkman is one of the few people who I  have "done" the alps ski and climb classics;  Namely: Mt Blanc,twice, The Matterhorn, The Eiger, then on skis the Vallee Blanche and the Haute Route.  Plus in our case countless other adventures including Britains finest climb : The Old Man of Hoy.

So I was delighted when he announced he was coming out to ski with me.  We would the same template as always: Be flexible and go where the conditions were good on the day and hopefully ski in some areas that Peter hadn't yet visited.  [A challange!]

On our first day we skied at Le Tour and then put the skins on for a journey into Switzerland.  The snow was quite blown and the descents were challanging.  We refuelled with a late lunch at the Appage de Balme which is alawys good.

Peter high above the ski station of Liddes CH

On our second day we headed to the mini resort of Liddes - On the road to the Grand St Bernard.  By mini resort it has one chair one T -Bar and one drag plus some excellent pistes and wonderful ski touring.

It is the sort of resort where you phone to ask what time they open and they reply "What time can you be here.?"

The first time I skied here was quite a few years ago the Chris Chataway in the late 90's - The man who paced Roger Bannister when he broke the 4 minute mile.

Our third day we headed to Les Contamines.  It was cold and clear and the pistes were in immaculate condition.

Looking down on the runway at Megeve

On our final day together we visited Courmayeur.  Again it was cold and the weather was beautiful.  The pistes were in great condition and empty.  We had an excellent lunch at La Chaumiere too.

Stunning skiing in Courmayeur with an impressive backdrop