The Yellow Gnome Awaits

To day Reuben Berg and I went to Les Contamines and climbed "Les Nain Jaune Attends." This is a route with a great name with a yellow Nome who is on hand to welcome you at the top.

Perfect spring snow in the "Combes des Mort"

At 2400 meters there was 50 cm of fresh snow the other night. It settled down very quickly so Andrea Florence and I skinned upto the Grand St Bernard Monastery to spend the night. The girls entertained themselves by jumping off the roof of an out house into a massive bank of snow.
This morning I had the best skiing I have everknown down the Combes des Mort

Plan B

Chris Dovell and I drove over to Grindlewald and headed up to the Monch Hut in glorious weather. The plan was to climb the Jungfrau and then ski down. But the next morning we awoke at 5.00am to blasting winds. We went back to bed. At 8.00am we were in the middle of a full blown storm and had no choice but to go back to the valley.
Instead we gave up the idea of skiing and went rock climbing for two days. Yesterday we finished by climbing in Italy just past Aosta at Arnad. We climbed the classic route of the area the "Bucced'arancia

Gran Paradiso 4062m

So we have had more snow coupled with high winds and mixed forecasts. Chris Dovell and I looked at the weather and decided to head to Italy. Yesterday we loaded our skis on our backs and walked up to the VITTORIO EMANUELE hut.
This morning we left the hut at 6.30am and battled our way through strong winds to reach the summit by 10.00am just as the wind dropped so that we could have a cup of tea on the top.
We skied back in half an hour. We would have been back home quickly but the Mt Blanc tunnel was closed due to a lorry full of milk that had overturned spilling milk all over the road.