New hat, new snow, new visitors…. It’s all happening. I got a cool new hat in the post today from my lovely mum, who picked it up in LA for me when she was travelling.
New snow has been falling for a few days now in the valley. It was really chucking it down last night. It’s still cloudy and snowing today but due to clear up a bit more at the end of the week, so conditions should be good for my new visitor, my sister Caroline. She’s coming down from Frankfurt by train this evening and I’m picking her up from Geneva station. She’ll be here till the end of the weekend and it’s going to be great taking her out skiing for a few days. I think a trip to Courmayeur in Italy would be good. It’s less than an hour away through the Mont Blanc tunnel and is a really nice day out. Great restaurants, great piste skiing and something a bit different for me too. Even though the area is included on my pass this year I haven’t been over there yet.
I’m back at work today after a marathon 5 days in a row of proper skiing with my friend Phil. Starting off with a full day’s off piste on fat skis in good powder on Wednesday, we then toured up to the Argentiere hut on Thursday to get a bit of experience on skins. Friday was the Vallee Blanche and as it turns out was the least taxing day of the whole week - just a leisurely boot down the punter route & back in the office for 3pm.
Then on Saturday something very different. I joined Mark Gear’s All Mountain Performance special Freeride Frenzy course as the photographer. The special bit was that Arno Adam - the freeride champion of the world in 1999 was the guest star. To get an idea of what kind of skier Arno is, take a look at this clip from his film Do You, Do You Chamonix?
The idea behind this brand new course is that Mark provides world class coaching alongside Arno who’s role is as a demonstrator. It was a stunning day. To ski with someone with that level of talent was inspiring. Freeride skiing is all about skiing the whole mountain, expressing yourself with the line you take, dropping rocks, tearing down steep couloirs and jumping off stuff. All at mach 5. In fairly hard, bumpy off-piste conditions keeping up with the group challenged my skiing more than it ever has been in the past. I learned loads, took a great set of pictures and generally had an amazing day which left me knackered and broken.
For Phil and I, Sunday was the day of the big finale of our week’s introduction to a skiing/mountaineering partnership we hope will last many years. We did a route called the Col du Passon. It’s non-trivial to say the least. It involves skiing down from the top of the Grande Montets, across the argentiere glacier, then skinning up for a couple of hours on the other side, culminating in climbing a very steep couloir for which we needed to wear crampons and carry our skis on our backs. That’s the mountaineering half, and then the decent - a beautiful hour and a half through some amazing glacial terrain down to Le tour on the other side. We did have a sketchy few minutes when we got trapped in a system of small, avalancheycouloirs which cliffed out just below us, but we managed to traverse out of that and make it safely down to the Le Tour car park and jumped on the bus back to GM to collect the car. It was an excellent day - we got the weather window just right, and did the whole route as safely as we could have done it with the experience we have. Next project is a section of the Haute Route when we both have the time.
Finally. After a long spell of high pressure, no new snow and warm temperatures. Finally the storm clouds are gathering and the skiers are looking up to the summits with baited breath waiting for the new snow.
As I’ve mentioned before, most of the people who live in Chamonix hate Christmas because they have to work so hard. So our friends Ian and George decided to have Christmas II on Thursday night now that things have calmed down after the mentalness of xmas/new year.
Up at the farm on Thursday 10th Jan, 10 good friends got together for a proper Christmas dinner. Roast turkey, christmas pud, stilton, port and crackers. It was really good fun - more fun than Christmas day.
And the best way to address the hangover? Skiing of course. It was sunny day up on Flegere, and perfect for the great group of 5 of us who decided not to do any crazy valleeblanche type skiing - preferring instead to boink about on the other side of the valley jumping off stuff. Apres ski at MBC and a great nights sleep rounded off a perfect Christmas II for me.
And today. Joy. It’s snowing. Dumping in fact. We’ve been needing some more snow for a while now, and here it is. I’m taking a day off from skiing to do some work and let my old bones recover, but tommorrow morning I’ll be up early at Les Grands Montets where the sun will be shining and I’ll be skiing in knee deep fresh snow all day. Maybe. Or perhaps I’ll go over to Courmayeur in Italy instead. Life is good.
