Month: March 2018

Day 53 and errands in Argentiere

Found the next outfit for Steve and wondered about this interesting bit of parking. Busy day …

inspiration for Steve?

?

Day 54

Some wild weather blowing the existing loose snow to new far off locations.

A brief glimpse of blue sky in the evening made for some atmospheric pics of our local pointy bits.

And a the mad wind finally blew all the clouds away to give way to a brilliantly clear night of stars moon bursts and shadows.

Pop back in a few days for a night time moon timelapse.

Snow on the way tomorrow to replace what we lost today.

Days 55 and 56 brought the snow back.

I made some new friends on the Les Praz Golf course on Saturday. Meet Gilbert & Bonkers. Not much golf going on.

Snow Dog

Incredibly the skies cleared in the evening of the 2nd March for an amazing Alpen glow show.

Back on the planks tomorrow …. and anticipation of arrival of next visitors.

England looses to Scotland

Colin’s arrival was marked by England loosing to Scotland in the 6 nations. It took Colin all of 30 seconds after his arrival to mention it but he did bring fancy tonic water so all is forgiven.

Days 50 to 52

Sunday, up early and heading for Les Grands Montets. A quick stop in Sanglard to rent some fine Volkls for Colin and up the mountain we go almost on the first lift.

A glorious warm up run down the deserted Bochard Piste then up to the Top and 3275m altitude. Our mission to warm Colin up for Vallee Blanche adventure on Monday.

Top of the bochard

Top of Les Grands Montets

Mark & Colin

That is much easier in touring boots

A wonderful Sunny day with pretty good snow and Colin was raring to go higher.

Monday morning 8:45am at the Aiguille Du Midi lift to meet up with our Guide and the rest of our group (if any). There was plenty of time for a fine wander around the various viewing platforms including the top at 3800m, still 1000m lower than the top of Mont Blanc. Mark even braved the famous glass box.

Despite the minus twenty something degrees we navigated the Arete and had a very fine ski down amongst the beautiful scenery. Our Guide, Olivier was great company and was fun to meet Barry & Tim from across the pond. What a day.

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Our Route.  Up the Cable car down the Glacier Du Geant, along to the Mer de Glace, up the boot track, Down the James Bond track to Town .. home for tea and cake.

Tuesday & back to Les Grand Montets.

A Glorious morning view to inspire us then off to the top to fill Colin’s last day with us.

Some great action shots of Colin which I hope serve as a fitting souvenir of his 3 days in Chamonix.

Coming up next .. some well deserved days off and here comes the snow … 

2 days tearing up the GM

Days 48 & 49 (23rd and 24th of Feb) and we are trying to cover any inch of the Grands Montets missing from the GPX traces so far.

Our focus was in truth the various Glaciers accessible from the Top lift station, namely the Glacier d’Argentiere the Lognan & the Rognons. For the first time we turned right at the bottom of the steps and did an amazing descent down the full front face. It was a bit steep in places but more or less just the two of us and some lovely soft deep snow to lessen the terror.

We made friends with some entertaining Canadians in the lift queue who were off to skin up to the Argentiere hut well equipped with a lot of wine .. happy days.

These are the tracks for the 23rd February with all the previous Grands Montets trails underneath. I am pretty sure we have made a good attempt to make the whole place tracked.

Our next visitor, Colin, arrives tomorrow. He used to ski for the British Army .. I think we are in trouble.

Oh almost forgot ..  Morning and evening Dru.

Morning

Evening

Next .. 3 Days of Colin …

The great unknown

Today we are out and about with Mountain Guide Tim Blakemore and Aspirant guide James Clapham (now qualified).  We have a very civilised start with bright and early coffee Chez Nous then up the Flegere lift with a number of options to choose from.

After confessions of how slow I can really be on the up and how epic I was prepared to be … boot tracking and mountain climbing off the menu thank you, we settled on the Col du Belvedere and over the Aiguille Rouges into and along the Bérard valley below.

A fairly chilled skin up followed by a rather narly rope based lowering down couloir of horrific steepness, a few steep turns then into powdery pastures, a pootle along the valley and in all probability a bit of toboggan run combat ski to finish and train back to base from Le Buet.

Sounds like a plan.

Huge thanks to Tim and James for the plan, the encouragement on the steep up, sniffing out the bonus fluffy turns on the up, very helpful kick turn advice, fantastic pictures and all round good company. And for sure putting up with my slowness on the up so James froze his but off lowering us down from the Col as just as we reached it the sun left it.

What a day.

Day 47 recovery day so ….

Banana bread baking

19th Feb dawned bright and sunny …

Day 44 and all’s well again with incredible views, blue sky, and fun skiing at the GM.

Aiguille du Midi

Les Dru

Aiguille du Grepon

View from Les Grands Montete accross the Chamonix Valley

Day 45 back to the GM

20th February kicked off with a very attractive Dru peaking out from the sunlit clouds

Definite motivation to get up and out back to the Grands Montets with a quest, equipped with harnesses and rope (just in case) to reach the top and venture onto the Argentiere Glacier.

Glacier Argentiere

Col du Passon

Coffee spot

atmospherics

down

lap 2

chasing the sun

figure in the landscape

sun and snow

2 laps and some great skiing and light not to mention the best coffee spot ever.

Back home for the ever present Aiguille du Midi and Les Dru

Time for some psycho physical preparation for tomorrow as we have a guide for the day so exploring we will go.

Day 46 up and over the Col du Belvedere ….

Time for timelapses

A Valentines date to remember.

Some people buy roses and chocolates and go out for a posh dinner. We walked up a cumulatively big hill for 3 hours and enjoyed a beautifully snowy ski down.

And only 2 stacks..

Mark’d better be making dinner tonight.

Les Contamines and Les Roches Des Enclaves.

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Tomorrow .. day off and a lie-in.

Just enough time to go up …

Steve’s pickup gave us just enough time to mingle with the Vallee Blanchers early in the morning and get to the top of the Aiguille Du Midi.

After of course we had chipped all the ice off the car so we could actually get inside it …. it’s got a wee bit chilly.

As ever it was just beautiful up there.

We waved Steve off and continued to enjoy the sunshine with a picturesque wander into town, mingling with the cross country skiers and dog walkers.

Tomorrow a touring we will go ….

All good things must come to an end

Sadly we had to wave Rich and Steve off to their next destinations. Rich back to the UK and then off to Myanmar for more hot air ballooning & Steve back to the UK to psycho physically prepare himself for the next ski trip in March.

Rich’s last day consisted of laps round the bumps in the Italian bowl at Les Grands Montets which I think the photo’s show he navigated with some style worthy of the new outfit.

Then a dash to the top of the top in truly terrible vis.

Then the snow came back to visit for the send off.. looking good for Steve’s last day tomorrow.

Bye bye Rich and helloooo fluffy stuff.

A fine display of landcruiser plus balloon trailer driving skills by Rich and then we are off to the GM ….

The snow just kept on falling with a morning of fluff and less than ideal visibility but it soon gave way to glorious sunshine and some sunny snowy lines through the magic forest and then across the front face via the long traverse under the Bochard lift. Great job Steve.

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Home in time for alpen glow on the Dru and the midi. I just never get tired of that view.

And finally … the shortish edit of the full adventure .. Some great conditions, mini adventures, good company & excellent skiing.

Tomorrow up the midi for some great views to see Steve off via Alpy bus..