Phil Ingle

The Eugster Couloir on the North Face of the Aiguille du Midi was first skied in June 1977 by Laurent Giacomini. It averages out at between 50° and 55° over 500m of descent.

Anselme Baud says in his guide Mont Blanc and the Aiguilles Rouges: A Guide for Skiers
that the slope reaches 56° in places. This puts it in the toponeige rating system at 5.4 and the exposition is definitely a 4.

To ski it in good style you have to start from the tunnel and take the roped arête on its left hand side, this does cause quite a stir as all the tourists on the Midi cant quite believe what they are seeing and they swarm across to have a look. You follow the hanging glacier down a short way before cutting back onto the wide ridge peppered with rocks that lies directly beneath the cable cars cables.

After a small steep section the Mallory drops away to the right and the Eugster takes the couloir to the skiers left. This steep couloir has a cliff in the middle that needs to be rappelled over, there was no in-situ gear so we left a sling behind hooked over a small boulder.

After this first abseil the couloir opens out a bit and the snow was excellent and some good turns were to be had. This section then ends in a small cliff band that had to be rappelled over, again no in-situ so the mountain claims another sling.

Then the couloir changes direction and heads directly down towards the old Gare des Glaciers. There was another small step here that we had to abseil over, this time we hacked out an ice bollard so that we didn’t have to leave any more gear behind.

There was a little tricky section in this last bit with some iced over rocks to pass before the couloir opened out properly and we could ski out onto the alluvial cone below.

It was a fantastic descent in perfect snow conditions. Though if there had of been a better base then the last abseil might not have been necessary.

Here is a map of the descent

download it to view in Google Earth

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