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
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
11 Comments
[...] more fresh fish soon, as I think Jeff and I may be going to Chitna next weekend. In the meantime, enjoy these Chamonix shots I’ve been drooling over all month. [...]
Nice route – I was never sure of the way off the glacier but now I know. Not that I’ll actually use that knowledge…
Blimey. Just walking the ADM arrete makes me feel queasy. You guys are mad (and seriously ballsey)
did you ski Tignes in summer 87?
Nice route..
Wow, your blog is cool. It has darn good content on what I’m trying to find out. I just favorited it. Keep bloggin’ please! Thank you.
Awsome content, what template do you use in your blog ? can there be a section to follow the Rss?
Hi Patrick
Thanks for the comments, there is a little RSS icon down on the bottom left corner of the blog, use that to follow. The template is one that I cooked up myself, web design is my day job.
Cheers
Great website and run just looking at the photos is giving me vertigo I,m assuming one trip up and your dead.
Hi Wayne
Thanks for the comments. You are right about tripping up.
thank you for post very nice blog thank you admin ..