Phil Ingle

The couloir that I had intended to ski with Hubert on Sunday was still un-skied. Alex and Dave had had a few days warming up in the area so I managed to convince them to have a go at it.

The couloir finishes in a big cliff so we had to get round that. I had recce’d it a bit and thought that there was a way round by climbing up a short couloir on its left and then traversing in above the cliff. This did work but we went a bit too high and had a hairy traverse followed by a descent down a short steep couloir, before getting in the right couloir.

Then on leaving the lower section of the couloir we trended too far to the left and ended up climbing the east face rather than the couloir intended. It took a while to realise that it was not the right line so we carried on up hoping to be able to get across at the top, and making a first ascent of this face at the same time.

There was no way of getting along the ridge so we ended up going up to the summit, dropping down the west side traversing across and then climbing back up to the top of the couloir on the west side.

The very top section of the couloir was very steep, a bit over 50°, then it levelled off to a pretty constant 45° for the rest of the top section. The lower section was less steep, but with hard snow a fall would have seen you off the cliffs at the bottom so care was still needed. We found the right way out at the bottom with a short traverse and a few step ups to get around.

Here is a map of the route

download it to view in Google Earth