May 23rd, 2003 | 
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Posts Tagged ‘couloir’
People say that skiing steep descents, or ‘extreme skiing’ is a reckless sport. It says something for the calculated precision of the actors in this game that on the same afternoon there were four groups of two of us who headed up the Aiguille du Midi cable car planning on doing this one line the following day. Having carefully watched the conditions, assessed the danger, tested out similar aspect slopes, we all pegged the conditions as perfect on exactly the same day.
Paul and Ewan decided that 8 in the Gervasutti was too many so they headed off down to do something else. So that left 6 of us. It was a good atmosphere sitting on the terraces of the Aiguille du Midi lift station cooking up our nosh, and knocking back some wine and beer while watching the sun set over Geneva in the distance.
We all got up early in the morning and rather than head up the north face of the Tacul which is notorious for serac falls we all headed up the left hand side of the triangle, up the Contamine-Negri route. Which is itself a good ski at 350m of 50°.
The snow in the Gervasutti was perfect. There was a slight windlip which made the first few meters very steep, but then it was a pretty constant 50 all the way down. We all took it in turns leading sections and waiting in safe spots for the others to pass. It was a great feeling to tick off one of the great classics in the area.
Karl and I headed up to do the Cosmiques this morning. Karl was a bit hung over and had forgotten an ice axe so we had to abseil in.
This was probably the first steep ski mountaineering line that I did in the Chamonix valley. I hooked up with Graham Frost who had been in the area for a couple of years and knew the place well.
Then the battery went flat. The slope is the large one to the right of the rocky peak. There is about 1050m of climbing to get to the top of the slope and it gets a 5.1 grade.
On SkiTour.fr
This was one of the last times that I used 35mm film. A run down the Grnads Envers with my brother Matt, nice powder at the top and some hard chalky snow in the exit couloirs.