Chamonix Part II

Tuesday - ENSA Couloir
 After a bit of a lie in following the previous days exertions I awoke to reasonable weather so decided to head up to Brevent  with the idea of skiing the ENSA couloir before the day warmed up too much.  The ENSA is a couloir that I've always wanted to ski and the guidebook suggests that despite being on the wrong side of the valley, it often holds good snow due to its tall walls and shady nature.  This might be the case in February but not, as I found out, at the start of April 3 days after the last snow!

George had decided to do some work today so I took the cable car up to Brevent on my own.  It was warm so, rather than waste time with some warm up skiing, I ducked under the ropes and headed down towards the entry.  To cut a long story short the snow was horrendous but hey, I kind of suspected as much and it's all good training and another line I could tick off in the book.  

Looking down the ENSA Couloir

It was just possible to ski right back to the road at Brevent from where I got the bus up to Grands Montets looking for something a bit colder to ski.

Brevent from the road - too late in the season really!

With nothing better to do with the afternoon, and wondering what the big north faces were looking like in the Argentiere basin I decided to skin up to the NE slope on the Courtes for a closer look.  The high traverse was in to get under the Verte, so I spent the next couple of hours baking in the sun skinning up to the Courtes - fortunately the skin track was already in which boded well for the skiing conditions.  As I reached the bergshrund a team of skiers were descending the bottom of the face - asking what the conditions were like was a redundant question when I saw the expressions on their faces - it was most definitely 'in'.


Wednesday - Courtes NE Slope
George put up significantly less resistance than I was expecting when I informed him what we were doing today.  First bin at Grands Montets and we were joined by Jake who was also psyched for some steeps action - unfortunately there were also several other skiers who had heard about the good conditions.  We skinned up to the bergshrund and there were probably about 8 skiers in total all aiming for the same objective.  There were two climbers already well up the face.

On the skin up to the Courtes

George under the bergshrund

We crossed the bergshrund fairly easily on skis and began to bootpack up the slope - it was very warm.  I was about a third of the way up, maybe 100m above George and Jake when I looked up to see a huge white cloud rapidly approaching down the centre of the couloir.  Entering survival mode I started running sideways as fast as I could, gaining shelter under a small rock as a huge sluff avalanche piled down the couloir - easily big enough to take out any climbers that were caught in it.  Fortunately George and Jake had not made it into the centre of the couloir and were oblivious to the whole thing.  With more sluff coming down from the skiers above and spontaneous slides happening on the adjacent walls we decided to bail - returning on a colder day or with an earlier start.  Freeride World Tour champ Drew Tabke and UKC celebrity Tom Grant made the same decision so I suspect it was the right one.

The skiing on the bottom of the slope, and below the bergshrund was fantastic - it was just a shame we couldn't have gone from the top.  Back in the carpark Jake and I decided we were keen for a rematch tomorrow as the weather forecast was the same as todays.  We got kitted up and caught the last bin up before skinning over to the Argentiere hut - getting a fantastic meal and then some sleep before an early start.

Looking up the NE slope on the Courtes

Looking down to George and Jake just after the first sluffs - fortunately we were all out of their path.

Thursday - Courtes NE Slope (again)
We left the hut at 6am and skinned over under a perfect cloudless sky towards the Courtes.  The snow was still well frozen which made the bergshrund a bit trickier than the previous day but we made it over and had began to bootpack up the couloir when the weather changed.  We had quickly gone from blue skies, and sun hitting the top of the slope, to dark grey clouds piling over the Triolet and Mont Dolent at the end of the basin.  It quickly became apparent that we weren't going to get any sun that day and the snow would remain frozen, furthermore the visibility would be awful.  Frustrated, we bailed once more, skiing down the glacier in horrible flat light, wondering whether we should have just pressed on the previous day.  With worse weather forecast for the next few days I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to wait to ski this incredible slope that has been at the top of my hit-list since I first descended it on foot after the Swiss Route in 2010.

The moon just dipping behind the Triolet on the way over to the Courtes

Jake back on the glacier, bad weather rolling in behind

That afternoon George and I decided to go sport climbing at a crag above Sallanches.  The ensuing complete failure to find the crag, and associated comedy proved that sometimes not going sport climbing can be far more dangerous than alpine climbing.  I'm awaiting a video montage of our rather epic fail that afternoon as it's well worth a watch...

Not sport climbing...