Well, a friend of mine suggested very challenging climax of running season.... so we’ll probably be doing some skiing on the Europe’s highest places....

The plan is simple: chamonix-grand mullets-MB summit-chamonix, 3-days ski-trip probably by mid-May....

Done some googling on it, but not to much avail.... so here go the yet unaswered questions:

- anyone (of board members) done it before?
- the little I found suggests to keep our tracks far to the right from the first ascend line (i.e. moreless to follow the N-E ridge of Gouter mountain - red line on attached picture) due falling seracs above original route (in green)
- will the Grand Mullets hut be open by mid-May (no functional hut website/contacts to be found)?

Thanx for any input/response.

Call the oracle. Route was not recommended last year - guides wouldn’t touch it due to the seracs. Take care.

Office Haute Montagne
http://www.ohm-chamonix.com

190 Place de l’Eglise
74400 Chamonix Mont Blanc, France
+33 4 50 53 22 0

My question is: How to be assured of not getting killed or injured by avalanche control work between the Gare des Glaciers and the M.B. tunnel entrance—control administered by GAZEX or helicopters. How do you know which days they’re doing it or not doing? or what time of day? (the warning sign near the M.B. tunnel didn’t give any website or phone number to check, and I haven’t gotten around to doing a web search, but since the topic has been raised, I will expose my laziness)

In early April two friends and I climbed on skis from the Plan d’Aiguille (not Chamonix) to the Refuge des Grands Mulets and then climbed the north ridge of the Dome du Gouter (http://www.roberts-1.com/t/s09/fra/k) - (we encountered a guided party on the route). Then we descended the Grands Mulets glaciers, well-known to be exposed to serac-fall risk : that’s why we tried to ski down thru it quickly - (there were at least two guided groups skiing on the Grands Mulets glacier).
? Perhaps we were foolish and ignorantly lucky and need to be educated about how serac-fall risk is higher in some years more than others ? or ...
? Perhaps we need to get more clear on specifically what it was that some guides were refusing to do when ?

Overall I thought it was a great tour, and I’m eager to do it again, but next time add starting climbing (le vrai Mont Blanc) from Chamonix or the M.B. tunnel entrance, and continue up the Bosses ridge to the M.B. summit—hopefully ski down almost to the tunnel entrance.

Mid-May?
Seems to me that by mid-May there’s not likely to be much snow between the Gare des Glaciers and the M.B. tunnel entrance. To me that’s a long ways to be hiking carrying skis. I’d rather hope to find stable conditions earlier in the season. (? or perhaps you did not really mean to start in Chamonix? rather at the Plan d’Aiguille?)

Refuge des Grands Mulets?
The refuge normally is guarded starting around the end of March: I assume that’s because they think people might be climbing the north ridge of the Dome du Gouter already in April?
At least one French-language ski guidebook gives March - July as possible season for Dome du Gouter and Mont Blanc.
I sorta think the Refuge stays guarded until sometime in summer—though it is “open” all year round—and that can surely be found and checked by a web search.

Ken

@Ken & Dropout: thanks for the input.

@Ken: nice trip.
ref starting point: We aim to do +/- same route - cablelift from Chamonix to Plan, traverse to hut (already did it once - in summer), thru N-E ridge to Gouter and via Bosses ridge to the summit. Back down the ridge to the Col de Gouter and from there thru the valley down to hut.
ref Mid-May: Probably worth reconsidering.... :wink:

We did it with a guide Christophe Rezette at the beginning of June last year (it was a snowy year last year).
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy6Df0xbqQE and photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/endlessride/sets/72157619168426741/ no one else on the route that day but the guardian said the hut was full (80?) the days before (on a weekend).

@endlessride: great, great, great. Thx a lot.

@endlessride: May I have several questions? (There are no speakers on my PC, so I didn’hear the movie commentary (should there are any)…

the Bosses ridge: did you ski up/down or on feet?

skiing down the valley from col de Gouter: did I see well - no roping? (what about roping at the upper section - the Bosses ridge - provided you made it on skis?)

the rappel: where? why? (navigation error or deliberate?)

Pavproch
did this April 27th 2009, from Aigille diu Midi mid station to Grand Mulets (bewere the dangerous “Junction” section of crevasses and bridges to be negotiated on the way to the hut)

Grand Mullets hut was fully operational.  Book ahead. Breakfast is served about 1am and you set off by 2am.  Make sure you get out of the hut before everyone else as there will be a big Q (the hut is perched 30m above the glacier and it is pretty epic simply getting down to your skis) We took your red route up and green route down, as did the other 50 or so people in front of us.  You cannot ski all the way up the ridge, it is a bootpack with crampons and ice axe. Beweare getting very cold at transition from skis to crampons at 3am (- stupid degC). We roped up as it very exposed.  Ice axe v. useful for negotiating scary exposed crevasse/crack about halfway up ridge, (about 5am as it was getting light i think).  I do not think that descending this route would be a good option, not on skis anyhow.

Green route down: Stick to the tracks so long as they do not dissapear into big holes.  Huge crevasses to the left and right hand side.  Don,t stop to look at the view, enormous amounts of serac fall debris (ranging from size of large houses down to golf ball sized) , very scary, some open crevasses to hop over, keep skiing. This was probabaly the most scary ski i’ve done, although technically easy at least.

Overall, technically the skiing and climbing is not particularly difficult, but not to be underestimated; good fitness, rope-work, crevasse negotiating technique, rescue, crampon & ice axe use, navigation, route choice, etc. skills are all required.  If you not having them a UIAGM Guide is essential. Numerous large dangers everywhere.  Keep an eye on the weather, we got clouded in at the Vallot hut and were exceptionally lucky that the cloud cleared for 5 mins and we managed to find our way down.  Otherwise we were in for a night at 4000m, and we did not really have enough warm kit, so that could have been disastrous. 

After decending to the Hut the fun is not over as you still have to re-negotiate the Junction area below the hut.  This time it is late in the day and so more dangerous, plus very tired. Worked out way back and across and up (very tiring traverse and climb under exposed late-in-the-day cliffs, a little like one of those 1980,s computer games where you dodge the deadly flying stuff coming out of the top of the screen) to ADM mid station by about 5pm, making for a 15hr day.

We wree in the bar in Chamonix by 6pm and all was well. Thanks Doug , Hamish and Rich for that!

Overall, best mountain day of my life, but we were a little lucky on a couple of occasions...

Good reports—a few thoughts:

* I think it’s much more fun if you get extra advance acclimatization nights sleeping in refuges around 2900m or higher. I’d want to be acclimatized also so I might have a shot at skiing down the N face of M.B. if it were in condition.
(There’s lots of other great ski tours in France April thru early May, so this is not an onerous strategy.)

* I think the 1:00 wake-up time is for the majority of parties who are not well-acclimatized. My friends and I were decently acclimatized, so we slept in until 3:00 (I had voted for 4:00), didn’t leave the hut until around 4:00, and were easily on track for summitting M.B. (though our original goal was only the Dome du Gouter)—until high winds came up.

* the record for summitting Mont Blanc with skis starting from Chamonix town center is 4 hours and 10 minutes.

* skiing the north ridge of the Dome du Gouter is rated Difficile in the Olizane guidebook, 4.2 on skitour.fr—It’s supposed to be steeper skiing than the N face of M.B. And I think I’ve heard it’s more exposed to wind, so it’s not often in good skiing condition as the N face. But with 30cm of stable + fresh snow, I might want to have a shot at skiing it.

* skiing down the Bosses ridge has been done I think, but it’s thought of as an extreme descent. (and I’m not sure anyone ever thought it was worth repeating).

* I would bring a GPS with waypoints for critical turns—unless very sure of stable clear weather. I remember that a compass does not work reliably there because of magnetic materials on M.B.

Ken

@McHardski: thanks a lot.
As noted, I’ve already been to places (summer 2005), reaching altitude of some 3800+ meters at N-E ridge (turning back there due rising winds)…

Rif. Gr.Mullet in the background down bellow.

McHardski - 01 February 2010 01:07 PM

Overall, technically the skiing and climbing is not particularly difficult, but not to be underestimated; good fitness, rope-work, crevasse negotiating technique, rescue, crampon & ice axe use, navigation, route choice, etc. skills are all required.  If you not having them a UIAGM Guide is essential.

Since 1987 I truly take care NOT to underestimate the Mountain again (ref my life-story).... moreover, after all the years (of randonee and ski-mountaneering) I feel myself like ready to challenge.
Nonetheless, thanks for all the advice/gudance.

Avalanche control work around M.B. tunnel and Plan d’Aiguille is more tricky to understand than I’d have guessed.

From looking at my photos last May of detailed map on the warning sign by the Tunnel, looks like it’s not just hiking up from the Tunnel to Gare des Glaciers that’s in the potential closure zone—but also ...
* any travel from the Plan d’Aiguille toward la Jonction or the Refuge des Grand Mulets.
* the M.B. Tunnel access road.

So my guess is that the authorities are much more worried about communicating preventive avalanche closure to truck + car drivers planning to use the Tunnel than they are about communicating to backcountry skiers.

From some web searches, looks like the system of Gazex and/or dangling from helicopters for preventive avalanche releases was introduced around February 2009. So they haven’t had much chance to test how to communicate about using it.

I still haven’t been able to figure out who’s in charge of deciding when + how to perform such control work. (? Perhaps that’s because of what one intelligent article about avalanche control in France described as “A legal haze regarding the allocation of authority and responsibilities ...” ?)

? My current best guess is that ... if they’re going to perform avalanche control work in that zone, they would: close the M.B. tunnel access road; forbid skiers + hikers to set out from the Plan d’Aiguille mid-station; post warnings + tape across obvious trailheads; and perhaps forbid skiers + hikers to depart from the Refuge des Grands Mulets.
My current theory is that because it involves temporarily closing the Tunnel access road, it’s a decision they have to make pretty carefully.

Seems rather likely that the guardian of the Refuge would have heard about upcoming avalanche control action + closure—so if there’s any question in my mind, and I still haven’t discovered who is the “proper authority”, I think I’d just call the Refuge d.G.M. guardian.

I’ll be glad for more ideas about this.

Ken

P.S. interesting article about legal / political / historical aspects of avalanche control in France:

As others have mentioned, that route up Mont Blanc is getting really scary with objective hazard from the seracs.

Fortunately, there are other, better options for getting to the summit. Seems the traverse of Mont Blanc du Tacul-Mont Maudit-Mont Blanc is good. You stay at the Cosmiques hut for high acclimatization & a safer approach. By May, the slab avalanche issues on Mont Blanc du Tacul should be past. We’ve tried this route, but we’re always there too early [March] & it hasn’t worked out. If that’s not enough climbing for you, then skin up from town via the Mer de Glace & Vallee Blanche. You could also come up the Italian side via the Aiguilles Grises & the Bionnassay Ridge, which is spectacular, or do a long traverse from the Domes de Miage area.

Last year [early April] we skied down the summer cable route leading up to the Gouter hut, which is challenging to say the least. Maybe it would be a good way up in cold weather, since the rockfall is less an issue in the winter [not exactly a skin path through the steep section, though]. If you follow the rails from Les Houches up to Nid d’Aigle, plan on having the tunnel snowed in, with a bit of a dicey traverse around the outside to bypass it [not sure when they clear the track]. Maybe better to go the regular route up to Tete Rousse hut?

As for the ski out above the tunnel, you can always traverse over & drop vie Pre du Rocher further skier’s right like folks typically do when exiting the Cosmiques Couloir. Probably better skiing, & definitely a shorter walk back to town. Not sure why you wouldn’t want to do that…

The green and red routes are definitely classics and well worth the trip. There are always been serac fall hazard on the green normal winter route, but it’s worsening lately, therefore going up by the red is a safer advice - down as well if snow sticks, a possibility in April, May or June - even July.
Refuge des Grands Mulets is open from spring to July period, booking is compulsory.
There is not much technical difficulty but it’s definitely a glacier high mountain route therefore crevasse rescue, abseiling, skiing with a rope and all these not so sexy things should be mastered.
Usually only 1 on 3 climbers or skiers make it to the summit: the critical part of the preparation is probably altitude adaptation and endurance. Starting at 3000m from Grands Mulets at night - without having slept if the hut is crowded - and climbing about 1800 m vertical to Mont Blanc, and then ski down thru glacier terrain and all kinds of snow 3 or 4 000 m can be a feast - or a nightmare! The best proven way to succeed is to train on other high mountains for a week and finish by Mont-Blanc - weather permitting.
The traverse of 3 Mont Blancs (Tacul, Mont Maudit and Mont Blanc) is nice but have challenges too and Tacul hosts windslabs any month of the year as snow and wind are common up there.
A both lazy and exciting way to get to Grands Mulets is to go up Aiguille du Midi, then ski one of its couloirs on Col du Midi side (Cosmiques, Glacier Rond...) and skin up though the beautiful and dreaded Jonction - a short and superb 1st day up Mont-Blanc.