This weekend was a trip to Val Thorens with Geraldine and my 3 year old son. This was his first trip to the high mountains and he was very excited to see all the snow bashers heading up and down the pistes from the vantage of our hotel bedroom in the Trois Vallees. Geraldine is not a skier but amused herself checking out the many cafes on the front neige for Onion soup and vin Chaud. We also had a couple of excellent meals in the Trois Vallees and cannot praise their friendly staff highly enough.
The aim of the weekend was to meet up with some of the guys on the Snowheads End of Season Bash (http://snowheads.com). After some delays on Saturday morning Bernard C and I headed up to the Cime de Carron around half past ten. A bit later than I would have liked, I’m more of a first lift man. I’d checked the avalanche bulletin, there had been perhaps 10cm of fresh snow overnight and some very strong winds from the south to south-west. We chatted to the piste patrol who didn’t seem very enthusiastic about the conditions but suggested that the Lac du Lou was ok provided that we stayed in the valley floor. The risk seemed to be surface slabs - there had been a death a couple of days previously where the victim had been taken by a slab measuring just 10cm - but as Werner Munter says a 100x100mx10cm avalanche is tons and tons of snow. Certainly enough to kill you or sweep you over cliffs.
We took a look at the IGN map. Bernard had done the route with a guide the year before but under much poor snow conditions so didn’t immediately recognise the start. We headed down the Audzin red to the first turn right as this seemed to be the right direction. However we were above some very rocky terrain which although skiable did not look inviting. After yomping up 50 meters we cut along a horizontal path that joined the start of the valley by the Rosael black, a similar entrance to the combe sans Nom which I’d skied a couple of years back. We skied down a short couloir…
and then onto more gentle, around 30 degrees and open slopes for some excellent powder skiing
Our plan was to avoid the big, open 35 degree+ north to north-east facing slopes that were pregnant with fresh powder. These neither looked inviting for a traverse or a descent.
After around 600 meters of skiing down 3 main pitches we arrived at a flat section where we could see the col de la vallee etroit. This moderate terrain was our initial objective but after about 100 meters of climbing we decided to head south towards Mont Brequin and the Pas de la Masse.
The route we selected followed a rocky ridge between two shallow valleys roughly to the left of the tracks in the photograph. The valleys were cross loaded by the ridge seemed to have a fairly consistent snowpack… just a few cm of fresh on a cohesive base. Where we had fixed skins as 2550 meters I’d probed the snow a bit with my pole and noticed a 20cm cohesive layer sitting on loose snow but this was not evident on the ridge climb. We still left a good space and followed a line of rocks - not a guarantee of safety by any means.
At about 50 (vertical) meters below the pas de la masse I waited for Bernard to catch up. He didn’t appear immediately so I skied back down a bit. He had some heavy gear and was finding the conversion turns pretty hard going. We decided to ski down from here as it was already 1pm. This would leave a nice 30-35 degree slope. This was virgin when we had climbed but a group of skiers had appeared from...well nowhere to ski down it. They didn’t seem to have much equipment so I couldn’t work out how they had gotten across to hear from the resort. A traverse didn’t seem possible so had they climbed on foot from the Maurienne side? They were not the only skiers we saw too.
... tbc
