Saturday I was free for most of the day so set off for the Reculet and the “secret” Avalanche Gulch on the West side of the Reculet

This couloir is rated 3.2 but needs a good depth of snow. I’d forgotten how far the drive to Lelex was from Geneva, you can get to Chamonix quicker. There were a couple of cars at the carpark at the entrance to the Hirondelles road tunnel and the track was already well made. Setting off at 9am I was at the summit, the massif cross on the Reculet by 10.30. A little over 600m an hour vertical. Probably quicker than the aging drag lifts at Lelex . Still in the biting westerly wind you had to climb to keep warm. The snow between the summit at 1700 and 1500 was windswept with some pockets of powder. To find the couloir you have to keep a barb wire fence marking the cliffs 50 or so meters to your left. Not somewhere to come in a whiteout (which is frequent here). You will see a round cattle trough then ski a short, steepish slope (we now had 20 cm of fresh powder on a hard base) before a horizontal strand of trees. At 1250 meters there is a clearing at the start of the forest and the couloir is to the right, steep and with some brushwood you ski over a step (which was snow covered today) before exiting into a wider couloir. If you ski the woods to the left you avoid this step. The Couloir des Lavanches is wide and very skiable and had a good 30cm of fresh powder.

Under the Reculet

I then decided to head over to the Cret du Chalam. I know this gets skied but not regularly. The snow was heavy and stuck to my skins and there was no track. 800 meters of breaking trail in heavy powder. I climbed the steepest track through the forest as this gave the best ROI. I almost cracked when I realized I would have to ski down to a col before climbing the last slope to the Chalam.

The last 200 meters to the summit is steep and when you get to the top don’t be surprised to see snowshoers, there is a car park about 1km away on the gentle north-west side. From the summit ski down the south-east slopes. These were in heavy powder which wasn’t sticking well to the base. Then a reskin before some gentle prairies then the steep “couloir des Bellys”. Again there is a step in the second half of this couloir which I skied around on steep slopes on the right bank. The snow was very poorly bonded to the base and each turned kicked off a sluff, not particuarly harmful in the woods but a reminder that conditions on open slopes could be sketchy.

The Chalam reminds me a bit of the Dome de Pravouta, my local hill in Grenoble. It is a nice looking mountain. A freerider would probably have tackled the north-east face with a cliff huck.