Don’t know if anyone in Chamonix saw this but a huge avalanche swept down the Aiguille du Midi today. The avalanche was apparently triggered by Serac fall around midday at around 3200m with the debris coming down to 1300 meters. Two Russian skiers were caught by the slide and one is in a serious condition. The slide covered the access route to the summit of Mont Blanc which KenR probably took in his climb last week.

Bit more info in the Daube today:

http://www.ledauphine.com/mont-blanc-grosse-avala-@/index.jspz?article=290208

The avalanche came off the Glacier Rond and descended towards the Grands Mulets Refuge. Looks like Ken made some very choices in his Mont Blanc climb.

It’s pretty hard to get near the summit of Mont Blanc with skis in April without crossing under the Aiguille du Midi + Glacier Rond at least once.

From what I’ve read seems like the guys who got caught were following a pretty good strategy for reducing the risk:
Travel between the Plan d’Aiguille and Refuge des Grands Mulets in the morning—when the danger of springtime avalanches on the generally West (or NW) facing slopes tends to be lower.

But seems like they were unlucky that the avalanche was triggered by a big serac fall. The risk management problem is that unlike most springtime avalanches, serac falls seem to happen randomly at any time of day.

For lots more photos and an interesting story, see
this trip report

Ken

Impressive photos.

Here are a couple more sent in by PS Lang.

Arrivale of the PGHM

Debris

KenR - 18 April 2010 02:55 PM

It’s pretty hard to get near the summit of Mont Blanc with skis in April without crossing under the Aiguille du Midi + Glacier Rond at least once.

From what I’ve read seems like the guys who got caught were following a pretty good strategy for reducing the risk:
Travel between the Plan d’Aiguille and Refuge des Grands Mulets in the morning—when the danger of springtime avalanches on the generally West (or NW) facing slopes tends to be lower.

But seems like they were unlucky that the avalanche was triggered by a big serac fall. The risk management problem is that unlike most springtime avalanches, serac falls seem to happen randomly at any time of day.

There is of course a considerably safer way again to do it. Which is to ski the Cosmiques or Glacier Rond first. Thus negating the need to ski under the Glacier Rond it also means you’ve got speed crossing the Bossons glacier. However it also means you’ve gotten the lift which may not be for everyone.

First let me mention a strategy which really does avoid the problem: Start at the Aiguille du Midi, climb up the Three Mont Blancs route, and then descend the same way.
(Tour 151 in Ski de Randonee Haute Savoie Mont Blanc, by Francois Labande (Editions Olizane))
But descending the North side of Mont Maudit—often not in condition for skiing). Anyway the Toponeige guidebook shows a rating of 4.3 and the Olizane guidebook says “Difficile” / D+ which I think fits my words of “pretty hard”.

Regarding the idea of starting by descending the Glacier Rond or Cosmiques Couloir:
* Both are rated 5.1 E3 in the Toponeige guidebook.
* G Rond is “tres difficile -” and Cosmiques is rated “difficile plus” in the Olizane guidebook.
I’d say those ratings fit my words of “pretty hard”.

Even so I’m not getting how that approach solves the whole problem, since the report from skiers who were on the scene as it was happening said:
“The Glacier Rond had calved and produced an absolutely massive catastrophic avalanche”.
And at least one famous skier died in an avalanche while descending the G Rond a few years ago.

I note also that the author of the report said that later on their descent his party did ski down the Bossons, but says they still had to first cross the “death zone” again in order to reach their descent route.
(Also by April it is not unusual for the lower part of Bossons descent to lose snow, and to find ski bases hitting lots of thinly-buried rocks before getting down to Chalet Cerro and the wide hiking trail.)

How about pointing us to a trip report by somebody who actually climbed Mont Blanc that way?

Ken

I wrote the above report on TGR and was one of the witnesses to the accident. It did cross our minds to ski the Rond (not in condition that I would like) and Cosmiques but we thought it would eat more time than we wanted. If theorhetically the Rond was in condition, it would probably offer the quickest way down. The piece of ice fell of the bottom of the ice cliff on the Rond as far as I can tell. You probably would have been safe in the exit couloir while this happened.

The thing was for us was that we didn’t want to screw around rapping into the cosmiques and deal with who-knows-how-many other people who would have been below/above us in our day-ascent. For me it seemed reasonable to just skin quickly across early in the morning (which we did). It just goes to show that no matter what, seracs don’t really play by the “rules.”

As far as the Bosson Glacier, the avalanche was so big that you would have been in big trouble if you were anywhere on the Glacier’s normal descent route when the avalanche came. We were lucky to ski relatively (rock free) good snow until about a 15 minute walk to the tunnel.

The report also mentions first considering the Three Mont Blancs route, but then hearing that it wasn’t in condition.

Anyway very few skiing parties would choose to descend the 3MB route, when there’s so much more vertical available down by various possible descents toward the Grands Mulets. So you still end up with the question of crossing that zone on the descent.

And the two most detailed French-language guidebooks avoid suggesting descending the Bossons glacier in connection with climbing Mont Blanc with skis (because it’s not usually good to plan on all of the high-altitude and Jonction crossing and the low-altitude all being in good condition simultaneously).

So I’m not seeing how there was any obviously safer alternative which the Russians or other parties should have taken—except to guess that a random unlucky event was going to happen that morning.

Ken

Its possible that the Russians were on their way back to skin up to the Plan du Midi (the mid station) but I find that unlikely. In order to properly descend the Bosson Glacier (at 17h00), we dealt with some somewhat soft snow but nothing really of concern. The only thing that was bothering me was being in the slide zone of the Rond after all its activity.

davedm - 19 April 2010 09:38 PM

I wrote the above report on TGR and was one of the witnesses to the accident.

Regarding your TGR report, I think you were entirely right to continue climbing after calling the PGHM. It would have taken you maybe half an hour to reach the scene, possibly risk secondary avalanches etc. Better to leave it to the PG and other people who were almost certainly in the area than risk more people in the sector.

I spoke to one senior PGHMer who told me that once they arrive at an avalanche they prefer to get “civilians” out of zone and just have members of the S&R services involved.

Thanks for posting the report, really incredible photos & story. A friend took this photo of the avalanche from his balcony which shows the size, thought you might be interested to see it…

Some more photographs:

http://www.tvmountain.com/index.php/articlesautres-recits/259-avalanche-glacier-rond

And a video that has cropped up on youtube. It looks like the same event:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p4n5b9JQEQ