Tom Greenall has once again been getting some early turns in on the Aiguille du Midi

http://vimeo.com/51310104

http://www.idriskis.com/blog/?p=48

Now I don’t want to be a kill-joy and Tom no doubt knows the AdM like his pocket but for anyone else who is thinking of taking cable car a few words of caution. Despite another 30cm of fresh today it is only really skiable on glaciers and that means crevasses. Poorly bridged crevasses. In Tom’s video @45seconds you can see the skier between two hollows, those are the rimaye of the Midi summit ridge. Remember Louis Lachenal died on the Vallee Blanche skiing in November after falling through a weak snow bridge.

The second point is that ice may not be far and the snow cover may be poorly bonded and you risk falls. Notice that Tom doesn’t go far onto the Chamonix side of the summit ridge for this reason.

As for anything gnarly like couloirs, these will not be filled in and should be left to much later in the season.

PS, check out Tom’s ski range while you are looking at his blog.

For non glaciated terrain rocks can be an issue. I remember a woman broke her leg falling on rocks just covered with snow a couple of seasons back, it was her first day ski touring in November and took her out for the season.

davidof - 18 October 2012 07:58 AM

For non glaciated terrain rocks can be an issue. I remember a woman broke her leg falling on rocks just covered with snow a couple of seasons back, it was her first day ski touring in November and took her out for the season.

I have seen this. Everyone gets excited with the new snow but it has not had a chance to get compacted down yet so can cause a few problems. If not to yourself then definitely to your equipment.

Dream about those turns in the cold snowy winter that approachs...but leave it at dreams for now...Annual pass bought I’m going shopping instead for some Razor Carbon poles that screw together as slightly shortened probe..

There were some new tracks on the Glacier Rond apparently yesterday too, according to Idris’ Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Idris-Skis/240667942636715?fref=ts
This feels really early in the season!