Last Friday must be our last ski trip of the season. The snows are melting fast in the Belledonne so we headed to Mont Pourri in the Haute-Tarentaise. The weather had been stormy all week and Marco bailed at the last minute. This left Gigi, Marine, Isa and Michel… just enough to fill Isa’s minibus.
In theory the weather was going to be good until the afternoon but by the Grand Col clouds were bubbling up the valley.
The crevasses on the glacier des Roches were well bridges but as the slope steepened the remains of an avalanche blocked our route. Behind the clouds rose higher, even le Mont Blanc dissapeared.
The climb down from the col des Roches was on some rotten snow. The glacier seemed much lower than when I’d last come this way in 2000.
Then a traverse across the glacier du Geay under some sizable seracs and over some very deep crevasses
The seracs are not too threatening here, they don’t overhang routes like they do in the Mont Blanc but you can see a whole to the left of Gigi indicating a crevasse below. In the warm air the snow bridges were distinctly soggy and Michel and I decided to keep to our skis.
The summit was blocked by cloud so we stopped about 100 meters lower down near the shoulder. The skiing was on spring snow at first with some steep passages between the seracs then onto the deeply crevassed glacier du Geay
Where it was a case of keeping a close eye on the skier in front
and admiring the ice formations
for a total vertical of around 1700 meters.
not bad work for mid-June.
Google Earth: http://pistehors.com/pistehors/google-earth/Les-Arcs.kmz
Mont Pourri north west face
