Today seemed like being the best weather for a few days and as the route de Prabert had finally reopened I decided to explore further the summits on the left bank of the valley. For some reason the descents on this side have been long ignored by skiers, probably because they don’t appear in the guidebooks.
I decided to take a look at the North Couloir of the Pointe du Sciallet
I was a bit early at the summit - 9h15. The snow was still a bit hard. The couloir is in the shadow of the Scia so doesn’t see much sun but I thought it would be better to wait until the air temperaturs rose a bit.
There was a bitterly cold south-east wind blowing. I decided to ski the spring corn down to the Riviers d’Allemont. 600 meters of extra vertical. At aroun 1750 meters the snow become too soft to ski so I refitted skins and climbed back up the gentle valley.
The entry looked ok
except for what looked like a steep section in the upper third of the couloir. It turned out to be steeper than I thought with hard snow - it was probably somewhere between 45-50 degrees for 10 meters. The rest of the couloir is a sustained pitch somewhere in excess of 40 degrees with a goulotte forming at the bottom
The Jas de Lievres south still looked skiable
and finally looking back up, the couloir is on the right
but there seems to be a second couloir possible on the left. This isn’t in the guidebooks but is only a minor variant.
The snow was well refrozen from 1400 but transformed very quickly on south and east facing slopes. East slopes were skiable from 9am and south facing slopes would have followed soon after. I descended the couloir at 11am with hard snow with good grip to 2100 m where the snow became spring like (it had taken some sun) to 1800 meters where it became unskiable much down to the forest trail at 1600 meters.
