Somehow I got my arm twisted by the Pete and Laetitia (they can be very persuasive after a few beers) to embark on a winter alpine adventure. The chosen objective was The Chevalier Couloir on the Petite Aiguille Verte, a classic gully graded AD+; we were then to round off this adventure by skiing down form the top station of the Grand Montets cable car station – what had I let myself in for……
In the event it all went pretty well, the snow conditions were not great making the climb quite exciting – three of us moving together with minimal protection, and near the top we had a 1000 feet of 55 degree snow plunging down to the Argentiere glacier. The highlight of the ascent (if you can call it that) was when a French skier decided to ski down the gully sending huge amounts of snow and ice pouring down on top of us – I think Laetitia was a bit shocked at my use (and knowledge) of English swear words and it’s probably a good thing the Frenchman couldn’t make them out either.
Getting back down to the cable car station took a bit longer than anticipated due to the continued poor snow conditions, but we eventually arrived back at our skis at about 4.15pm.
The ski down from the top was hard work, we all had rucksacks on carrying our climbing gear, being the crappiest skier mine was considerably lighter than Pete or Laetitia’s though, we arrived at the bottom for a well earned beer, being the last people on the piste!
That ski down was so hard with that heavy rucksack, my back is really hurting now from the strain! 🙁
How crazy was that skier to try to come down while we were climbing!? How would he have lived with himself if he’d knocked a rock down and killed one (or all) of us? :angry: However, watching an extreme-skier at such close quarters was very impressive. His jump turns were really awesome! 😛 It’s quite hard to imagine that such steep ground can be skied at all, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I’m not sure I would believe it … but I guess in many ways it is a kind of controlled falling…