Ross Hewitt Guiding

Capucin

2nd Feb 2016by rosshewittguidingLeave a comment

A quiet Sunday on to the Capucin couloir was what we hoped for, no stress from people behind & time to enjoy it. As I put the track in towards the Periades I looked over my shoulder and was shocked to see 25 people following! Fortunately they were only going for low angled pow and soon turned around leaving us to enjoy the mountains in peace. With all the recent wind I guessed the line would filled in but it was still amazing to see so much snow there. If I hadn’t been the first person in there this year I would have skied in form the col but I wanted to cut the slope while on the rope.

The uppers skied really well while the lower half on the bed surface was chalky. After the summer’s heat wave the glacier has dropped significantly providing us with the added surprise of a 30 m abseil to get out of the couloir.

Couvercle

1st Feb 2016by rosshewittguidingLeave a comment

An early season trip to the gorgeous old Couvercle Refuge coinciding with the full moon and my birthday – as if you need an excuse to go there!

Cosmiques Arete

1st Feb 2016by rosshewittguidingLeave a comment

A perfect cloudless winter day for Michelle to practice her mountaineering skills and for me to practice some short roping on her! No matter how many times you do this route its still loads of fun in a beautiful setting. Thanks Michelle!

Fil a Plomb

31st Jan 2016by rosshewittguidingLeave a comment

While we anxiously waited for snow to arrive I took the opportunity to snatch a day alpine climbing with my good friend Andy Houseman. Its great to cross train to avoid imbalances and injury and besides I still love Alpine climbing despite not having too much time away from skiing to do it. My friend Nico Magnin had been to Fil a Plomb so we took advantage of his trail breaking to have a fun day climbing this Chamonix classic. I was also testing those Lenz heat socks in my lighter Scarpa Phantom boots. Usually I suffer from really cold feet but the socks worked brilliantly and enabled me to leave my heavier Scarpa 6000s at home. Check them out at https://www.lenzproducts.com/. I chose the 1800 rcb battery for long days alpine climbing.

Navis Freebird Review

31st Jan 2016by rosshewittguiding16 Comments

New Zealand skiing Ross Hewitt Tom Grant-1-2

The Navis has been in the Black Crows line up since the early days and became a cult ski amongst the Chamonix steep skiers. In 2015 Black Crows introduced the lightened Freebird range for the back country.

Initially I was suspicious that the ride quality and dampening was going to be compromised by the lightened poplar / carbon / glass fibre core and I was slow to get out on them – how wrong could I be! I mounted mine with PLUM guides for the 2015 winter and was really surprised by how dampened the ski is. It skis similarly to the classic 2012 Volkl Mantra but without the weight of the metal sheets. My skis are the 179.4 / 133-102-118 / 19.

After the European winter I took my Navis Freebird to ski mountaineer in New Zealand where big walks carrying kit are the order of the day. They make the perfect compromise of weight, float with 102 under foot and edge holding.

Since then I have remounted them with a PLUM 170 race binding and the set up weighs 4120 g. The 2016 version has been lightened by 400 g so with any type of low tech binding it would give you a 4 kg set up. These are still my go to ski and the 102 under foot makes them much better for edging on firm or spring snow.

Navis freebird evaluation