fullwingspan – Ross Hewitt Guiding

A Photo Essay- 1st Descents Down Under

3rd Sep 2016by rosshewittguidingLeave a comment

With it starting to feel autumnal here in North Wales and seeing all the ski porn flooding in from the southern hemisphere, I’ve started to dream about skiing again and am looking forward to some sensual turns in the powder. Here is a short photo essay about trip Tom Grant and myself did last October to New Zealand’s Southern Alps. We skied 18 days out of a 25 day trip, losing 2 days to lost bags and 1 to a blown camper van engine. The highlights were skiing on the east face of Mt Cook and first descents on Elie de Beaumont’s west face and Darwin’s south face.

A big thanks to Evan and Mandy Cameron, Mel Cash & Stefan Austin, Shane Orchard, Cam Mulvey and Beau Fredlund for your hospitality, beta and good times.

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Argentiere Training Loop

31st Jan 2016by rosshewittguidingLeave a comment

This is one of my favourite touring loops in the Argentiere basin which is continually interesting as it provides the variety of skinning, bootpacking, scrambling, rope work and some couloir skiing. I’m not going to give away any details excpet to ay I regularly see Killian on it before he goes on to tag a few other peaks. Usually its pretty quick but before they opened the top GM tram it felt considerably longer with the bonus skin from Bochard over the Col des Rachasses and it ended up being a 6 hour day – its nice to get some mileage for those big 12-15 hr days that lie ahead and just for general base fitness to be able to ski every day. Besides, being alone in the Argentiere basin and hanging out below those beautiful big walls is well worth that effort.

New Zealand Ski Trip

4th Oct 2015by rosshewittguiding1 Comment

In ten days time I will be questing off to New Zealand with Tom Grant with the hope to ski some of the lines in the big mountains there. My good friend Evan Cameron lives in Christchurch and has already been skiing some great lines on his days off from doctoring so conditions look promising and I hope to share some turns with him in the Cook Range. Its almost ten years since we skied together in AK. Another friend and ex-Chamonix resident lives in Wanaka so the trip will be social whatever the conditions in the mountains and there’s always plenty great of sport climbing on the Wanaka rock as a fall back plan!

Its 4 months since my last turns on the East Face of the Matterhorn so next week I will have to get up the Midi and make some turns to get the feel back and acclimatise.

Brevent Rock Climbing – Premier Corvee and Ex Libris

3rd Oct 2015by rosshewittguidingLeave a comment

2 days of very contrasting weather in; the first uber hot and sunny with Davide de Masi on Premier Corvee, the second misty, damp and cold with James Clapinski wrapped up in all the clothes we had. Both were fun in their own ways. Both fun routes worth doing.

The Grand Gervasutti Couloir

12th May 2015by rosshewittguiding3 Comments

Tom Grant and myself had a look at the Diable Couloir this morning on the East Face of Tacul. It wasn’t happening so we skinned back up Mont Blanc du Tacul and skied the Grand Gervasutti – its an awesome plan B to have and we are lucky in Chamonix. I got a bit of a shock when I dropped in – there were some people climbing it about 700 m below, fortunately they were out of our sluff line – I’ve not heard of people doing that for 20 years!

The Grand Gervasutti is the 800 m line centre right.