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!
Couvercle
Tag: Lyon Equipment
Cosmiques Arete
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
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.
Christmas Eve on Chardonnet South Face
On Christmas Eve I had the pleasure of skiing with Jesper Petersson and returning to the Argentiere basin. We skinned from Bochard over the Col des Rachasses towards the Col de Chardonnet to have a go at the South Face. Rotten snow meant getting off the Argentiere glacier was really tough and we had been going for 5 hours by the time we got to the face. The weather was changing rapidly and by the time we climbed the initial couloir the wind was howling, tugging incessantly at the skis on our bags trying to lift us off the mountain. The decision to ski down was pretty simple!
Argentiere Training Loop
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.
Ross Hewitt Guiding 