snow – Page 28 – Ross Hewitt Guiding

The day was forecast 40% sun but it didnt look too promising peeking out window from under the covers in my bed. Eventually my conscious starting playing on me for being lazy and we headed up the Midi with hope the forecast was right. The lifty on the bin said we were the first skiers of the day which was slightly surprising as this is Chamonix at the most exciting time of year for a skier and a bin had gone up before us.

Walking down the Arrete the mist started to part revealing a pristine sparkling wonderland with its new coat of pow. I never fail to feel a twinge of excitement going to ski on the Midi. Unlike a ski resort the Midi offers adventure, doubt, excitement (read sphincter twitching fear), risk and reward. You end up skiing in outrageous places – the stuff dreams are made of.

A guide was working on the arrete removing the fixed ropes and expressed concern that we were going skiing. Its not like I haven’t been up the Midi a 1000 times but I guess they have responsibility to warn people of the dangers given the number of inexperienced people that disappear up there questing of into the unknown. Maybe I just looked like a punter walking down rather than skiing. It does always make a little part of me question my decision making and that can be unsettling. I spent a few seconds thinking about it and off we went.

Anyway the Rond was getting better with every run and with a topping of 30 cm made for fast fluid skiing in fresh tracks. Bit by bit the North Facing stuff is coming into condition. Its a shame Grands Montets closed on Tuesday!

The latest reset on the Midi had everyone heading for the freeride zone in the Cosmiques and Rond. Will has shin splints and I needed some exercise, so we decided to go tour even though the train was closed with trees on the line. There wasn’t much snow stuck on the south side of the Midi Arrete, so we bailed on the Grand Envers approach and went for first tracks on the low angled pow on the Gros Rognan.

The snow kept changing with aspects and with it our minds on which of the 3 Tacul tours to do. Finally deciding to go to Breche Tacul we got to 50 m from the ridge and were falling into holes in the unconsolidated wind blown snow. That decided it – Capucin.

At the Col I could push my pole completely into the snow and not touch rock. Finding the anchor required a lot of digging with the showel!

There was some good cold snow down the right side which we hugged tightly to avoid sluff activity coming of the sunny side on the left. The skiing was fun and it was great to be out in the mountains after such a long period of unsettled weather. Thanks also the American team behind for waiting and not sluffing us out.

After the walk down to Chamonix it was definitely beer o’clock!