Merry Christmas. The snow from the last big dump has transformed by wind and sun so it has been difficult to find good snow from the lifts but the cover at mid altitudes has been excellent. The ice climbing conditions continue to improve but all the main venues in the Aosta valley have been closed due to avalanche risk in in some cases actual avalanches have blocked the roads, cutting of power supplies and damaging buildings. We have been out and about skiing the Troue de La Mouche in the Aravis near la Clusaz and the Col du Beaugeant in the Aiguille Rouge, both had challenging crusty snow but were great days out, if you go to the beugeant make sure you take a rope as there is a 7m rock step on the North side at the moment. We made a short video of the tours.
Trou de La Mouche - Col du Beaugeant from Bruce Goodlad on Vimeo.
I was skiing in Italy this week with the Ski Club of Great Britain the plan was to acclimatise and warm up round the Benevolo hut then move round to the Vittorio Emanuelle (VE) hut for an attempt on the Gran Paradiso. We skinned into the Benevolo and skied the Punta Paletta in interesting snow on Sunday on Monday we skied the Punta Calabre finding interesting snow and poor visibility on the last section to the hut. We skied out down the Vaudala which had some powder at the top and un-ski able bushes at the bottom all very entertaining. After a relaxing night in the valley we carried skis then skinned to the VE hut in poor weather, the next day dawned cold and clear for our ascent of the Paradiso we had to leave skis at the Col a couple of hundred metres below the summit due to icy conditions and continued on crampons to the summit. On the last day we skinned towards the head of the Val Savaranche before dropping into the valley and following the stream bed all the way to the car. The perfect way to finish the Alpine winter.
Another attempt at the Haute Route this week with Angy, Andy and Nick Benitz. We met up in Verbier for a training day in perfect weather spending the first night in the Cabin de Mont Fort. The weather for the next few days was quite difficult, skiing on a compass bearing to the Prafleuri then Dix huts. The visibility was bad again the next day until we reached the summit of the Pigne d'Arolla where the cloud cleared to give us a fantastic descent to the refurbished Vignettes hut. The final day to Zermatt was in perfect weather skiing all the way to Zermatt. We had one day spare so we managed to book a last minute Heli drop on Mont Rosa finding every snow condition from perfect powder to desperate crust finishing with spring snow to the valley.
The team assembled in Obergurghl on Saturday we were joined by Stuart Mc Aleese who is almost finished his guides training. We started the week in a very similar fashion to last skinning into the Martin Busch hut from Vent then refreshing everyones memory about avalanche safety. After some fresh snow on Sunday night the weather wasnt too bad allowing us to climb the Similaun we skied to 150m short of the summit then finished on crampons before descending to the Similaun hut in very poor light. Tuesday dawned cold and clear allowing us to traverse the Hochlab Joch to the Hoch Joch Hospiz. Like last week we had great powder on the descent. Wednesday was a big day we skinned up the worlds longest glacier (thats what it felt like) to climb the Weiskogel one of the great ski touring peaks of Austria the summit was reached after 7hrs of effort which only took 50mins to retrace in descent. Thursday the weather was a bit mixed but ok so climbed the Mittel Guldsar Spitz and descended to the Vernacht hut for the night. The weather was pretty bad on Friday so we went for a short skin then headed for the valley.
We met up in the small Austrian village of Vent for the start of a Ski Club of Great Britain week we started by skinning into the Martin Busch hut which is about 3 hours after settling in we practiced avalanche transceiver work so everyone was up to speed ready for the week ahead. The forecast was mixed so we decided to take each day as it came. On Monday we climbed the Hochlabkogel which would be a perfect ski peak if we could have seen it on Tuesday we climbed almost to the top of the Kreuz Spitz but were beaten back by strong winds. The weather on Wednesday was truly appalling but we managed to fight our way to the Similuan hut things were much better the next day for a traverse of the Hochlab Joch and a fantastic ski descent in powder snow to the Hoch Joch Hospiz. We finished the week traversing the Mittel Gulsar Spitz and descending to Vent via the Vernacht hut in extremely flat light.