Tete de Balme, France

It has finally arrived, after much planning and anticipation, the first day of our course on Ski touring. We met Brian at his house, and we went over our equipment and what pieces we were missing. Luckily Brian had all the spares we needed, Skins, Couteau, transceivers, and after a short logistics check we headed off to Le Tour at the end of the valley.

Today was going to be a work out for our skiing capabilities followed by an introduction to skining. The weather had improved, sunny with a chill wind.

We started off doing a fast traverse of the resort, up to the top of the Charmarillion lift, down back up then across to the drag, then around to the tete de Balme drag and down from the top.
The first section was standard Red piste skiing, and we soon realised how slow and technically deficient we were, and things were not going to get better on the next section ...  as we worked over to the drag, Brian took us off through the powder off-piste between two pistes. Carnage would be the best way to describe the three of us splattered over the short slope. Eventually struggling through it was obvious to everyone that we were greatly challenged away from the prepared tracks.

Brian cottoned on to what we needed to learn quickly and we spent every opportunity after this on techniques and practice to cope with the powder. In place of the common instructor shouted command of "bend zee knees" we had "hop, hop, bounce" to try to persuade us to ho into the fall line and power around ...  was the cause of much pain as we inevitably leant back after the hop and crashed, or leant too far forward and either turned too far uphill and fell over backwards, or just face planted down the slope. I do remember swearing a lot as things got worse before they got better.

Along the ridge south

We were getting the hang of things but very tired - the drag up to the top  of the station was very windy and icy and I remember wondering how I was going to get through the day .. every muscle ached. Luckily this was the culmination of the first act ...From the top we dropped down to the middle station on the pistes trying to be as fast as we could ... thighs and calves screaming we stopped outside for a break and something to eat, and more importantly a welcome rest and recovery (lots of sugar and caffeine.

After lunch we took the Charmarillion chair back up to the top, and then  the second act started. We had a lesson on putting the skins onto the skis, then we started off for the top of the Tete de Balme. On the way we learnt how to skin and make uphill kick turns.
The route traversed across to the refuge and from there up the ridge to the top. this was a very relaxing way to climb the hills and we were soon enjoying the views.

Looking down the valley to Chamonix

Wind scoop on the tete de Blame

After this was full steam ahead as we charged down the pistes to the bottom and finish for the day.

Our first summit on skis