The Skies were clear and it was going ot be a good day again.. We decided to head up to the Col d'Izoard again, but this time we would make for the Clot la Cima, a prominent peak to the West of the col.
We parked in the same place as last time, at le Laus and walked up the road, past the road block, and on towards the pass.
There was much less snow on the road than last week, and we had to carry the skis the first set of hairpins.
We followed the same route as last week and cut the hairpins in the same way.
At the point where the road reached the second flat zone, we split off the trail trying to find the route through the trees as shown on the map.
We set off following tracks and soon realised that we were a little low and had to fight through the trees to get to the right trail.
This was harder than it looked and just reinforced my belief in woods taking a long time to navigate in.
After struggling in the woods for what seemed an eternity, we eventually came out in the valley where the track was plain to see and we were back on track.
We could now see the col that was our first objective... the idea was to make the col then cut up the ridge.
This was further than it appeared, and we had a number of bowls to climb through just to get close.
In the last plateau we did a time check and realised we were desperately behind schedule to get to the summit.
Suffice it to say just getting to the col before our extended reserve time limit passed would be hard.
Stretching it a very little and we made the col, just as the clouds came in over the summit, but luckily not the col.
We rapidly took the skins off and prepared for the descend, and dropped off the ridge, and headed back the way we had come.
We need not have worried, as the clouds blew over, but the time we were back at the bowls and readying for the drop to the valley.
With the benefit of looking down we could see the better lines, and soon found the route we should have taken on the ascent.
This was a lot less trouble than we had fighting through the trees on the way up.
Soon we were back on the road and working our way back down. It was not long before we were hopping over the bare patches, and eventually we were back at the end of the snow.
From here it was the long walk back to the van.The day had been a good idea, but we lost so much time in the woods, that we had to devise an alternative summit. Albeit we had a good day.