Argentiere hut, France

The forecast for today was mixed ... it would start off sunny and then the clouds would come in during the afternoon, followed by rain/ snow.

Looking for a half day route we chose to skin to the Argentiere hut from the Grands Montets mid station at Lognan.

The initial part of the route followed the pistes coming around from the Argentiere glacier.

As we met the glacier, the route continued on the glacier. We could have followed the glacier off piste route up the right hand side, but we chose to cut over to the left hand side early, before the serac zone.

We passed under the route to the col de passon.

As we approached the bottom of the col de Chardonnet, there were a number of seracs we had to work our way through.


We basically hunted out a route through them, and then picked up the route from the bottom of the col de Chardonnet up to the hut.

It was further than I remembered, and as we approached the hut, the cloud was starting to descend.

We cut up to the hut, and paused for a bite to eat and watch the local wildlife.

As we had been sitting there the clouds had got thicker, and when we left it was positively blind. I could see only a few meters in front of me.

We headed over the glacier, following the main line of tracks. At one of the moraine lines the main track veered right (back to the col de Chardonnet), and a minor one went on straight to the (we hoped to meet the glacier off-piste route and so return to the mid-station at Lognan). After a heated discussion, where I wanted to follow our ascent route, Bryon persuaded me to go straight on. This was very weird, skiing in a white out, trying to maintain a walking pace, and control the skis in flat light. There was a constant danger of crevasses.

We had luck on our side, and soon hit the well followed route, and knew we were safe.

Back on the pistes we had a smooth run back to the mid station and down to the bottom.

We had made a good day out of the possibility and also we had gained some really valuable experience of navigating in white out conditions on dangerous territory.