The sky was clear and another good day was forecast. We wanted to go and have a look up the valley we saw yesterday. Looking in the book this gave a route to the col du bastillon, or mont Telliers, but I believed that was a step too far at this point of the tour.and our fitness levels.
We parked in the same place as yesterday and headed up the track, unfortunately M-J felt her foot almost immediately and by the time we got to the split from the track she felt she could not continue.
The rest of us continued on up the steep slope on the opposite side of the valley. We worked our way up the slope to the skyline.
As we neared the top and the slope eased up, we could see the valley running away ahead of us.
The valley was relatively flat at this stage and we followed the obvious line to the point where it turned back north.
Around the corner the valley continued and began to get steeper as it followed the ridge line. We continued as the wind got fiercer.
As we climbed out the back of the valley it raised to a second flatter area (I think there are lakes here in summer).
The ridge line on our left showed us the direction and we headed to what looked like the obvious col .. I am still not convinced we were where we thought we were on the ridge, but time was passing and we needed to be heading back down.
After a rest and some food we readied for the descent and wrapped up warm as the cloud had come over and the temperature dropped.We followed the route we used on the ascent without much issue ... slightly icy but quite pleasant.
As we got to the steeper section that dropped down to the Grand St Bernard valley. Here the snow surface softened and we skied perfect snow down the the valley bottom.
On the other side the snow was really soft and made the return to the car park more arduous than the day before. We met up with M-J and retired to the dortoir.