Levanna Occidentale, France

The day was promising again ...  we set out early. the sun wa just rising on the peaks behind the hut.

Ahead of us on the other side of the bowl was the target...  a prominent summit over looking the hut, with an obvious route ... up to the col then read left up the ridge and back to the summit.

Most of the ascent to the col we did in the half light before the sun came up, following the tracks.

As we came to the col the sun was just breaking over the hills around, we were not doing bad for the first high route of the tour, but a little behind the book time.

We were caught here by a strong party we would share the next few days with, but it did show us we were on the right path.

The route from here went up the face to below a rock band before cutting back right to ridge.

We both had to pause for a while to fit our crampons on where the surface was wind blown and very icy.

Once on  the ride it became  little easier, and we followed this up to a little point below the final slope to the summit.

Here we left the skis and continued on foot, up to the summit and the Cross.

After the obligatory photos on the summit we made our way back to the ski depot, and had a quick bite to eat.

The descend started off on the same way as the route up, and back to the col. It was a little tricky on the windblown slabs, however once back at the col we saw that the other party had stayed high and traversed around to the slopes above the frozen lakes by the hut.

Soon we were really please d to have followed them as we dropped down some most excellent slopes down to the lakes. This was some really good steep(ish) descents.

Back at the hut we relaxed in the sun reflecting on a fantastic day.