The forecast was the same again .... clouds with sun.
We decided that we should go back to one of the routes we had done the previous visit to this valley - Mont Telliers - we had only mad the Col the last time - so a chance to get to the top was worth taking on.
Essentially the same start as the day before - the car park below Grand St Bernard. only this time you leave the track going up the first valley to the right.
This leads up to a very Scottish hanging valley. this leads back to a ridge line, and the target was a peak on this.
The initial climb is fairly brutal and wakes you up. the following flat section gives you a chance to get your breath back . The clouds were floating around the top of the ridge line, and did not look threatening at this time.
As we reached the end of the valley and turned right to take a gully to the next plateau, we were caught by a group behind. they went up to the cloud line and waited to see what we were doing. As we went past into the clouds they tagged on behind.
Spurred on by the fact that we had a marked ridge to follow on the left and a peak to the front, we kept going into the murk.
Eventually things steepened and we arrived at the ridge line - it is strange how in the mist you do get turned slightly and also that it always seems lots of effort and appears longer to get even short distances. At the ridge we spotted a useful landmark of a transmitter .. and continued up towards where we hoped the summit to be.
A while later the descent became more of worry .. or more importantly my memory of land marks for the return to ensure we got back down the correct valley.
We reached a point on the ridge and paused for a bite.. our friends had passed us again but stopped just below our high point.
This was the end .. I was fairly confident we were on the summit cone, however later looking at the GPS tracker we were only at the start! and still had a couple of hundred meters to climb. However we had reached that time when we needed to turn back to get the best of the snow.
The descent in the cloud was "controlled" and it wasn't until we popped out of it and arrived "thankfully" at the point we left the hanging valley, that we could relax and enjoy the great snow. the bottom steep section was in perfect conditions and made a great ski.
Afterwards there was time to plan what to do next!! The forecasts were not great, but if we could get into a sunny patch we would achieve something .. however we had to think of alternatives.
We decided that we should go back to one of the routes we had done the previous visit to this valley - Mont Telliers - we had only mad the Col the last time - so a chance to get to the top was worth taking on.
Essentially the same start as the day before - the car park below Grand St Bernard. only this time you leave the track going up the first valley to the right.
The initial climb is fairly brutal and wakes you up. the following flat section gives you a chance to get your breath back . The clouds were floating around the top of the ridge line, and did not look threatening at this time.
Spurred on by the fact that we had a marked ridge to follow on the left and a peak to the front, we kept going into the murk.
A while later the descent became more of worry .. or more importantly my memory of land marks for the return to ensure we got back down the correct valley.
This was the end .. I was fairly confident we were on the summit cone, however later looking at the GPS tracker we were only at the start! and still had a couple of hundred meters to climb. However we had reached that time when we needed to turn back to get the best of the snow.
The descent in the cloud was "controlled" and it wasn't until we popped out of it and arrived "thankfully" at the point we left the hanging valley, that we could relax and enjoy the great snow. the bottom steep section was in perfect conditions and made a great ski. Afterwards there was time to plan what to do next!! The forecasts were not great, but if we could get into a sunny patch we would achieve something .. however we had to think of alternatives.
