Col de Tour Noir, France

Another day with Brian Hall ...  Dave and I had discussed going on a longer tour with Brian, and he suggested the Col De Tour Noir .. a regular classic in the area for new converts to the touring world. While we would be doing this, Sue and the girls would take KT in the backpack up aiguille du midi and then participate in some xc skiing in the afternoon.

We, (Dave, Alan, and myself) met up with Brain and a previous client of his in the Grand Montets car park, and took the first lift to the very top .. a process that would be repeated many times over the years. This is a typical scrum with a linear series of queues...  first you wait for the building to open then queue for a "one up" day ticket at the ticket offices, then you charge up the stairs and wait in the queue for the cable car, hoping that you are close enough to get through on the first lift. Then the attendants count out the people to move through to the loading bays, wait again for the car to drop from the top, squeeze in, all the time trying to not get someone else's gear in your face, and also make sure you have something to hang on to as the car goes over the pylons. Once everyone has squeezed in ("move down please"!)and the doors have executed the final crush everyone shuffles around to get comfortable for the ride. At Lognan (the middle station), there is a huge rush the minute the doors open, as the whole process is repeated .. a charge around to the extension ticket desk, queue for the car, staging loading, crush and set off. The upper lift is smaller than the first one so there are always some people disappointed and have to wait for the next one.

From the top station we were soon down the ladders and on the col getting ready in the shadow of the Petite Aiguille Vert for the descent to the Argentiere glacier.



 We dropped down to the glacier, following the higher route through the seracs to retain height. The descend was on very hard frozen snow, no problem with technique, but the ride felt like riding cobbles. Once we got down on the glacier my legs were stinging from riding the ridges, we thankfully paused for putting the skins on in the shade before the sun poked around the mountains.
Setting off up the glacier the sun popped over the tops around us.

After passing the Argentiere hut we turned left up the glacier coming down from the col, just past the long curve of the moranine

Climbing up this Tour Noir glacier was fairly simple to start with, just a gentle slope. After a while we came up on the crevasse zone and a much steeper section, and the first kick turns of the trip.

Once over the crevasse zone, the angle dropped back to the same as we started with, and we continued up the side of the Aiguille de Chardonnet.

There was a small sting in the tail as we came up to the col, with a steep final section, I remember this as it was also very hard packed, and I ended up stepping up, and had a few issues with my bindings and the friction (or lack of it) of the hinge. this made stepping up hard as the ski tail dropped before I was ready.


I vowed to spend some time understanding how the mechanism works and what is a god way to maintain them effectively. After I had recovered my composure and the air was less blue.

At the col we had time to recover from the climb, and take a lot of photos

Over the other side of the ridge we had great views into Switzerland, and a world we would be spending a lot more time in a decade later.




The descent followed the line of the ascent down to the Argentiere glacier. We soon discovered that, as the sun warmed thing up, there were easier and harder lines down ... the easier ones were where we did not have to bounce so much were where the wind had packed the snow down and blown the surface powder away. .. It never ceases to amaze me how much the ascents takes out of you and just a few turns on the descent get your legs screaming.
Dropping down onto the glacier brought us back to the consolidated trails (not yet pistes, but that soon followed). Once we joined up with the Pic a Ric piste it was a simple schuss back to the mid station and down - I cant remember if we skied down or took the lazy way. Back in the car park we said our goodbyes before heading back to the apartment for rest and rehydration :)

While we were experting ourselves, the girls went on a trip up the aiguille du midi cable car.

After the scum of the people doing the vallee blanche, they settled for a more gentler pursuit of some ski de fond.

Grands Montets

Dave, and I had been in touch with Brian Hall to see if he was in the valley for this week, and getting a positive response had reserved a couple of days to continue our education. The first of which was to enhance and extend our skills on the vast expanses of the Grands Montets. So while Sue and the girls went up to Montenvers with KT, and did the tourist thing down to the ice caves on the Mer de Glace

Alan, Dave and I spent the day chasing Brian around the Grands Montets (he had just come back from an ascent of Mont Dolent using approach skis) constantly wondering how he did not raise a sweat.

We covered most aspects of the area, from the Italian bowls of last trip, and the long run from the top of Bouchard down to the lowest lifts at Le Lavancher down the combe Pendant. We also took in the two runs from the topmost station, for ever taking the direct lines.

By the end of the day we were completely knackered, and no bounce what so ever left in our legs.

While we were hurtling around Grands Montets, Sue Lyn, and Jane went up the Montenvers cog railway to see the mer de glace

Ski de Fond, Chamonix, France

Sue had a day off, resting her knee but Dave, Alan and I, together with probably Lynn and Jane, decided that we would try out the Ski de Fond tracks between Chamonix and Les Praz.


Dave and I would try out our touring bindings and skins on the ski de  frond piste, the others would hire XC skis.

 The piste went along the valley past the mer de glace camp site that we had visited together on one of our summer alpine visits.
We also got a good sight of the helicopters taking off from the base by the camp site.
The experiment was not really a success.. the touring skis are so much heavier and the skins do not glide as easily. the tracks are a little narrow, but our skis were not like later "fatter" models.

Lac Blanc, France

Another brilliant forecast...  blue skies and little wind.  Encouraged by the day at Le Tour, we had chosen to extend our experience by doing a little tour from the ski resort of Flegeres ... we would follow the summer path from the top lift to the summer restaurant at Lac Blanc, and then cut straight down back to the pistes.

However to start off we (Alan, Dave, and myself), went with a dew of the others and spend the first part of the morning on some off-piste trails beside the main Index run (straight down between the zigzags), and the bowls off the central lift.

As the day wore on and before the sun got too hot and the snow too soft (remembering that this resort faces due South). We took a ride to the top of the Index chair lift and traversed around keeping as high as we could. The aim was to stay high and skirt around each of the ridges that fall down from the main Aiguilles Rouge ridge line.

Once we could make no further progress traversing, we put the skins on and continued following the trail made by previous people on the route.

As the route was generally flat, we had moments of descending as well as ascending. This reminded me of the first attempts at this with Brian earlier in the year. Alan was using some "inserts" in place of true touring bindings. these fit inside a normal downhill binding like a boot, but then have a second set of fixings on top that your boot fits into. this second set has the touring features. The draw back is that you are much higher off the snow, and from time to time that has an impact on stability (especially downhill with skins on).

Before too long we arrived at our destination ...  closed for the winter, but a great place to pause, have a bit and a drink before the challenges of the route finding and descent.



The descent was relatively straight forward when you look back in hindsight on it, however at the time it was a series of bowls, where we were not exactly sure where we were, but confident we were not going to miss the end of the ski resort and end up fighting down to the valley base.
The snow had got really quite soft and heavy in places, and with our lack of technique I for one was really tired by the time we hit the piste. This would not be the first time I would feel fantastic when the snow under foot became pisted and everything got much easier, and you end up wondering why it was all so difficult!

I cannot really remember what happened after this, but I am sure that Dave would have argued to ski down the closed piste into the valley (it became an in-joke at the time). But nothing could take away from the great feeling of another key step on the road to being confident in our ability to go into the mountains on our own.

Sue, Lyn, and Jane, went to Les Plannards together with Mik on his first lessons.

Le tour, France

Dave, went off with Steve Derek and Alan to climb an ice fall at the top of Vormaine and I with Jane and Lynn spent the day on the higher slopes experimenting with the off piste techniques. Le tour has some great small valleys running down the slopes between the pistes, as well as some slopes heading SW from the top lift, which allows for much experimentation of techniques.

The day started with some exercises in the humps and valleys besides the pistes on the Chamonix side. The snow was relatively good and there was plenty of fun had in the warm bright sun. This was very quickly a favorite with all the parties we would go with, as it stretched our limited capabilities in a safe manner, and once we had reached the limit we could always drop out to the piste, for a rest.

Les Jeurs, France

Sue, and Jane went to the Vormaine slopes at the bottom of Le Tour, KT was not in Panda club any more, so, after trying it out myself,  Sue had her in a back pack and was determined to see if she could ski like that.

Unfortunately she had a slight accident avoiding a collision and twisted her knee, this would keep coming back over the next years, and would mean wearing a brace. They all came up and joined us for lunch

I had picked up a book , by Francois Burnier and his mate giving a number of the main off-piste routes in the Chamonix valley ... even better the book was in English and French. Francois we would bump into in a later trip and a different year, but for now he opened our eyes to possibilities away from the ski resort. For now this was a relatively significant step for us, we would be beginning the journey for making our own way in the mountains in winter.

Dave, Alan and I decided to try a descent from the Le Tour ski area into Switzerland - called Les Jeurs. This is now much easier, with the Valorcine extension to the lift system, and much of where we went is now well tracked beside the piste. The others would spend the whole day within the ski area.


After a break for a bite to eat we made our way to the top of the ski area ... towards the top of the tête de Blame. From the top of the drag lift we put on the skins for the quick trip to the top of the tête de Balme.



From the top we headed down the back side ...  there were plenty of tracks, and the snow was quite crisp .. riding the clean snow was good, but getting caught in the old tracks would cause difficulties, and take a deal of effort to get our with our limited techniques, of stem turn and hock-stop turn.

We were for ever checking the map and route description, trying to pick out landmarks, never quite sure we were on the right route ...  we need not have worried, all routes pointed in the same direction... down towards the reservoir. .. Other years we would take the far more demanding routes to the right (east) of this, but for now this was quite demanding enough.

As we got to the tree line the snow softened up and we could even make some approximations to parallel turns (really a mixture of the stem and hock-stop turns), and also as being closer to powder was kinder to our technique.

Before we continued we had a brief respite and a quick bite/ drink. Then it was on to the next section and the reservoir ...  this is where the new intermediate station is located. From here (if we had known) we could drop down to Vallorcine, but the route description took us NE to a track, that descended to Chatelard. This track was very rutted and ever increasingly icy.




As we arrived at near the bottom, two pedestrians were walking up the track, slowly pulling into the side Alan, and I came to a halt. On the other hand Dave was travelling a little faster, stuck in the rutted tracks and ended up in a heap between Alan and myself, just in front of the two people. They duly said "Bonjour - Passports svp.!" They were border guards looking for the unprepared. This was the days before the single currency, and the Schengen agreement.. the borders were well policed. Fortunately we had thought to have our passports, otherwise it would be a long walk back to the Vallocine track!

From here it was a walk down to the road, and after some hunting around, we found the railway station up the other side of the valley a little way ...  in future we would cut back to France - it would be simpler.

The train ride back to Le Tour went very smoothly - later we would use public transport more as a mechanism for getting back to the car after multi day routes. Picking up the car we returned, tired but satisfied with a very productive day.

Sue, Jane and Lyn, went to Le Tour ... just to ride the lifts a bit.A final addition to the party - Mik - arrived by Train today - he had never been skiing before and was just recovering from an odd separation process, so it was good to see him.