Brevant descent to Les Houches

Saturday was a good day, but the weather outlook was not brilliant for the weekend. We decided that we should go for one of the routes out of Francois's book. while we had more than one car there was an opportunity to do one of the straight line routes.






We picked the Brevant descent to Les Houches, this would give us an opportunity to get half a day loosening up before dropping down from the top station away from the lift.

North from the top station

After the morning spent going on routes from the mid station, and lunch in the sun on the terrace.

We then set off around the first corner down to the turn above the col before dropping under the rope and back around under the top station and running northwards.

Looking back up

The route then dropped down the undulating slopes, moving around the rocks and gullies, in big sweeping turns ... the snow was firm on the tracks but softer off them, so we stayed on them, where it was possible, although our turns were not always controlled enough to avoid the odd excursion.

Looking toward Mt. Blanc

Once down the initial slopes we headed over to the obvious ridge that bounded the Chamonix valley.

We skirted the rocky tops along the ridge heading towards the rounded col on the ridge where we would drop down towards the valley at Les Houches.

After the tram track running around the ridges there was some schushing down to the col.

There was a slight sting in the tail that there was an unavoidable slight rise, which we did without putting the skins on, just releasing the back bindings.

Over the other side of the col were a number of bowls and drops through the upper meadows until we hit the tree line...  the snow was relatively soft and quite heavy as we were a little late on the south facing sides.

After the initial tree line we worked down to the lower meadows, and there was some final gentle slopes.

Eventually we ran out of snow, and had to take the skis off and walk the final meters to where we had parked a car in the morning. we used this car to ferry everyone back to the Brevant car park and the other vehicle.

That night we settled down in our tents oblivious of what would happen overnight.