Retreat, France

The clouds and rain came back again ... Dave had a flight to catch (from Geneva this time, so we would have a more comfortable ride back with only 4 in the car)

Unlikely to do any routes over the next few days we cut our losses and retreated back home.

A last photo call outside the Gite de la Montagne, quite a reunion, and it was great to be out with Dave again... John has his new skis .. and I still have a memento today, as I carry a sit mat in my current vehicle that was "left luggage" from the trip.

Grands Montets, France

More snow overnight ...  but the outlook for the day was supposed to be good...
We had a good day a couple of days ago at Brevant, so this time we headed for Grands Montets.

We seemed to be all over the mountain chasing the fresh powder, trying to stay one step ahead of all the other people doing exactly the same.

My one specific memory was of leaping off what I thought was a bump and turned into a small cliff ...  luckily the powder was deep and cushioned my fall, just did not cover the embarrassment.

Grands Montets is absolutely fantastic when it is like this.

Col de Bérard, France

A welcome sunny day, after a good cold night.

There was only one route to be considered - the traverse over the col de Chrochue, and the col de Berard.

Taking the Flegere cable car and the Index chair, we got height quickly.

Skins on and we soon traversing around the coombes to the Chrochue valley

From here we zigzagged up the combe, as the slope got steeper. The last time Bryon and I had been here we ended up walking the last few meters, but this time we could skin all the way to the col.



At the col we soon changed from uphill to downhill mode.

There follows a long descending traverse keeping as high as possible but keeping under the rocky ridges.

At the corner we changed again into uphill mode, and headed for the col de Berard.

this section always looks further than it turns out and we were soon on the col looking down the long Berard valley.

The wind was quite vicious so we did not stay long, just enough time to take the skins off and eat a chocolate bar

The powder on the other side was fantastic and we all had fun (apart from John, who had struggled on his "approach" skis the previous day in the powder, the skis just were not buoyant enough to hold his weight up as he weighted to turn, the diving skis caused him to nose dive frequently).

Being selfish we all found our own lines to descend and made the most of the situation.

At the bottom we all had massive grins .. including John who had used this to justify getting some new skis!!

Brevant, France

Over night had seen more snow fall, and were really grateful we decided to move to the gite. Not understanding the stability of the snow pack after all this snow, and with there not having been much hard frost for a while we did not want to travel too far from the safer areas of the pistes, and with all the fresh snow there was some good off-piste playing to be had while using the mechanical lifts to get more runs in.

We started off on the combe East of the mid station, before heading the top, as this was in the clouds for most of the day.

To make good use of this time, we thought we would have a distraction around lunch, and dig a snow pit to look at the snow pack. So taking a diversion under the rope we found a suitable slope not too far form the piste.




The pit rapidly became a snow block to see what the fracture tests would give us ... as it was his idea, Dave was "volunteered" to be the poodle and do the jumping on the block.  The pack was far more stable than we could have hoped.

After the interlude we returned to the powder between the pistes, and repeated the descent from the top station several times.

Rain Day, France

Yesterday afternoon Bryon, Chris and I arrived back at the camp-site, feeling rather pleased with our day's efforts, to find John ad Dave looking glum. Whereas we had escaped the rain, down with them it had drizzled all day.

They had escaped to the drying room - a small bunker under the owners flat - but soon ran into difficulties .. there was only a small electric bulb in there, and it ran on a 5 minute press button timer. If you left the door open it sounded an alarm - apparently the boiler got upset with the door open.

With the tents wet out side and the prospect of more to come, we quickly came to the logical conclusion to make a break for a gite. ...

From past trips both Chris and I had used the gite de la montagne (not far away), so we quickly drove around there and discovering there was space available for the remainder of the week, we unanimously opted for the cushier option. the tents were quickly put away and we decamped to the gite (much to the camp-site owners disappointment - but he could not offer us the sheltered space.).

The gite is an old farmhouse in the middle of the pasture past the Chamonix sport centre between the main road an the back road to Les Praz. We had were all in a dortoir, for about 8,  but we quickly took it over completely.

The frist night after we had arrived, Dave did some exploring to see what the facilities were, and got the surprise of his life when looking in what he believe to be a cupboard was actually the door to another dortoir, only to interrupt a couple "in flagrante" although I am not sure they realised he had made an appearance!

the rain continued when we awoke, and into the day.  The best we could do was walk into Chamonix and drool over the equipment we could not afford.

The forecast was for improving and return of the sun later in the week.... already thoughts of the Chamonix - Zermatt route (or even sections of it) were rapidly disappearing.