Vanoise Off Piste Perfection coaching course

This week i have been running an Off Piste Perfection course based in the 3 Valleys. The purpose of the week is to mix coaching and mileage on some great off piste runs, with a bit of touring thrown in if conditions are right.

On Sunday clear skies and soft snow allowed us to ease into the week with some Courchevel classics:

On Monday the visibility started off very poor, but we made great use of the morning with a focussed coaching session on piste which we were then able to transfer to off piste in the afternoon as the weather improved.

Tuesday's forecast was for a bright start rapidly turning to snow, so a long morning with a later lunch was planned and we headed up high in Mottaret. Expectations for the snow were low with the mild temperatures, but we were pleasantly surprised by up to 10cm of fresh up high, and with the visibility holding out much longer than expected had a fantastic morning pushing onto some steeper terrain...

Wednesday - once again the forecast was for a few bright spells in the morning, followed by cloud and precipitation, and once again we managed to keep reasonable visibility almost to the end of the afternoon. The 15-25cms of fresh that were forecast were just about there, which gave great skiing where the base was smooth or soft, though the snow was rapidly warming and turning a little heavy by the afternoon. A good morning was spent putting first tracks into several Courchevel classics like the Pyramid face and Creux Noirs!

With a small top up and cooler temperatures Thursday turned into another belter of a day, barring an hour or two of poor visibility over lunchtime, starting with first tracks down the Becca Couloir and finishing off with a couple of laps in some very atmospheric (and powdery) Mont Vallon couloirs, with lots more good skiing in between!

The last day of the course came with a tricky weather forecast, with very high winds due at lunchtime. These turned out to be blowing hard right from the off, and with lots of lift closures in Meribel we put in a focussed skills session on piste, and then re-located to La Tania and went up into the Courchevel lift system which was much more sheltered from the wind and also gave us some good cold snow to finish the week with a couple of great laps in the couloirs!

A huge thank you to David, Terry, Jez, Phil and Charlie for a great week - I look forward to skiing with you all again next winter!

The descent of Rum Doodle

There exists a hazy aerial photograph on which both Will & I had spotted an intriguing white line many years ago. While I am generally busy working in the winter, Will had a lot more time to explore and after several eventful failed attempts finally managed to locate the entrance to (and descend) what has since become known as 'Rum Doodle' couloir, named after his favourite book - W.E.Bowman's wonderful 1956 parody of the grand mountaineering expedition books of the period (if you haven't read the book go away now, read it then come back...).

This line had been on my hit-list for many years, but lack of time, conditions or partners had always conspired against. Today finally everything lined up!

A short walk followed by a surprisingly good mix of spring snow and powder on the first descent took us to the main climb of the day:

Our second warm-up run was even better than the first...:

With the most snow recorded for 40+ years it should have come as no surprise to find the automatic weather station almost buried...:

Greg questing in search of the entry to the fabled Rum Doodle couloir:

There it is!

Greg checking the piton for the first rap:

Looking down the main event:

Greg on the first abseil:

Conditions = 'acceptable':

The second 'abseil' (in a normal snow year...) - we skipped this with a short straight-line... amazing how much speed you pick-up in a short space!

More good turns in the lower section of the couloir:

A quick 300m vertical dropped us back up and over for our last ski down - we were fully braced for this to be a crust-fest but were pleasantly surprised by heavy but very skiable powder all the way down!:

A grand day out with over 2000m of really good skiing - hats off to Will for persevering with the exploration all those years ago...
Will be raising a glass to you tonight!

"I put my breakfast aside and went to Pong’s tent. I found him filing a fork into a bowl. He took no notice of me. After a while he laid down the fork and began to grate a piece of rock. I thought I had better let him get used to my presence before trying to communicate with him; so I sat down and watched him. After chopping up a portion of climbing rope and mincing an old sock he threw everything into a pan of pemmican stew and stirred for five minutes, adding sand and paraffin to taste. Finally, he strained it, spread some of it on a slice of leather, and took a hearty bite."

Pointe de la Rechasse

A quick blast up the Pointe de la Rechasse today with Hoops, Matt and Chris, followed by the best descent I have ever had from here (by a long stretch) - 1400m vertical of perfect powder all the way down to the Pralognan pistes!

Vanoise touring

Back at the start of last week I had a couple of days touring in the Vanoise to finish off my 'alpine' season before coming up to Lofoten in Arctic Norway. Rob, Simon, Andy, Mike and Hugo are all ex Courchevel seasonnaires from way back in the day (think turn of the century...) and wanted an introduction to ski touring with a night in a refuge. The Col de la Vanoise hut above Pralognan is the perfect venue for this with relatively easy access, with potential for detours on the way up, and lots of summit possibilities before dropping back into the valley. With heavy snowfall just 2 days before we were a bit too early for the spring snow cycle tobe back to its best but still managed to find some great snow!

See you next year guys!

A quick update from the French Alps

It has been quite quiet here at Offpisteskiing HQ - a busy week of work for the opening week of the 3 Valleys, but last week I had programmed in some family time over Christmas with some fun days skiing with Jr 1 and Jr 2 who both seem to have caught the bug now! Back to 'the office' today in St Foy, working with my good friends Dave Meyer and Andy Nelson - Dave and I go waaaaay back to my first season teaching skiing at Nevis Range back in 95/96!

Conditions are exceptionally lean (no news there) but there is still some fun skiing to be had. Today was our first day with a couple of families who are keen to do some touring, so we had a good 'shakedown' day skinning and skiing the South side of the Foglietta, going over some basic uphill technique tips, and building in a good transceiver/shovel/probe session.

Snow in St Foy is non-existant (barring man-made on the pistes) below 2000m, but up higher there is actually a reasonable covering (for early season) and some nice patches of wind-filled softness.

Magic carpet ride...

Yesterday evening I had a sudden burst of enthusiasm, threw some kit in a bag, checked boots fitted bindings, set the alarm quite early, and hoped the motivation would still be there when it went off...

Inspiration:

The Pointe du Vallonet is a sub-peak of the Grand Bec and one of those lines that stares you in the face from Bozel though for some reason I had never got around to skiing it. Given the lack of skiing this spring (work & family & weather combining regularly to stop play...) this was a perfect line for today - 1500m of up, 200m at 45º then lots of mellow terrain.

I was very surprised as I drove up to the parking spot to see another car there... clearly I am not the only madman in the Vanoise - Frank had the same idea as me and we naturally fell in step and had a good natter on the way up.

Crampons on for the narrows below the summit slopes - bulletproof!

On the summit ridge:

Great views from the top along to the Grande Casse:

After hanging out on the summit for 30 minutes, we decided that on the balance it was better to ski the top slopes when they were hard and get great skiing all the way down from there, rather than wait for the summit slopes to soften up but then have 1000m of porridge below. As the top 200m was quite 'textured' anyway this was an easy decision, but did mean some fairly controlled skiing on 45º bullet-proof-ness for my first outing this year on my super-lightweight kit...!

Frank on the summit slopes:

On the shoulder above the steep narrows:

Below the narrows - it starting getting really good from here!

From here on down we were treated to 1000m of perfect spring snow (and when I say perfect I mean really, really perfect - billiard smooth, top inch softened, pure velvet...):

And it just kept on going:

Even the Scottish-style gully at the end was fun skiing!

The gully-line took us down to 2050m, leaving just 250m of hiking back to the cars, not bad for the end of May!