Steep Vanoise 2014 - St Foy

On Thursday we made the (almost mandatory) trip to St Foy for day 4 of this year's Steep Vanoise week. As always, it delivered big style!

A short skin up to the Fogliettaz summit and we dropped in to the North face, and found some good cold soft snow (some might call it powder..!) - even 2 1/2 weeks after the last snowfall!

With such good snow to be skied (all things considered) we hung a hard right traverse below the top face and put skins on again to head up to the Col D'Argentiere and on to the top of Couloir Doudou.

Doudou looked rather unappealing so we headed back to the Col D'Argentiere, where I had spied a totally unskied shoulder line of good looking snow as we skinned up. Good choice as it turned out:

A late lunch in the sun below the Archeboc refuge, and we headed off down a nicely softened 'icy path of doom' and back to the car for a well-earned refreshment at the Monal...