Chamonix 17/1/14

I arrived in Chamonix yesterday after taking the overnight sleeper train from Lille, with a few hours in Paris for dinner. The weather was pretty bleak, and there was a foot of fresh in town. I decided to take a four-hour ticket up to Brevent, which I'd never skied before and which at least had trees for poor visibility. To be honest, it was all a bit ho-hum until they opened the cable car. The accessible off-piste was at a high risk for avalanches, and I hadn't brought either my beacon or airbag.

Then they opened the Brevent cable car, and things got better. Whilst most people seemed happy following the zig-zag goat trail back to the station, there were some glorious turns to be had in and around these loops, including a couple of very deep couloirs. Whilst mostly knee-deep, there were a few waist-deep smear-turns and the odd face-shot.

By late afternoon, the weather had started to lift across the valley, with patches of sunlight starting to illuminate the Aiguilles - and even the big fella itself. I got a bit of a rush seeing Mt Blanc for the first time since July when I was on top of it.

My ticket ran out, and I had no choice but to take the winding trail back down to Chamonix - only problem was that it was closed due to lack of snow, but I figured that it was only my ski bases that were going to suffer - nothing that petex and wax won't fill. As it was the trail was fine, and as the clouds lifted the views just continued to get better.

After a rest I took my camera along on my afternoon run, and the alpenglow put on a show that just kept on giving, reminding me again of just how mind-blowing these mountains are. 

Have some guides booked for a few days this week so am hoping for some fine weather. 

French Alps January 2014

After the dump, we've been blessed with a string of fine weather, which has made for some good photos. The avalanche risk continues with notable slides in most of the usual places, so I've been content to either skin up the mountain en piste either before breaky or for sunset. That seems to be what most others who need their fix of 'up' are doing too. 

I have a tentative tour with Roland who took me up Mt Blanc booked for later in the week, but looks like more bad weather coming in. So far it's a pretty crap snow year for guides - although most of them spend their days guiding stupidly rich Russians around the green slopes anyway.

In Australia, there's always something off piste to do - but that just doesn't hold in the Alps, especially when bad conditions have been set up by early snowfalls followed by a period of warm. Even some of the sneaky caches known to locals have slid over the last few days.

We've been content to harvest little powder patches in amongst the trees, and to the side of the groomers. I've also made great progress teaching Balti to ski - yesterday we ditched the harness, and today the edge-wedgie such that now he's all alone. My pocket rocket ski buddy.