Loads of snow on Mont Blanc!!

On top of Mont Blanc at 6am the other day!

So last week I cycled around it, this week I went to the top of it!

Yep I'm just down from my first Mont Blanc summit of the summer season. I spent the first half of the week wading around in deep snow in zero visibility following compass bearings through snow blizzards. It snowed down to about 2000m, it finally cleared when we were up at the Trient refuge, (which we navigated to in complete white out, wading through knee deep snow on the Glacier du Trient) and so we climbed the Aiguille du Tour in perfect winter climbing condition and waded through light sparkling powder to both get there and get back down to the valley.

Check out the sparkling fresh snow, amazing riding conditions!

It would have been perfect riding conditions!

The last couple of days the weather was perfect and we did Mont Blanc from the Gouter refuge 3800m. The first day you climb up to the Gouter refuge from the Nid d'Aigle 2372m, some 1400m of climbing the last 600m of it steep rocky scrambling in crampons. The second day we did from the hut to the summit, 1000m of climbing which we did in just over 3 and half hours (which is pretty quick). we were the first teams on the top and had the summit to our selves for the sunrise, perfect conditions but bitterly cold!

Sunrise on the summit of Mont Blanc, the Monta Rosa massif in the background.

Again there was loads of snow and it would have been great for riding instead of wading around in it!

I now have a couple of weeks off to ride my bike some more before a busy August in the mountains. The Tour du France passes through Morzine so I'll cycle over there to see that. Andy Cook who some of you might know from winter courses is coming out to stay so we'll get some rides in and go visit the Tour before I briefly head up MB again mid July.

Winter bookings are going very well, Ruth will start taking deposits very soon and then all these provisional bookings can be confirmed. 2 courses are provisionally full and 3 or 4 others have only 1 or 2 places left! Amazing for this time of year!!

Jeremy Sladen from the TSA has been in touch to offer a 10% discount on 'Jones Splitboards' to anyone who has booked on one of the 'Split board courses'. Anyone interested in taking up this offer should get in touch with me as he only has limited stocks (but can order more if interest is high). I've replied to see if this offer can be extended to all the 'Jone Snowboards' range on all 'McNab snowboarding courses' so watch this space for further news. We'll contact everyone who has booked with news of the offer once deposits have been taken.

I've also been asked to do a monthly BC feature in Whitelines next year so that should be good. If anyone has any specific BC topics they want to see covered let me know and I'll see if I can do something with it.

I'll also be writing something on Off Piste/BC riding on the TSA web site soon, so again whatch this space for further news.

I'm out cycling with the GPM10 team again tomorrow, the weather has finally come good these past few days and it looks like summer has finally hit!

All is good in Chamonix!

Neil.