Spring powder sessions week 3...

Another busy Splitboard touring week passes by. Perfect weather on day one saw us take the opportunity for a quick tour over the Col des Autannes before a mixed forecast was scheduled to make planning the weeks schedule an ever changing process.

With mixed weather on Tuesday we headed up to the Col de grand St Bernard for a couple of days, hiking to the Col de Barrasson on the first day with a brief spell of good vis, before a calming night up at the monastery.

Nearing the col de Barrasson.

The next morning unfortunately the weather was taking a serious turn for the worse with zero vis and strong winds. We headed back down to the Van and made an escape to Champex where we rode some seriously heavy wet snow through steep trees for the rest of the day. Champex has some great terrain and will be fantastic on a powder day, we had great fun charging steep soggy lines through the trees whilst looking at the amazing potential for future escapades.

This was followed by heavy snowfall over night and a great bad vis powder riding day off the top lift at the Grandes Montets on Thursday, check out the video below!



With a continuing bad forecast I had planned a possible tour to the Col d'Argentiere for Friday, a col that I have only once managed to reach with one of my Advanced BC groups. The snow conditions would be great, all we would need would be some good vis to make the tour possible. It snowed heavily over night at altitude, rain in the valley, an I awoke to clearing calm skies. The sun started to clear the remaining clouds from the valley, this could mean only one thing for outlast day and so I made a quick call around the guys and booked a mid morning heli flight up to the Trient plateau. On the way up the pilot, who had just made one drop off previous to ours said he had not seen such good conditions up there since early season and this quickly became apparent as we flew up over some seriously good looking steep and deep untracked powder.

Amazing conditions on the Trient plateau.

All alone and deep in it again!

After the customary hike across to the Aiguille du Tour we began the descent with perfect conditions, blue skies, great snow and no tracks (the three skiers before us having traversed way out left missing out on the best riding for some unknown ski reasoning).



The riding was perfect for about 1500m vertical of the 2100m descent, the lower half being temperature affected with some soft crust followed by spring corn making it an epic last days riding in the Chamonix massif both for the guys and for me (for a few weeks) as I now head off Splitboarding in Norway's Lyngen Alps for this years 'Voyager trip'. Following this after a week of acclimatising to sea level I'm back to Chamonix for this years Mont Blanc trip.

First though I have a few days off to get things ready, this of course means leaving everything until the last possible minute whilst riding my bike as much as possible in order to gain some form for the coming cycling season for which I'm badly lagging in fitness.

With this said I am now going to head out for a ride…

All is good in Chamonix!

Neil.