Off-Piste course in Chamonix March 2009
Chamonix Experience and guide Sébastien ran an off-piste course in Chamonix last week, 23-28 March. We had six enthusiastic participants in the very international team; Marco from Italy living in Australia, Rona and Peter from the UK living in Switzerland, Ulrich from Italy living in the UK, Miles from the UK and Patricia from France. Thank you all for great efforts!
This week provided a lot of powder to play in but unfortunately also quite a bit of cloud, bad visibility and wind. The itinerary for the week developed as follows:
Day 1 – Nice, clear and sunny weather. The group headed to the Grands Montets ski area and practised ski techniques as well as crevasse rescue and glacier travel skills.
Day 2 – Snowy weather and bad visibility but a great opportunity to practise real powder skiing. Sébastien filmed and at the end of the day they were watching themselves skiing at the Chamex coffee shop. There were some embarrassed laughs but it is a great way to improve.
Day 3 – Le Tour was on the agenda today. More snowy weather and the wind picked up so much that they closed some of the lifts which left Rona, Peter and Sébastien stuck in Vallorcine and had to be picked up by car. The afternoon was spent learning about avalanches and practising transceiver search.
Day 4 – Cloudy weather with sunny spells. After a descent from the Plan de l’Aiguille it cleared a bit for a while which was just enough for Sebastien and the group to ski the Vallée Blanche. They had an amazing descent down an almost untracked Vallée Blanche.
Day 5 – Cloudy with sunny spells again. The group drove through the Tunnel du Mont Blanc to Courmanyeur in Italy. They had some great powder runs there and nice Italian coffee…….an important part of skiing in Italy.
Day 6 – Brévent
photo-blog Martina Palm 01 Apr 2009 No Comments
