This week-end ended tremendously bad... As I got home from Mont Blanc I heard about an accident occurred in Alpamayo, were a group of friends were on an expedition. Two of them are missing. My thoughts and all my hope are with them and with their families.
This week I thought i was going to do nothing because nobody was free to join me skiing. But I received a message from Alessandro (whom I met on Fletschhorn) asking me my plans. We agreed to go to Mont Blanc to try Macho Couloir at Col du Diable. A very nice steep line with a lot of exposure over a 300m hanging serac. The idea seemed good because I knew the couloir had been skied on thursday and it was going to snow a little. But it didn’t end that way... Because of high temperatures and sun peeping out of the clouds the snow on the face became harder.
Climbing up was not that easy: the first part of the face is exposed to the sun and we got multiple ice showers on our heads.
The top part was the best; since it’s more north exposed, the snow was not sun affected and we got to ski nice powder at 50 degrees. Nice turns hanging above the big serac below. But that was just for the first 100 meters... Under, were the face get steeper, snow became really hard and lot of stones popped out... It was really hard to ski in conditions like that. In the steeper section we were turning at >60° in a small couloir filled by rocks.
indeed it has been a nice experience, to re-do with better snow conditions thought!
Again a huge thanks goes to Morris wePowder for the custom forecast!
