The Deepest Gnarliest Day on the Midi
The Deepest Gnarliest Day on the Midi
I woke at 7am to bluebird skies and deep fresh pow, rushing to get down the valley from Argentiere to Chamonix I cursed the lazy construction workers who’ve left their temporary lights up over the weekend. Pulling up to the Midi the clouds were starting to come in but nothing too threatening …its 7.50am, I’ll make the 8am tram…..Lazy Bastard Lift Co….No info till 9, no tram until after that….9.30, 30 or so skiers jostle with the Japanese tourists for first bin, the clouds are really rolling in, but its been snowing all week so we have to go up and see.
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Its –18C, snowing and blowing 60kph or more….and the snow is deep, deeper than anyone expected, since Tuesday it’s snowed 2m (6feet)…w can’t see shit so we talk of possible routes, wait for it to clear, a few try walking down the ridge…they don’t really get anywhere.
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We can’t see much more than a few tens of meters, but a few agree to follow, I make a turn or 2 on the ridge…it’s way deep
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The first part of the Grand Envers is down and up and takes 2 to 5 min depending on how much you straight-line….with 9 of us taking turns to brake trail it takes and hour or so of wandering around and cursing….but hey you try making headway in snow this deep….we were real glad the snowboarders didn’t try and follow, on foot or snowshoe you’d be over your head, sometimes your chest deep on skis….ski choice doesn’t make much difference here…Ok the guy on Silimon Verse sinks the most but the Spatulas are no quicker than Bandit XX, actually they are worse, not enough tip!….We make it to the first pitch, it’s slid already, so the middle is soft on windcrust and the edges are deep….2/3 of the way down it gets real deep….even Spatulas don’t give much of an advantage….not over the V explosives and Intuitive Bigs the rest of the group are riding…it’s just too deep, where we would normally make turns we straight-line, were we straight-line we slingshot past each other to make headway…the second pitch has also sloughed off, but from here down it is just perfect….speed is your friend, yes fatter skis are better, but misplaced balance causes cartwheels regardless of ride….down onto the flats and its 15cm of fresh and we have to pole most of the way, but its been well worth it…we couldn’t see more than a few turns, we took 4 hours to do a 45min run but it ain’t ever been that deep before…
Oh and this is what we called hardpack
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