First off… Happy New Year and thank you for following this blog or even reading it from time to time. It means a lot to me that anyone at all cares what I have to say and this gives me reason to keep going!
2015 was a bumpy year with a rough start. With the loss of friends from skiing accidents and also my dearly beloved Grandfather who was a great inspiration to me, motivation for skiing and general mountain activities was low. Ordinarily I’d expect to ski off a mountain or two and have at least a handful of long days in the mountains with friends. Looking back I realise that I hardly had any stand out days last winter due to work commitments, lack of snow and lack of psyche.
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Y Couloir, Aiguille d’Argentiere. One of those days….
……..that I’ll never forget. Great snow, perfect weather, 5* line and good company. What more do you need from a day. I had skied this line before 2 seasons ago in spring corn and always thought I could do one better and get it in pow. Yesterday that happened and after a hesitant start me and Liz Daley were soon ripping down what can only be described as one of the best days I’ve ever had in the mountains. I had decided I wanted to go up a mountain rather than up a boring col and when I suggested this to Liz she seemed pretty keen. Although she also said she was “like a fat girl at the prom…..I’m just happy to be here!”
I knew it was good to have options so we decided to go to the Argentiere so we had a choice of 3 possible ways down, the Milieu glacier (not much fun but an easy enough descent), the Barbey couloir (not done it yet and looks sick) or the Y couloir. After getting our sorry asses to the summit we had ruled out the Barbey due to the lack of snow on that face so decided to look at the Y. At the top of the couloir we looked in and couldn’t decide what it was. Pow, crust, ice? Its hard to tell from above so I had the bright idea to chuck a rock in to see what happened. (Note; it was 2.30pm and we couldn’t see anyone coming up so we were 90% sure we weren’t going to kill someone by doing this) I chucked a fist sized block in and…..pooooff. It disappeared in the pow. It was on……
Till the next one folks….