Having farmed much of the pow in the Chamonix area, word came through that the south, and also the areas near the border of Italy had had further snowfalls. Fortunately Jerome hails from the South of France, and that area of the Alps is very familiar to him, so he put together a great road trip plan.

With fresh legs from a day off, we jumped in his van and headed towards the Ecrins, a mountain range in the South Alps that Jerome was very familiar with, which contains the famed areas of La Grave, L’Alpe d’Huez & Les Deux Alpes, and also many smaller places with excellent skiing that are largely unheard of to foreigners.

But we weren’t heading there. We did stop in La Grave to pick up some ski crampons which we had forgotten to get in Chamonix, but continued south to a small town called Fressinieres, and headed into the hills. Our destination was Dormillouse, a tiny hamlet with no road access and a small gîte that would be our home for the next 2 nights. So we drove as far as we could, packed our bags, fitted skins to our skis and hiked up for 90 minutes until we reached the gîte.

Unlike many high mountain refuges, this gîte was a little better equipped in that it had hot showers, running water, working toilets etc, but still dormitory style rooms and a communal dinner table. So we found our beds and settled in for the night. Le Gîte de l’Ecole has a maximum capacity of 14 people plus Serge the guardian.

The next day dawned clear so we began our ascent into the mountains. As this has not been a stellar year for snow the lower elevations and sunnier aspects were relatively bare, but we knew if we headed high we would be rewarded.

After 1000m of ascent which took a little over 4 hours, we reached a col on the shoulder of the Grand Pinier and decided that would be enough. The snow on the Grand Pinier looked pretty windblown and it would be a big effort for not much reward, so we settled on our location, had a great lunch and surveyed the bowl that we would be skiing.

Whilst it may sound a little over the top to hike for 4 hours for what would essentially be one run, do bear in mind that we were looking at an area the size of a substantial western US ski resort without one solitary single track.

The first bowl was nice powder, then it rolled over into some pretty decent pitch, which was also a little windblown. It was good steeper skiing but the wind crust made things interesting on wobbly legs that had just done their biggest hike on skis ever, but when we got down a little lower the snow became absolutely superb.

The camera lens was nowhere near wide enough to take in what we had at our disposal:

Jerome dropping in:

This is why you hike all morning:

We had gotten a little excited on the last pitch, and were cliffed out so we needed to do a little sidestep upwards and across, which also gave us a great view of our tracks:

Perfect powder again on a lower pitch:

I have footage of this as well, but the poor little netbook I am travelling with is not coping well with HD video editing, so I am keeping the videos to a minimum, and may edit them all together into something more substantial when I get back to Oz.

We finally reached the bottom of the valley and followed the stream down, with a couple of entertaining crossings:

Lower down the valley is popular with ice climbers:

Exhausted and content we reached the gîte and settled in for the usual apres ski banter about everyone’s day.

As it was by far our largest ever ascent on skis, I would by lying if I said it did not take its toll, so we settled on a slightly less strenuous itinerary for the second day, about 700m of ascent. We were in an area that had been skied by the other groups and therefore lightly tracked, but still plenty of powder was to be had.

It was finally time to head down to the car, but instead of snowploughing down the access road, Jerome had spied a couloir that looked interesting.

It resembled the very best of Buller-style combat skiing, and we loved it – about 40 degrees in pitch, powder at the top, sloughed down to bare ice in the middle, slush below, trees, roots, thorn bushes – it had it all. For the Buller skiers, just think Hangman’s Drop in a low snow year, but twice as long with avvie debris in the middle.

After the assault of the couloir, we gently made our way down to the car, repacked and caught up with a friend of Jerome’s for coffee and to discuss our next move. One of his friends had recently been down to the Queyras mountain range and reported excellent skiing – they had received a metre of snow 5 days earlier. The Italian side of the range had received more, but the weather was still cloudy, and the avalanche danger higher, so we jumped in the car and headed another hour southeast towards the town of Abries.

We had loved every minute of our experience at Dormillouse, and it was our first true backcountry adventure. We had dipped our toes into the world of touring but these were our first days where we had earned every single turn, and we were most proud.

With clouds looming over the Aiguille du Midi, we decided to leave that for another day and head for the Aiguilles Rouges for a ski tour. Starting from Flegere, we would ride to the top, put on our skins, hike to the Col des Aiguilles Crochues, ski a way down the valley, skin again to the Col du Berard, and then ski down the Berard Valley to the township of Le Buet.

Despite the fact we had skied a couple of days on the Brevent/Flegere side of the Chamonix Valley, it had always been in poor visibility so we had never been able to take advantage of the perfect vantage point for viewing the Mont Blanc massif. Here’s a great shot of L’Aiguille Verte & Les Drus early in the morning:

Time to fix the skins:

And finally it was time to learn the infamous uphill kick turn. Skin tracks up the mountain are often set in zig zag patterns, requiring the ability to turn 180 degrees on the spot. I had been warned about the learning curve on these, and I would definitely be lying if I said it was easy. Standing on the side of the mountain with each ski pointing in the opposite direction wondering how on earth you can get the other one around is quite a precarious feeling, and is often followed by a far less than graceful movement. It wasn’t until the second skin of this tour that we even remotely looked like we knew what we were doing!

As the slope got steeper and narrower towards the col, the switchbacks became closer and we got to the point that the kick turns were wasting too much time so we strapped our skis to our backs and bootpacked up to the col. I’d like to say this was fun, but it really wasn’t, but it was over fairly soon and it was time to ski some powder. The best part about our arrival at the Col was the view, a breathtaking vista of the Mont Blanc Massif:

Richard & Jerome on the bootpack just below the Col:

Powder awaiting us on the other side:

After some nice powder turns and a long traverse, it was time to fix the skins again for an ascent up to the Col du Berard.

What should have been a straightforward skin up to the Col du Berard actually became quite a challenge due to strong crosswinds threatening to blow us down off the skin track, and also the blowing snow that this was transporting, even though i was less than 20-30m from the next skier at times the track had completely filled in with windblown snow which made things awkward at times. Anyway all difficulties were forgotten once we saw what was awaiting us on the other side:

Our tracks with the Col in the background:

All smiles:

Jerome led us to an area that was a couple of square kilometres of lovely soft powder:

A full shot of the Combe du Berard:

From this point onwards we followed the river down to the town of Le Buet – at times it was a bit like a ‘James Bond’ trail complete with berms, whoop-de-doos and the odd creek crossing:

We got a great view of the Couloir we skied yesterday afternoon above Vallorcine:

Our tour ended at the township of Le Buet:

Where we rewarded ourselves with a lovely platter and glass of wine:

We then caught the train back to Chamonix extremely content, and reflecting on the various aspects and emotions of the day. Some of the climbing wasn’t particularly fun, but it was incredibly rewarding when we reached the powder and knew that our efforts were what enabled us to achieve this goal.