Vallee Blanche Jan 31 2014

For a special request from Neroli - now my renovation nightmares are over and some fun has been had, time for me to get off my backside and ramble about it :)

Had the chance to ski the Vallee Blanche at the end of January - for some reason I'd never been up the aguille du midi in winter, time to fix that!


From South Chamonix the Aguille du midi cable car rises from 1000m to a change at 2000m - from there it goes straight up (well a little down the valley first) to 3800m without any pylons! The lift alone is a spectacular enough ride, let alone the environs... You hop off at the top well and truly in the high alpine environment!

looking at the aquilles du chamonix

Looking up to the Aguille du Midi from the mid-station

From the lift, you must walk (carefully!) down the arete in the picture above - as you can see, it's quite popular... It's crowded and slippery with a tumble either side being rather inviting, on the left it's 2000m of tumbling!

Through this tunnel in the rock, then an ice tunnel and out... my hands were frozen from standing around waiting for the french to get organised so not too many pics of this part...

So after you walk and ski down, this is the other side of the Aguille du Midi...

Where we came from...

our guide on the left, above his head in the Cosmiques hut and in the mist somewhere behind him is Mont Blanc!

the gnarled NE face of Mont Blanc du Tacul

side of Tacul with La Tour Ronde in the backgroud - Italy on the other side

Aguille Verte in the background and les drus on the left

We skiied the Vallee Blanche Rognon Variant, so we hugged the rock face on the left of the above pic, we found some wind-blown powder there, some good but not too deep. Nice sustained pitch though, pleasantly steep but not really...

some of the steeper variants pop out here...

and down we went, losing elevation fast

We quickly exchanged freshies for the crevasse zone as the glaciers merge torturously to form the Mer de Glace

icefall

from whence we came... top right, around the back of Gros Rognon in the centre and down through the glacier shoulder...

And after lunch on a rock in the middle of the Mer de Glace we made it to the end; with a stunning view up to my fave lump of rock, les drus

And if you excuse my dodgy skiing and shakey, tilted head cam, check out the video!