La Grave, France 2-26 & 27-12

EMSC

Well-known member
There are two defining features of La Grave at the moment. The possibilities and the reality. The terrain potential here is of course legendary. The reality is that the snow at the moment is very unusual and unforgiving. After some warm days (when I was up in Chamonix) the temps cooled down refreezing things that had been soft and leaving cue ball like snow in many places up top.

On our first day Pelle, our guide and the owner of Skiers Lodge here wanted to take us down a south facing coulier. An unforecast strong wind played a bit of havoc up top. After going up both pulse gondolas (what a weird lift concept), we took a warm up lap on the upper poma which covers 400 m of vert. It is a very odd design that started life as 2 pomas in one with some odd mechanics. Now the first portion is unuseable since the glacier has retreated and they pull you up that pitch with what almost looks like a smart car on tracks. Anyway, after a short hike we headed right past the top of the upper lifts of Les Du Alpes - which were not running due to the wind. While you would think that with the steep vertical over here that the wind would drop off once decending... You would be wrong. The wind was howling down the first several thousand verts of our decent and was keeping the south face solidly frozen and or sastrugi (2-3 feet deep wind ridges at first).

After a seemingly endless series of falling leaf sideslips Pelle ended up changing his mind away from Larama to Olympic coulier. Olympic is a tight little chute with rock walls that shoot up on either side by hundreds of verts at times. It's probably only upper 30's in degrees of pitch and it had warmed nicely to corn and spring snow. Apparently it is rarely skiable. About half way down we had to go on belay to rappel down a short waterfall that was appearing. And then skied another short ice waterfall near the bottom. After several thousand verts of the nice snow in the coulier we popped out into the shadowed valley with rock hard snow for our 7 kilometer traverse. Foretunately there is enough snow still to ski all the way into St Christophe, a tiny little town perched on the side of a mountain. The single cafe was very busy from other skiers who had come down different routes on the back side. After finally getting lunch there we had to wait for a bus to drive us an hour back to La Grave. A one run day due to getting gear, ice side slipping, rappeling
 
My Nook Color seems to go weird when my posts get very long...

I should note that the avi beacon prep consistes of a 10minute video and a short conversation. No 3hour training and practice like most of North America.

For day 2 we stayed on the front side of La Grave, eventually getting 4 runs in.our "warm up" run consitsed of over 4,600' down the main valley back to the lower gondola P1 station. Certainly the first time I have ever loaded a moving gondola while climbing up stairs :shock: . The snow is a mix of cue ball in spots, minor sastrugi on occasion, and some honest to goodness chalky snow. In fact more of the latter. Of course that only holds until a certain elevation where all aspects are simply refrozen ice and frequently bumps as you appraoch the P1 station.

Our second run was down the glacier to skiers left of the upper poma and then a zig zag route after that; though somehow goinv right past the coulier where Doug Coombs lost his life. The top of that area is nothing worth noting to get there, but it is a pretty exposed, long, "sketchy" coulier that they fell into.

After a delicious lunch at the cafe at the top of the upper gondola we did a route that included a section called Rock Garden. Getting to it involves about 3k of traversing down the skiers left of the main gut to the left of the upper gondola. This run finally added some pitch, perhaps 40 degrees.

Our final run after hitting P1 yet again was a long run down under the hanging seracs of the main gut
 
(More wigging out by the nook....)

We skied the final run all the way to the town of LaGrave. That includes a section that is literally a hiking trail in the summer (aka super narrow). None of the snow had softened even at the very bottom.

Tuesday is also supposed to be cooler and Pelle, our guide seems likely to take us to a ski place over by/in Italy cor the day. Then things are supposed to warm back up with the potential for spring snow on some of the Couliers here. I certainly hope [-o< . Still interesting enough for a couple days so far, but getting a bit skunked on the surface conditions for the moment.
 
One day at a time sorting through my ~1500 pictures ;) Here are some pics from our first day at LaGrave over the backside and eventually down Olympic Couloir.

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Day 2 was not exactly cold, but it was cold enough to keep the snow frozen solid... Here are some pics.

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jamesdeluxe":g3rgnvgu said:
Great pix, too bad about conditions.

Where's the feature article?

Thanks. The Snow did get better the next few days I haven't written up yet (bit of a warm up, not new snow)... though still less than ideal in some spots.

I'm having enough trouble finding time to write it up as basic TR's! Maybe if Admin asks nice I'll do a slightly different take on the whole week as a feature :-$
 
EMSC, like me 4 years ago, is in France when it has not snowed significantly for a few weeks. The big storms this season were in December and January from what I recall. Coverage is better this year as EMSC skied under the La Grave lift to the valley floor, which we did not in 2008.

Where my trip was better was the south side run into the valley draining to St. Christophe. We had good skiing in the upper bowl and perfect corn in Le Rama couloir. We had the same icy 7 mile traverse out of that valley, and with lower cover had to walk down the final 500 vertical to the village.

Feature articles, even if written promptly, are published when admin thinks they will draw the most interest. Typically but not always that is in September/October when most people are planning destination trips for the upcoming season.
 
As I thought I'd be in France this year, I paid a bit more attention to snow reports than normal (although I hardly kept up on a day-to-day basis). The big storms were in December/January, leaving most of France with an excellent base. However, the main thing I noticed is that temperatures seemed to increase greatly after many storms, basically ruining the snow. I don't know if this is normal for France, but it seemed like there were a lot of great pow days, followed by a lot of days with really miserable snow conditions.
 
Staley":2vpgztlv said:
The big storms were in December/January, leaving most of France with an excellent base. However, the main thing I noticed is that temperatures seemed to increase greatly after many storms, basically ruining the snow. I don't know if this is normal for France, but it seemed like there were a lot of great pow days, followed by a lot of days with really miserable snow conditions.

Add to this set up a 2-3 week super cold snap for much of Feb (coldest temps in Europe in decades) and high winds at some point during said cold snap (according to the guides)... Then a short warm up at lower elevations followed by these 2 days of just-cold-enough to keep things frozen down low.

What does that equal? Super firm surfaces up top for the most part and icy, refrozen down low.

Fortunately we did have corn in Olympic Couloir itself after the frozen falling leaf parade up top and the final pitches into St Christophe were warm and soft on day one; but just locked-in firm on day 2 at La Grave. I'm getting ready to post following days TR's soon where the temps warmed back up enough to soften some things and also release just enough of it's cold grip up top that it began to ski more like chalk than brick...

So mostly good base depths and coverage all the way down to the low elevations (except where wind scoured of course), but surface conditions less than ideal.
 
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