Page 46 - AMA Summer 2023

SKIMOUNTAINEERING
EXERCISE
TIGER
HAUTE
Brigadier Adam Corkery
April 2017. The Dix hut in the French Alps. A storm is definitely coming and the multilingual hum of parties deciding what to do increases in volume. We should reach the high point of the route the next day, traversing the Pigne d’Arolla but the forecast for 80kph wind and heavy snow sounds sub-optimal. We take the hard decision to retreat via the ladders over the Pas de Chevres to Arolla the next morning. A couple of nights in Arolla, and we rejoin the route at the Vignettes hut, but I feel a bit cheated; the Haute Route hasn’t been truly completed.
Five years later: April 2022. Exercise TIGER HAUTE 22 and a new team. It’s not been a promising start. The forecast is terrible and the snow cover is super-thin. We’ve had 2 training days in Chamonix but the likelihood of making the complete traverse is not high. We decide to make an attempt to exploit a short weather window, but it’s definitely not long enough to get all the way from Chamonix to Zermatt. We drive around to Verbier and dump the minibus
and get up into the hills. The Mont Fort hut is glorious. Day 2 and the route around to the Prafleuri hut is good too (except for a dropped ski which travelled for the best part of 3km by itself, but that’s a story for another time). The cirrus increases through the day though and the mood, like the sky, begins to darken. By supper time it’s snowing and I’m transported back 5 years as we again debate the courses of action for the following day. The sheer amount of snow forecast over the following 3 days effectively made carrying on a non- starter. To sit tight for 3 days, possibly more, and try to carry on, or to escape the route and find safer skiing elsewhere? We wake to six inches of powder and make our escape to Pralong via some serious terrain next to the Dixence dam. The very deep powder skiing we have over the following days based out of the ‘Love Hotel’ in Zinal is exceptional, but that’s also a story for another time. Attempt 2 ends in failure.
Another year on. April 2023. Chamonix. Ex TIGER HAUTE 23 and the team is back together. The snow is great, the weather set fair and morale is high. A day of training above Chamonix and a day in the Vallee Blanche (if ever you’re in need of a harsh reality pill about global warming, go there), and we’re ready. An early bus up to Argentiere, the now-shorter uplift following the fire on the Grand Montets lift in 2018, and the skinning begins. Attempt 3 was underway. It’s the start of the French holidays and so our early hut bookings would pay off – there were a lot of people aiming for the Argentiere Glacier. A long skin up and we join the groups transition- ing into crampons to pull up the fixed rope leading to the Col du Passon. The skiing on the far side to the Albert Premiere hut was fantastic – big mountain scenery and now away from the masses, most of whom headed on to the Trient hut. The Albert Premiere was perhaps the most
46 / ARMY MOUNTAINEER
Adam leads a bootpack up the lower section below Col du Passon
The Glacier du Tour at sunset