Page 47 - AMA Summer 2023

comfortable hut of the route, but the outdoor loo requiring crampons to get there safely added some unwelcome spice.
Day 2 saw a cold skin in harscheisen to the Col Sup du Tour, and then round to the Col des Ecandies before a ski down to Champex with everything from ice, breakable crust and perfect powder in the space of a vertical kilometre. After a welcome coffee and the thicker valley air, the standard transfer across the valley saw us in Verbier by noon. With Arthur, our cavalryman, feeling very much at home we tucked into a reassuringly expensive lunch before ascending again, but this time using lifts to access hut 2 – the Mont Fort.
After the previous afternoon of being with the hoards in a resort, it was good to climb away from them and up to the Col de la Chaux on the third morning. Back into remote country and a pleasant skin up to the Col de Momin and the skiers’ summit of the RosaBlanche at 3336m saw us with only a downhill ski to the hut. Flashbacks of dropped skis thankfully remained just flashbacks and again the descent saw everything, including a section of about 300 vertical metres of perfect powder. The Prafleuri hut loomed into view, and giant Rosti beckoned. Day 4 dawned; overcast but workable – unlike my previous visit. The Prafleuri to Dix day is more awkward than hard – an ascent to a col which was fine, if cold, and then a long (really long) traverse without skins along the side of the Lac Dix. Lots of sidestepping, lots of poling, and some seriously aching right legs led to
the head of the lake and a deterioration in the weather. A transition to skins and a long climb followed in increasingly poor weather. The snow started, the visibility dropped, and up we climbed. We used two different apps for the bulk of the navigation: I used Fatmap which costs me about £25 a year; Will, our JSMG, used Outdoor Aktiv – a similar product. Both of us downloaded all the mapping for the route before we set off (allow plenty of time for this if doing it on dodgy WIFI in a Chamonix hostel), and both found the products excellent. Taking a high line paid off and we reached the Dix by 1230hrs. Time for more Rosti and a few more rounds of Monopoly Go.
Day 5 saw some fresh powder but clear skies. This was to be the section I’d missed 6 years previously. It’s apparently always cold on the route up to the Pigne and it was a quiet and contemplative party in ascent. Local intelligence was that the awkward step up before the Col du Brenay was icy and so we donned harscheisen again and made our way up. A good call we thought as the guide behind us was pulled from the slope by his slipping (crampon-less) client – not too serious, but sobering neverthe- less. The Pigne gave onto another glorious bit of skiing down to the Vignettes hut with its glass corridor entrance and log fire boot room to welcome us.
Easter day started with chocolate eggs at breakfast. This was to be the longest day of the route – 30km and 1100m of ascent. This was the sacrifice for the comparatively comfortable first day whilst still keeping the trip to 6 days. It’s a long easy climb to the Col de L’Eveque – the first of the three major climbs that day. What followed was a great powder ski down to the Glacier d’Arolla and an ascent firstly on skins and then boot-packing up to the Col du Mont Brule. We descended to the Glacier Tsa de Tsan and then climbed for the final time up to the third col of the day, Col de Valpelline. By this time, we were all tired – even the two Paras Guy and Gaz, Will the PTI and Lucy the ultramarathon runner. The descent below the Matterhorn is extraordi- nary – huge glacial features, huge seracs hanging menacingly above the skiers’ line, and all the time the Matterhorn looms, seemingly impossibly massive, above you. Lower down the line became indistinct and we picked our way through crevasses, boulders, bare patches and ice fields. I had my first fall of the trip straight-lining some
Lucy above the Vignettes hut
ice when tired – thankfully nothing more serious than a bent pole and a bruised ego, but definitely a reminder of how far we’d come that day.
The rest of the ski down to Zermatt was comparatively uneventful as we sought out the longest ribbons of snow before resorting to walking. The ‘Brown Cow’ revived us with a drink and a burger, and that was it: my 6-year Haute Route odyssey completed!
For anyone looking for a genuinely excellent ski mountaineering challenge, do consider this route as it really does deliver a bit of everything. A world class location at the start for a few days training, good huts, spectacular mountains, every type of terrain imaginable, the need for ropes, for crampons, for harscheisen, for sound map-reading, for constant risk management, and then a great town in which to finish (which it’s probably worth staying in the night you arrive, even if you have to scavenge some clothes from the lost property). Don’t approach it too lightly though – it won’t always let you complete it – and it demands good fitness, a good head for heights and willingness to scramble in crampons unprotected, a certain amount of nerve for crossing reasonably steep ice-fields in harscheisen and an ability to ski pretty much any type of snow/ice.
Our sincere thanks go to Will for guiding us in 2022 and 2023 so expertly, and to Gaz for leading the organisation in 2022 and Kukie in 2023 – great experiences and happy memories.
Gaz climbing to the Col des Ecandies
ARMY MOUNTAINEER / 47