April 25-28th
The snow continues in Chamonix as well as my burning thighs! For four days in a row all we have been doing is riding bottomless powder with big vertical. Every run is 3000 feet with a high-speed gondola, tram, or chair to get you back up the mountain. There are not a lot of skiers this late in the season, so it is pretty much us and a bunch of powder crazed locals.
The weather forecast was for sun up high and clods in the valley. With optimism we went up the Brevent side hoping its summit would be above the clouds. Stian had a few good zones up there that would get beautiful morning light. Unfortunately we were about 600 feet too low and were in a thick cloud. Since you are a few thousand feet above tree line our best option was to ski a couloir or next to rocks to have any kind of visibility for the descent. Since Stian had some pretty bright colors on, we figured it might be pretty cool to snap a few pics in the white out conditions.
After two runs in the clouds we decided to head down and go up the other side of the valley to the Aiguille du Midi, the worlds greatest chair lift! We knew for sure its summit would be above the clouds giving us some great photo opportunities.
In European fashion, we headed to town, ate sushi for lunch, took a nap, drank coffee, and then caught the last tram up the Midi. Three quarters of the way up we rose above the clouds and it was pretty much heaven on earth. Plus we were the only two people in the tram and on top of the Aiguille du Midi, which is very rare.
We watched the sun drop lower into the sky as I snapped many, many photos. There is an old saying, “quality over quantity”, but I have always said if you got the quality, shoot the quantity!
It was almost 7:30pm when we decided to ski back to town. With almost 9000 vertical feet to the valley and only about 1000 feet above the thick clouds we knew it was going to be quite the adventure down the Vallee Blance. Thankfully Stian knows these mountains well, with only about 15 feet of visibility I most likely would have fallen into the glacier at some point!
-Christian
<<- April 22nd
